HarperCollins Study Bible

by Harold W. Attridge

for the wicked are not removed.

  30They are called “rejected silver,”

  for the LORD has rejected them.

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  a Heb are uncircumcised

  b Or a fortress

  f Or I will destroy daughter Zion, the loveliest pasture

  g Or the city of license

  h Cn: Heb They shall glean

  6.1–8 The approach of the invader. In this prophecy of judgment, the enemy’s conquest of Jerusalem is launched.

  6.1 Jeremiah warns his fellow Benjaminites to flee Jerusalem. Warnings for Jerusalem are to be issued from Tekoa and Beth-haccherem (possibly modern Ramet Rahel), twelve miles and two miles south of Jerusalem, respectively. The invading army is now marching toward the capital.

  6.3–8 The assault on the city is launched.

  6.3 Shepherds…flocks, here invading kings and their armies (cf. 3.15).

  6.9–15 Jeremiah’s warnings go unheeded. As the assault against Jerusalem intensifies, children, married couples, and the elderly will experience the wrath of the LORD (i.e., divine judgment, v. 9) in the form of suffering, death, and exile.

  6.16–30 Forsaking the ancient paths. The ancient paths (v. 16) are the covenant of Moses and its laws, which were to guide the religious and moral lives of the people. In this prophecy of judgment against Zion (Jerusalem), the people have disobeyed the covenant and not given heed to the warnings of the prophets (sentinels, v. 17). The fierce enemy from the north will destroy all (parents and children…neighbor and friend, v. 21) without distinction and without mercy.

  6.20 Sacrifices and gifts do not appease God’s wrath (see Hos 9.4). Frankincense, a fragrant gum resin from the Boswellia tree, which grows in southern Arabia, northeastern Africa, and India. It was imported into Israel by caravans from Sheba (a country in southwest Arabia; see 1 Kings 10.1–13; Isa 60.6; Ezek 27.22–23) and was used as perfume (Song 3.6; 4.6, 14) and ritual incense (Ex 30.34–38). Sweet cane, also known as calamus, one of several varieties of cane or grasses yielding sweet-scented and volatile oils. It was used in holy anointing oil (Ex 30.23). Burnt offerings and sacrifices cover the array of animal sacrifices connected with the temple. Animals offered as burnt offerings were totally consumed by fire on the altar, while the edible parts of sacrifices were to be eaten by the worshipers. Acceptable, an indicator of the Lord’s willingness to receive the offering and the spirit with which it is given. The sacrificial laws in Leviticus specify the type and condition of acceptable animals (see Lev 1–7).

  6.26 Rites of lamentation do not avail.

  6.27–30 Jeremiah is a tester and a refiner who, like a metalsmith, examines the metal or religious character of the people and discards them like rejected silver, i.e., metal not containing enough silver to use for jewelry and decorations (see Job 23.10; Zech 13.9).

  JEREMIAH 7

  Jeremiah Proclaims God’s Judgment on the Nation

  1The word that came to Jeremiah from the LORD: 2Stand in the gate of the LORD’s house, and proclaim there this word, and say, Hear the word of the LORD, all you people of Judah, you that enter these gates to worship the LORD. 3Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel: Amend your ways and your doings, and let me dwell with youa in this place. 4Do not trust in these deceptive words: “This isb the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD.”

  5For if you truly amend your ways and your doings, if you truly act justly one with another, 6if you do not oppress the alien, the orphan, and the widow, or shed innocent blood in this place, and if you do not go after other gods to your own hurt, 7then I will dwell with you in this place, in the land that I gave of old to your ancestors forever and ever.

  8Here you are, trusting in deceptive words to no avail. 9Will you steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely, make offerings to Baal, and go after other gods that you have not known, 10and then come and stand before me in this house, which is called by my name, and say, “We are safe!”—only to go on doing all these abominations? 11Has this house, which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your sight? You know, I too am watching, says the LORD. 12Go now to my place that was in Shiloh, where I made my name dwell at first, and see what I did to it for the wickedness of my people Israel. 13And now, because you have done all these things, says the LORD, and when I spoke to you persistently, you did not listen, and when I called you, you did not answer, 14therefore I will do to the house that is called by my name, in which you trust, and to the place that I gave to you and to your ancestors, just what I did to Shiloh. 15And I will cast you out of my sight, just as I cast out all your kinsfolk, all the off-spring of Ephraim.

