5. They are like a scarecrow in a must even be Be not afraid of them, for that it shake not. cucumber-garden, and carried, for they cannot walk. they do no harm; nor does it lie in them to do good. 6. None is like thee, O Yahveh, thou art great, and thy name is great in strength. 7. Who will not fear thee, O king of the nations? for to thee it is due; for among all the wise ones of the nations, and among all their rulerships, there is none like thee. 8. And at a stroke they shall become simpletons and fools; the vanities are chastised, wood is this! 9. Beaten silver is brought from Tarshish, and gold from Uphaz ; it is a work of the artificer and of the smelter's hands; violet and red purple is their attire: they are the work of skilled workmen altogether! - באהת .8 .Ver Ver. 5. л, properly," like a pillar of a cucumber-field" scarecrow, according to the apocryphal Epist. Jer. (of the Maccabæan age) ver. 70, ἐν σικυηράτῳ προβασκάνιον. Cf. the priapus-pillars, which figured ridiculously as scarecrows (Verg. Georg. iv. 110 f.; Horat. Sat. i. 8. 1–4). nup in Isa. i. 8 also signifies cucumber - field, elsewhere (Ex. xxv. 18) certainly turners' work, from p, to turn. Hence many render "like a turned pillar-shaft," which is less expressive. NW, Ges. § 47. a. 4, for . On the matter, cf. Isa. xlvi. 7. They can do neither good nor evil, Isa. xli. 23. D, see on i. 16. Ver. 6. here and ver. 7 as in iv. 7, but peculiarly independent. Ver. 7. here only: to beseem, to be due. unā. y, to become stupid, denom. of "ya, cattle; cf. Niph. vv. 14, 21, and in the parallel li. 17; here, to stand as fools. Ver. 86 through its enigmatical brevity is very differently interpreted. D, best: chastising of the vanities idols, in the sense of convicting them; cf. ver. 15, np. When their worshippers are convicted of folly and stand confounded, this is also a chastising of the idols, which are degraded from their arrogant height to what they really are, mere wood. Therefore: chastising of the idols is or begins: this is wood. Ver. 9. Tarshish Tartessus, the well-known Phoenician colony in south-west Spain (Isa. xxiii. 1), whence silver was brought. The gold-country mentioned is Uphaz, which only occurs again in Dan. x. 5. Targ., Syriac, Theodotion put Ophir for this; but it is inconceivable that the word arose by error from this wellknown name. Assyria and Babylon might have other gold mines. Still the views respecting the site of this Uphaz remain = = 10. But Yahveh is God in truth; he is the living God and everlasting King; the earth trembles at his wrath, and the nations cannot bear his fury, (11. Thus shall you say to them: The gods, which have not made heaven and earth, shall be swept away from the earth and under the heaven, these!) 12. who has prepared the earth by his strength, established the circle of the world by his wisdom, and stretched out the heavens by his knowledge. 13. At the sound of his call there is a multitude of waters in the heaven, and he makes vapours ascend from the end of the earth, he creates lightnings for the rain, and brings forth wind from his treasuries. 14. Every man is become brutish in understanding, every metal-caster is put to shame by his image, for his casting is deception and there is no spirit therein. 15. These are nothingness, a matter for jests; in the time of their visitation they perish. 16. Jacob's inheritance is not like them; for mere conjectures. nhan, violet;, red, purple. Ver. 11, with the exception of the last word, is Aramaic. Perhaps a chance gloss, more probably a current sarcasm, which the exiles used to the heathen about them. Certainly neither Assyrians nor Babylonians spoke Aramaic as a national tongue; but they understood it (cf. 2 Kings xviii. 26) as a widespread language of intercourse. But this verse completely interrupts the connection. Perhaps it was a marginal note on ver. 9, which came into the text at the wrong place. Vv. 12-16 almost entirely the same as in li. 15-19. Ver. 13 almost like Ps. cxxxv. 7. At the sound of His call, nn, from in, sc. Sip, vocem edere. "Creates lightnings for the rain," these rending the clouds and so causing the rain to pour down. Store-chambers for the wind, as for snow and hail, Job xxxviii. 22. Ver. 14. In presence of such miraculous works of God in nature every man becomes stupid, so that his knowledge vanishes (, negative): his understanding is utterly confounded, these things far transcending his power of thought. The idol-maker is put to shame by his molten image (70 as in Isa. xli. 29, xlviii. 5), since in presence of God's wonders it leaves him speechless. Ver. 15. bynyn, from ynyn (Gen. xxvii. 12), from yyn, to mock, mockeries: opus risu dignum. Ver. 16. Not like such (idols) is the portion of Jacob: Yahveh, cf. Ps. xvi. 5. Conversely also Israel is His inheritance, as the second half of the verse says in conclusion, recalling Deut. xxxii. 9. In the LXX certainly the words are wanting, and in li. 19 G he is the framer of all, and Israel is the tribe of his possession -Yahveh of hosts is his name. , where this second turn of thought drops out: "the Creator of all, He is his inheritance." Many prefer this. But see Keil here, and Nägelsbach, Jeremia and Babylon, p. 93. EXPOSITION. Contents of x. 1-16. Against Idols: 1. Their Nothingness, vv. 1-9. 2. Yahveh's Pre-eminence, vv. 10-16. This section stands quite by itself, and cannot be included in any larger group; whereas x. 17-25 in form and contents. is plainly connected with the preceding oracles belonging to Josiah's and Jehoiakim's days. The style of vv. 1-16, along with Jeremiah's forms and turns of expression, presents many special features, and differs in a marked manner from the other oracles (cf. Nägelsbach, p. 89). Moreover, the matter is peculiar a warning to Israel not to accommodate itself to heathen gods and ways, but to hold fast to its own glorious, Almighty God. There are very many material and formal resemblances to parts of Isaiah xl.-lxvi., and, like the latter, the present section is addressed to exiles. The plain reference to astrology, as well as the sharp polemic against idol-worship, points to Assyria or Babylon. The prophetic dignity of the oracle is unmistakeable. But whether Jeremiah himself (Ewald, Keil, Neumann et al.) or some one later (Movers, Hitzig, Gesenius, Nägelsbach, Cheyne et al.) addressed this warning to the Church in exile, may be disputed. Movers, de Wette (Hitzig) regarded Deutero-Isaiah as the author; not so Gesenius and Nägelsbach. We rather believe that this section of Jeremiah stimulated the DeuteroIsaianic polemic against idols, and think it possible that it springs from Jeremiah himself, because from an author of his long and diversified literary activity it is unreasonable to expect the same style and turns of phrase in all his productions. If written before 588 B.C., as seems probable to us, the oracle is a kind of admonition to the northern tribes in exile (J. D. Michaelis), whom it was natural for the prophet to address, iii. 12 ff. Observe also that xii. 16 is the antithesis of x. 1. The oracle was inserted in this passage because of the "house of Israel" in ix. 25 and x. 1. In the LXX, vv. 6, 7, 8, 10 are wanting (according to Hitzig, just the genuine passages of Jeremiah !), but not ver. 11 (although attacked by most). The purpose is to warn the exiled Israelites against adopting heathen superstition and idolatry; and with this is joined the counsel to hold fast immovably to the most glorious jewel Israel possesses-Yahveh, its God. From astrological auguries, hinted at in ver. 2, the prophet passes quickly to the grossest form of heathen superstition, popular image or idol worship. This cultus vanishes into nothing directly one considers the way in which these idols originate. The prophet therefore lingers with holy irony in order to recount this origin, how first wood is felled, then the material is shaped, then the log is covered with a coat of metal and nailed to the ground, where it stands like a scarecrow, motionless, voiceless, lifeless. How different the God of Israel, full of life and power, called directly the King of the heathen (ver. 7), because dominion over the whole world is due and belongs to him. Heathenism can show no similar god. Neither do the wise men among the heathen (who often have a higher, purer conception of God than the vulgar people) know such an one, nor does one of this character reign among the nations. Ver. 8. The heathen shall all stand convicted of immense folly when the true God passes judgment on those vain forms, which in reality are dead wood. This leads the prophet again to refer to the origin of these gods (ver. 9), and indeed he seems here to take the most precious into view. How can that be God which was introduced as so much merchandise, and was fabricated by the hands of workmen ! In contrast with these phantoms (ver. 10 ff) stands Yahveh, the God of heaven and earth, whose creative power is pictured as in Amos ix. 5 f., and often in Isa. xl.-lxvi. and in Job. Before this God the no-gods vanish with their worshippers (ver. 14 f.); on the other hand, Israel has the "Framer of all" (ver. 16) for its abiding portion, as He is its chosen inheritance. The universalism of the conception of God and the particularism of God's revelation do not exclude each other. |