Jeremiah 10:1

Hear ye the word which the Lord speaketh unto you, O house of Israel.

Hear ye the word which the LORD speaketh unto you, O house of Israel: Israel - The Jews, the surviving representatives of the nation.

CHAPTER 10 They are forbid to be afraid of the tokens of heaven, and consult idols, which are vain, , and not to be compared with the majesty and power of God, who is Jacob’ s portion, . The Babylonians destroy the temple; the brutish pastors and the flocks are scattered, . The prophet’ s humble supplication, . Here begins another sermon, i.e. most probably relating to Jechonias and the Jews, that were already in captivity. Israel; the ten tribes.

Jeremiah 10:1 Hear ye the word which the LORD speaketh unto you, O house of Israel:Ver. 1. Hear ye the word which the Lord speaketh.] Exordium simplicissimum, saith Junius. A very plain preface calling for attention; (1.) From the authority of the speaker; (2.) From the duty of the hearers. O house of Israel.] The ten tribes, long since captivated, and now directed what to do, say some; the Jews, say others: and in this former part of the chapter, those of them that had been carried away to Babylon with Jeconiah.

X. (1) House of Israel.—This forms the link that connects what follows with what precedes. The “house of Israel” had been told that it was “uncircumcised in heart,” on a level with the heathen; now the special sin of the heathen, which it was disposed to follow, is set forth in words of scorn and indignation.

CHAPTER X The Jews, about to be carried into captivity, are here warned against the superstition and idolatry of that country to which they were going. Chaldea was greatly addicted to astrology, and therefore the prophet begins with warning them against it, 1, 2. He then exposes the absurdity of idolatry in short but elegant satire; in the midst of which he turns, in a beautiful apostrophe, to the one true God, whose adorable attributes repeatedly strike in view, as he goes along, and lead him to contrast his infinite perfections with those despicable inanities which the blinded nations fear, 3-16. The prophet again denounces the Divine judgments, 17, 18; upon which Jerusalem laments her fate, and supplicates the Divine compassion in her favour, 19-25. NOTES ON CHAP. X Verse 1. Hear ye the word which the Lord speaketh unto you] Dr. Dahler supposes this discourse to have been delivered in the fourth year of the reign of Jehoiakim. It contains an invective against idolatry; showing its absurdity, and that the Creator alone should be worshipped by all mankind.

Ch. Jeremiah 10:1-16. The folly of idolatry It is now generally recognised that this passage is a later insertion, for (a) it breaks the connexion between Jeremiah 9:1-22 and Jeremiah 10:17 ff.; while by its omission the train of thought in the former is carried on smoothly in the latter; (b) elsewhere the people have been rebuked for being already devoted to idolatry (Jeremiah 7:18; Jeremiah 7:31), but here they are addressed as sincere and convinced worshippers of Jehovah, and are warned against imagining that idols are possessed of any real power, a warning which would be well adapted to the circumstances of the exiles in Babylon, surrounded as they were with its elaborate idol worship; (c) elsewhere Jeremiah’s argument is, “Expect no help from vain gods; they cannot save you” (Jeremiah 2:28, Jeremiah 11:12); here the argument is, “Do not fear them, they cannot harm you.” See LOT. p. 254. This does not indeed preclude the possibility that the passage is one which the prophet himself addressed at a later date to his brethren in captivity, and in fact it contains certain of his expressions, viz. vain, vanity, as applied to idols (Jeremiah 10:3; Jeremiah 10:15), in the time of their visitation (Jeremiah 10:15). But the style generally is not that of Jeremiah, and resembles that of the second Isaiah (chs. 40–66), so that it may at any rate be attributed to that period. The MT. is an expansion of the original form of the Hebrew. This is shewn both by the superiority in logical sequence exhibited on the whole (but see on Jeremiah 10:10) by the text of the LXX in the way of omission as well as change of order (see on Jeremiah 10:5-8; Jeremiah 10:10), and by the smoothness of metre which results from the adoption of the Greek form of text. Co. points out that we then have from Jeremiah 10:2 onwards a series of clauses arranged in triplets, presenting a clear and well articulated connexion of thought. So too Gi. (in Jeremias Metrik) with slight differences in detail. Du. shortens the passage still further. We may add that Baruch, ch. 6 (The Epistle of Jeremy) is partly an amplification of this passage by one who was very familiar with particulars of the idolatry as practised at Babylon. The passage may be summarized thus. (i) Jeremiah 10:1-5. Be not led away by heathen beliefs. The phenomena seen in the sky have no element of divinity about them. The gods are nothing beyond the materials put together by workmen. They are speechless, and incapable of movement. They are powerless both for good and for harm. (ii) Jeremiah 10:6-16. Jehovah is not as these. He is the supreme God, Creator of the heavens and of the world, and Wielder of the powers of nature. The peoples of the earth may well tremble before Him, who has created all things and has chosen Israel for His own.

THE OF THE FALSE GODS, Jeremiah 10:1-5.Several eminent German critics have pronounced against the genuineness of the first sixteen verses of this chapter. Among these is the scholarly and evangelical Nagelsbach.