  The People’s Disobedience

  16As for you, do not pray for this people, do not raise a cry or prayer on their behalf, and do not intercede with me, for I will not hear you. 17Do you not see what they are doing in the towns of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem? 18The children gather wood, the fathers kindle fire, and the women knead dough, to make cakes for the queen of heaven; and they pour out drink offerings to other gods, to provoke me to anger. 19Is it I whom they provoke? says the LORD. Is it not themselves, to their own hurt? 20Therefore thus says the Lord GOD: My anger and my wrath shall be poured out on this place, on human beings and animals, on the trees of the field and the fruit of the ground; it will burn and not be quenched.

  21Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel: Add your burnt offerings to your sacrifices, and eat the flesh. 22For in the day that I brought your ancestors out of the land of Egypt, I did not speak to them or command them concerning burnt offerings and sacrifices. 23But this command I gave them, “Obey my voice, and I will be your God, and you shall be my people; and walk only in the way that I command you, so that it may be well with you.” 24Yet they did not obey or incline their ear, but, in the stubbornness of their evil will, they walked in their own counsels, and looked backward rather than forward. 25From the day that your ancestors came out of the land of Egypt until this day, I have persistently sent all my servants the prophets to them, day after day; 26yet they did not listen to me, or pay attention, but they stiffened their necks. They did worse than their ancestors did.

  27So you shall speak all these words to them, but they will not listen to you. You shall call to them, but they will not answer you. 28You shall say to them: This is the nation that did not obey the voice of the LORD their God, and did not accept discipline; truth has perished; it is cut off from their lips.

  29Cut off your hair and throw it away;

  raise a lamentation on the bare heights,c

  for the LORD has rejected and forsaken

  the generation that provoked his wrath.

  30For the people of Judah have done evil in my sight, says the LORD; they have set their abominations in the house that is called by my name, defiling it. 31And they go on building the high placed of Topheth, which is in the valley of the son of Hinnom, to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire—which I did not command, nor did it come into my mind. 32Therefore, the days are surely coming, says the LORD, when it will no more be called Topheth, or the valley of the son of Hinnom, but the valley of Slaughter: for they will bury in Topheth until there is no more room. 33The corpses of this people will be food for the birds of the air, and for the animals of the earth; and no one will frighten them away. 34And I will bring to an end the sound of mirth and gladness, the voice of the bride and bridegroom in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem; for the land shall become a waste.

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  a Or and I will let you dwell

  b Heb They are

  c Or the trails

  d Gk Tg: Heb high places

  7.1–8.3 This section comprises a series of prose speeches written by editors: the temple sermon (7.1–15), the forbidding of Jeremiah’s intercession by God,(7.16–20), disobedience and rejection of sacrificial ritual (7.21–28), the fate of Judah and the disinterment of the faithless dead (7.29–8.3).
These speeches were written during the exilic or postexilic period to explain that illicit worship and disobedience to the Mosaic covenant were the reasons for the exile. The theme of illicit worship continues in 10.1–16, a poetic polemic against idol worship.

  7.1–15 The temple sermon (an abbreviated version appears in 26.1–6). Although 26.1 places the sermon in the accession year of King Jehoiakim (609 BCE), shortly after the death of Josiah, the sermon we have was most likely written later, during or after the exile. However, it is probable that Jeremiah delivered an oracle of judgment against the temple and that the content of the prose sermon reflects his own views. Josiah’s death marked both the end of Judah’s political ambitions for self-determination and the religious reform. Neco II’s victory over Judah’s army at Megiddo and the death of Josiah in 609 led to Egyptian control of Israel, until the defeat of Egypt by the Babylonians at the battle of Carchemish in 605. Israel and Judah were soon incorporated into the Babylonian Empire. The son who succeeded Josiah to the throne, Jehoahaz, only ruled for three months. Neco II took him to Egypt and placed on the throne Jehoiakim, another son of Josiah. Jehoiakim received neither the endorsement of the elders of the land nor prophetic anointing. The sermon consists of an introduction (vv. 1–2), a first admonition (vv. 3–4), a second admonition (vv. 5–8), two rhetorical questions (vv. 9–11), and a threat (vv. 12–15).

  7.2 LORD’s house, the Jerusalem temple. With the death of Josiah and the end of the dreams for national destiny, the people of Judah make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem to celebrate a festival, possibly the Festival of Booths (Tabernacles, September-October), an eight-day festival that gave thanks for the autumn harvest and recalled God’s guidance of Israel during the wilderness wanderings (Lev 23.39–43). This festival was also the time when Solomon’s temple was dedicated (1 Kings 8). Every seven years the Torah was read publicly during this festival (Deut 31.10–11). It has also been suggested that the sermon was delivered at Jehoiakim’s coronation (see 26.1) during the New Year’s festivities, which took place at roughly the same time as the Festival of Booths.

  7.3 The Hebrew may be read two ways: let me dwell with you in this place (i.e., divine presence in the temple), or I will let you dwell in this place (i.e., not go into exile).

  7.4 Deceptive words (Hebrew sheqer, “lie, falsehood”). The notion that the temple of the LORD (repeated three times for emphasis) is the basis of security, grounded in the belief that God will defend Zion against its enemies (see Pss 46; 48; 76; Isa 31.4–5), is rejected.

  7.5 Repentance (returning to the Mosaic covenant), not the temple and its worship, is the one hope for divine presence and the people’s continued dwelling in Judah.

  7.6 Alien, orphan, widow. See Deut 10.18–19; 24.17–22; 27.19. Aliens are resident foreigners who do not enjoy the same economic or legal status as native-born Israelites. Orphans and widows do not have families to sustain them. All three are therefore socially vulnerable and require outside support from the king or the Israelite community as a whole. In Deuteronomy, Israel’s responsibility for the destitute is linked with God’s merciful deliverance of the people when they were slaves in Egypt at the time of the exodus.

  7.9 Five of the Ten Commandments (Ex 20.1–17; Deut 5.6–21) are mentioned. Here they serve as a symbol of all of Israel’s covenant obligations.

  7.11 Den of robbers. See Mt 21.13.

  7.12–15 Shiloh, eighteen miles north of Jerusalem, is Khirbet Seilun. The seat of the levitical priesthood and the location of an important sanctuary (Josh 21.1–2; 1 Sam 1.3, 9), the town was a major religious center during the period of the judges (twelfth century BCE). It was destroyed, probably by the Philistines, in the eleventh century BCE (see Jer 26.6–9). This destruction was eventually understood as God’s judgment on the priestly house of Eli for the abuses it committed at the shrine. Eli’s descendants, including Abiathar and perhaps Jeremiah himself, traced their loss of priestly power to these early events (1 Kings 2.27). Jeremiah’s reference to Shiloh therefore carries a particularly powerful message for his priestly relatives at Anathoth (1.1). Jeremiah’s threat of destruction and exile parallels that of Micah in the eighth century BCE (see Mic 3.9–12).

  7.15 Offspring of Ephraim, the Northern Kingdom, which fell to the Assyrians in the eighth century BCE.

  7.16–20 Jeremiah is forbidden to intercede to save the nation. Intercession is a primary function of the prophetic office (see 11.14; 15.1; Am 7–9).

  7.18 Queen of heaven (see 44.15–30), the Assyro-Babylonian goddess Ishtar, an astral deity associated with Venus. She was a goddess of both war and fertility.

  7.21–28 Obedience, including moral behavior, not sacrifice, is the basis for the covenantal relationship with God.

  7.21 Eating the flesh of burnt offerings was forbidden by ritual law, for the flesh was to be burned and thus reserved for God (Lev 1).

  7.25 My servants the prophets suggests the image of a king sending his couriers and emissaries to announce royal proclamations (see 23.1; 25.4). God has sought to address the covenant people with a long series of emissaries, but to no avail.

  7.29–8.3 A prose sermon on the fate of Judah and the disinterment of its leaders.

  7.29 An earlier poetic fragment from Jeremiah, embedded within the prose. Cut off your hair, part of the ritual of lamentation (16.6; Mic 1.16).

  7.31 Topheth (from Aramaic, “fireplace”) was pronounced with the vowels of the word “shame” in Hebrew. This cultic place for child sacrifice was located in the valley of the son of Hinnom (Gehenna), just west and south of the walls of Jerusalem. The valley received notoriety for being the site of idolatrous practices, including child sacrifice (2 Chr 28.3; 33.6). The law requiring the giving of the firstborn to God (Ex 22.29–30) may have been interpreted to mean child sacrifice, a view Jeremiah counters (see Lev 18.21).

  7.32 Valley of Slaughter, lit. “valley of murder.”

  JEREMIAH 8

  1At that time, says the LORD, the bones of the kings of Judah, the bones of its officials, the bones of the priests, the bones of the prophets, and the bones of the inhabitants of Jerusalem shall be brought out of their tombs; 2and they shall be spread before the sun and the moon and all the host of heaven, which they have loved and served, which they have followed, and which they have inquired of and worshiped; and they shall not be gathered or buried; they shall be like dung on the surface of the ground. 3Death shall be preferred to life by all the remnant that remains of this evil family in all the places where I have driven them, says the LORD of hosts.

  The Blind Perversity of the Whole Nation

  4You shall say to them, Thus says the LORD:

  When people fall, do they not get up again?

  If they go astray, do they not turn back?

  5Why then has this peoplea turned away

  in perpetual backsliding?

  They have held fast to deceit,

  they have refused to return.

  6I have given heed and listened,

  but they do not speak honestly;

  no one repents of wickedness,

  saying, “What have I done!”

  All of them turn to their own course,

  like a horse plunging headlong into battle.

  7Even the stork in the heavens

  knows its times;

  and the turtledove, swallow, and craneb

  observe the time of their coming;

  but my people do not know

  the ordinance of the LORD.

  8How can you say, “We are wise,

  and the law of the LORD is with us,”

  when, in fact, the false pen of the scribes

  has made it into a lie?

  9The wise shall be put to shame,

  they shall be dismayed and taken;

  since they have rejected the word of the LORD,

  what wisdom is in them?

  10Therefore I will give their wives to others

  and their fields to conquerors,

  because from the least to the great
est

  everyone is greedy for unjust gain;

  from prophet to priest

  everyone deals falsely.

  11They have treated the wound of my people carelessly,

  saying, “Peace, peace,”

  when there is no peace.

  12They acted shamefully, they committed abomination;

  yet they were not at all ashamed,

  they did not know how to blush.

  Therefore they shall fall among those who fall;

  at the time when I punish them, they shall be overthrown,

  says the LORD.

  13When I wanted to gather them, says the LORD,

  there arec no grapes on the vine,

  nor figs on the fig tree;

  even the leaves are withered,

  and what I gave them has passed away from them.d

  14Why do we sit still?

  Gather together, let us go into the fortified cities

  and perish there;

  for the LORD our God has doomed us to perish,

  and has given us poisoned water to drink,

  because we have sinned against the LORD.

  15We look for peace, but find no good,

  for a time of healing, but there is terror instead.

  16The snorting of their horses is heard from Dan;

  at the sound of the neighing of their stallions

  the whole land quakes.

  They come and devour the land and all that fills it,

  the city and those who live in it.

  17See, I am letting snakes loose among you,

  adders that cannot be charmed,

  and they shall bite you,

  says the LORD.

  The Prophet Mourns for the People

  18My joy is gone, grief is upon me,

  my heart is sick.

  19Hark, the cry of my poor people

  from far and wide in the land: