Jeremiah 8:1-9

8:1 The Lord says, “When that time comes, ¹  the bones of the kings of Judah and its leaders, the bones of the priests and prophets and of all the other people who lived in Jerusalem will be dug up from their graves. 8:2 They will be spread out and exposed to the sun, the moon and the stars. ²  These are things they ³  adored and served, things to which they paid allegiance, ⁴  from which they sought guidance, and worshiped. The bones of these people ⁵  will never be regathered and reburied. They will be like manure used to fertilize the ground. ⁶  8:3 However, I will leave some of these wicked people alive and banish them to other places. But wherever these people who survive may go, they will wish they had died rather than lived,” ⁷  says the Lord who rules over all. ⁸ 

Willful Disregard of God Will Lead to Destruction

8:4 The Lord said to me, ⁹ 

“Tell them, ‘The Lord says,

Do people not get back up when they fall down?

Do they not turn around when they go the wrong way? ¹⁰ 

8:5 Why, then, do these people of Jerusalem ¹¹ 

continually turn away from me in apostasy?

They hold fast to their deception. ¹² 

They refuse to turn back to me. ¹³ 

8:6 I have listened to them very carefully, ¹⁴ 

but they do not speak honestly.

None of them regrets the evil he has done.

None of them says, “I have done wrong!” ¹⁵ 

All of them persist in their own wayward course ¹⁶ 

like a horse charging recklessly into battle.

8:7 Even the stork knows

when it is time to move on. ¹⁷ 

The turtledove, swallow, and crane ¹⁸ 

recognize ¹⁹  the normal times for their migration.

But my people pay no attention

to ²⁰  what I, the Lord, require of them. ²¹ 

8:8 How can you say, “We are wise!

We have the law of the Lord”?

The truth is, ²²  those who teach it ²³  have used their writings

to make it say what it does not really mean. ²⁴ 

8:9 Your wise men will be put to shame.

They will be dumbfounded and be brought to judgment. ²⁵ 

Since they have rejected the word of the Lord,

what wisdom do they really have?

[8:1]  ¹ tn Heb “At that time.”

[8:2]  ² tc MT, 4QJer^a and LXX read “the sun and the moon and all the host of heaven,” but 4QJer^c reads “the sun and all the stars.”

[8:2]  ³ tn Heb “the sun, moon, and host of heaven which they…”

[8:2]  ⁴ tn Heb “followed after.” See the translator’s note at 2:5 for the idiom.

[8:2]  ⁵ tn Heb “they will not” but the referent is far enough removed that it might be ambiguous.

[8:2]  ⁶ tn Heb “like dung/manure on the surface of the ground.”

[8:3]  ⁷ tn Heb “Death will be chosen rather than life by the remnant who are left from this wicked family in all the places where I have banished them.” The sentence is broken up and restructured to avoid possible confusion because of the complexity of the English to some modern readers. There appears to be an extra “those who are left” that was inadvertently copied from the preceding line. It is missing from one Hebrew ms and from the Greek and Syriac versions and is probably not a part of the original text.

[8:3]  ⁸ tn Heb “Yahweh of armies.”

[8:4]  ⁹ tn The words “the Lord said to me” are not in the text but are implicit from the context. They are supplied in the translation to make clear who is speaking and who is being addressed.

[8:4]  ¹⁰ sn There is a play on two different nuances of the same Hebrew word that means “turn” and “return,” “turn away” and “turn back.”

[8:5]  ¹¹ tc The text is quite commonly emended, changing שׁוֹבְבָה הָעָם (shovÿvah ha’am) to שׁוֹבָב הָעָם (shovav ha’am) and omitting יְרוּשָׁלַםִ (yÿrushalaim); this is due to the anomaly of a feminine singular verb with a masculine singular subject and the fact that the word “Jerusalem” is absent from one Hebrew ms and the LXX. However, it is possible that this is a case where the noun “Jerusalem” is a defining apposition to the word “these people,” an apposition which GKC 425 §131.k calls “permutation.” In this case the verb could be attracted to the appositional noun and there would be no reason to emend the text. The MT is undoubtedly the harder reading and is for that reason to be preferred.

[8:5]  ¹² tn Or “to their allegiance to false gods,” or “to their false professions of loyalty”; Heb “to deceit.” Either “to their mistaken beliefs” or “to their allegiance to false gods” would fit the preceding context. The former is more comprehensive than the latter and was chosen for that reason.

[8:5]  ¹³ sn There is a continuing play on the same root word used in the preceding verse. Here the words “turn away from me,” “apostasy,” and “turn back to me” are all forms from the root that was translated “go the wrong way” and “turn around” in v. 4. The intended effect is to contrast Judah’s recalcitrant apostasy with the usual tendency to try and correct one’s mistakes.

[8:6]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “I have paid attention and I have listened.” This is another case of two concepts being joined by “and” where one expresses the main idea and the other acts as an adverbial or adjectival modifier (a figure called hendiadys).

[8:6]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “What have I done?” The addition of the word “wrong” is implicit in the context and is supplied in the translation for clarity. The rhetorical question does not function as a denial of wrongdoing, but rather as contrite shock at one’s own wrongdoing. It is translated as a declaration for the sake of clarity.

[8:6]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “each one of them turns aside into their own running course.”

[8:7]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “its appointed time.” The translation is contextually motivated to avoid lack of clarity.

[8:7]  ¹⁸ tn There is debate in the commentaries and lexicons about the identification of some of these birds, particularly regarding the identification of the “swallow” which is more likely the “swift” and the “crane” which some identify with the “thrush.” For a discussion see the Bible encyclopedias and the UBS handbook Fauna and Flora of the Bible. The identity of the individual birds makes little difference to the point being made and “swallow” is more easily identifiable to the average reader than the “swift.”

[8:7]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “keep.” Ironically birds, which do not think, obey the laws of nature, but Israel does not obey the laws of God.

[8:7]  ²⁰ tn Heb “do not know.” But here as elsewhere the word “know” is more than an intellectual matter. It is intended here to summarize both “know” and “follow” (Heb “observe”) in the preceding lines.

[8:7]  ²¹ tn Heb “the ordinance/requirement of the Lord.”

[8:8]  ²² tn Heb “Surely, behold!”

[8:8]  ²³ tn Heb “the scribes.”

[8:8]  ²⁴ tn Heb “The lying pen of the scribes have made [it] into a lie.” The translation is an attempt to make the most common interpretation of this passage understandable for the average reader. This is, however, a difficult passage whose interpretation is greatly debated and whose syntax is capable of other interpretations. The interpretation of the NJPS, “Assuredly, for naught has the pen labored, for naught the scribes,” surely deserves consideration within the context; i.e. it hasn’t done any good for the scribes to produce a reliable copy of the law, which the people have refused to follow. That interpretation has the advantage of explaining the absence of an object for the verb “make” or “labored” but creates a very unbalanced poetic couplet.

[8:9]  ²⁵ tn Heb “be trapped.” However, the word “trapped” generally carries with it the connotation of divine judgment. See BDB 540 s.v. לָכַד Niph.2, and compare usage in Jer 6:11 for support. The verbs in the first two lines are again the form of the Hebrew verb that emphasizes that the action is as good as done (Hebrew prophetic perfects).