Глава 8

1–3. Continuation of the speech on the punishment of idolaters. 4–6. The Jews are persistent in their apostasy from Jehovah. 7–12. Their calculations will not come true. 13–17. The Avenger is coming. 18–22. The Prophet's Sorrow. Jeremiah 8:1–3. The dead idolaters will be disturbed in their grave chamber, and the surviving Jews will be carried away into captivity. h5 Jer.8:1 . At that time, says the Lord, they will throw out the bones of the kings of Judah, and the bones of its princes, and the bones of the priests, and the bones of the prophets, and the bones of the inhabitants of Jerusalem from their graves; The conquerors plundered the tombs of kings and nobles because they were looking for precious jewelry buried there with the dead, or perhaps out of a sense of revenge. h5 Jer.8:2 . and they will scatter them before the sun and the moon and before all the host of heaven * whom they loved and whom they served and followed, whom they sought and whom they worshiped; they will not take them away or bury them: they will be dung on the earth. "Before the sun and moon". The dead Jews served these luminaries, and now neither the sun nor the moon are able to protect the remains of their admirers from desecration. Jer.8:4. And tell them: This is what the Lord says: Do they not get up when they fall, and turn away from the way and return? Jer.8:5. Why is this people, Jerusalem, in stubborn apostasy? they hold fast to the deception and are unwilling to convert. Jer.8:6. I watched and listened: they do not tell the truth, no one repents of their wickedness, no one says: “What have I done?”; everyone turns to his own path, like a horse rushing into battle. The Jews do not want to understand the need for repentance and continue to follow the path of lawlessness. Jeremiah 8:7–12. Being more foolish than simple birds, the Jews nevertheless consider themselves smart and boast that they have the law of the Lord. They have distorted this law and do not fulfill it, and the priests and prophets reassure the people with false hopes. For this, the Lord dooms them to destruction. h5 Jer.8:7 . And the stork under the sky knows its definite times, and the turtledove, and the swallow, and the crane watch the time when they will fly; but my people do not know the decree of the Lord. Birds have an innate instinct by which they know where they need to fly, people have a religion, a religious feeling that draws them to God. But this feeling is completely alien to Jews. This is the idea of ​​the verse. h5 Jer.8:8 . How do you say, “We are wise, and the law of the Lord is with us”? But the lying cane of the scribes turns him into a lie. “The Law of the Lord” is not only the Torah, but all revelations of God in general, including the orally transmitted speeches of the prophets. - “Scribes” are educated people of that time, who undertook to be teachers of the people, but falsely interpreted the revelation. An example of their interpretation is given in Art. 11. The opinion of Cornill and Marti that here Jeremiah refers to the insertions made by the scribes, at the request of the priests, into Deuteronomy is based on a misunderstanding of the expression Law of the Lord, supposedly meaning: Deuteronomy. Jeremiah 8:10. For this I will give their wives to others, their fields to other owners; because all of them, from small to large, indulged in greed; from the prophet to the priest, everyone acts deceitfully. Jer.8:11. And they heal the wound of the daughters of My people frivolously, saying: “Peace, peace!”, but there is no peace. Jer.8:12. Are they ashamed when they do abominations? no, they are not at all ashamed and do not blush. Therefore they will fall among the fallen; during the visit they will be defeated, says the Lord. See explanation of Jer 6.12–14. Jeremiah 8:13–17. The Lord will devastate Judea and its inhabitants themselves, in anticipation of this, come to complete despair. Jer.8:14. “Why are we sitting? get ready, let's go to the fortified cities and die there; for the Lord our God has appointed us to destruction and gives us water with gall to drink because we have sinned against the Lord.” The Jews from the cities on the plains are planning to flee to the mountain cities, but they do not hope to be saved there either. They feel that the Lord Himself is against them. - “Water with bile” - that is, poison, - according to some interpretations, opium. Jer.8:15. We are waiting for peace, but there is nothing good, a time of healing, and here are the horrors. The enemies of the Jews are compared to snakes, the bite of which cannot be healed. – “Basilisk” – see Ps 90:13, Ps.57; Eccl. 10.11. Jeremiah 8:18–23. The prophet grieves over the fate of his people, especially since he is well aware of all their guilt before Jehovah, whom the Jews abandoned. Jer.8:19. Behold, I hear the cry of the daughter of My people from a far country: Is there not a Lord in Zion? is there not his King upon him? - Why did they provoke Me to anger with their idols, foreign, insignificant? The people seem to the prophet to have already been taken into captivity. He asks with bewilderment, has the Lord completely ceased to consider Zion as His royal capital, if he leaves this sacred city in desolation, and its inhabitants in a distant country? The Lord responds to this that the Jews themselves are to blame for everything that happened. Jeremiah 8:20. The harvest has passed, summer has ended, and we are not saved. The people say that all their hopes for deliverance from captivity were destroyed. So the farmer, who did not collect anything in his granaries in the spring, hopes to collect fruits in the fall. But sometimes this last hope deceives him and he faces a hungry year. Jer.8:22. Is there no balm in Gilead? isn't there a doctor there? Why is there no healing for the daughter of my people? Balm of Gilead was the best remedy for treating wounds. This is actually the resin of the mastic tree, exported from Palestine abroad (Gen. 37.25). - “There” - most likely, the prophet is talking about Zion, where the Great Physician dwelt invisibly, in whose hands were all the means to heal the illness of the Jewish people, that is, again Jehovah Himself. You might be interested in: