1At that time, said the LORD, they shall take out from their graves the bones of the kings of Judah and the bones of its nobles and the bones of the priests and the bones of the prophets living in Jerusalem. 2And they shall spread them out before the sun and before the moon and before all the array of the heavens that they loved and that they worshipped and after which they went and that they sought out and to which they bowed down. They shall not be gathered in nor shall they be buried. Manure on the face of the soil they shall be. 3And death shall be preferable to life for all the remnant of those remaining from this evil clan in all the remaining places where I will drive them, said the LORD of Armies. 4And you shall say to them, thus said the LORD:
If they fall, will they not rise?
If they turn back, will they not turn?
5Why is this people a rebel,
Jerusalem, everlasting rebellion?
They have clung to deception,
refused to turn back.
6I listened closely and have heard—
no honesty do they speak.
No man regrets his evil,
saying, “What have I done?”
They all go in their headlong course
like a horse rushing forward in battle.
7Even the stork in the heavens
knows its seasons,
and the turtledove, the swift, and the crane
keep the time of their coming.
But my people does not know
the justice of the LORD.
8How could you say, “We are wise,
and the LORD’s teaching is with us”?
has the scribes’ lying pen made it.
9The wise shall be shamed,
they shall fear and be caught.
Look, the word of the LORD they rejected,
and what wisdom do they have?
10Therefore will I give their wives to others,
their fields to dispossessors,
for from the least to the greatest
they all chase gain,
from prophet to priest
all of them work lies.
11And they would heal the wound of My People’s Daughter easily,
saying, “All is well,” but it is not well—
12They are shamed,
for abominations they have performed.
Therefore shall they fall among those who fall,
in their time of reckoning they shall stumble,
said the LORD.
13I will surely sweep them up, said the LORD,
There are no grapes on the vine
nor figs on the fig tree,
and the leaf is withered,
and I will give them to those they shall serve.
14“Why are we sitting here?
Gather, that we may enter the fortified towns
and be silent there,
for the LORD our God has silenced us
and made us drink venom-water,
for we have offended the LORD.”
15Hope for peace and there is nothing good,
for a time of healing, and, look, terror!
16From Dan is heard his horses’ snorts,
from the sound of his chargers’ neighing
the whole earth shakes.
And they shall come and consume the land and its fullness,
the town and the dwellers within it.
17For I am about to send against you
viper-serpents that cannot be charmed,
and they shall bite you, said the LORD.
18I catch my breath from sorrow,
my heart within me aches.
19Look, the sound of My People’s Daughter crying out
from a faraway land:
“Is the LORD not in Zion,
is her King not within her?”—
Why did they vex Me with their idols,
with alien empty breath?
20“The harvest has passed, the summer has ended,
and we have not been rescued.”
21Over the breaking of my People’s Daughter I am broken,
I plunge in gloom, desolation has gripped me.
22Is there no balm in Gilead,
to my People’s Daughter?
23Would that my head were water
and my eye the font of tears,
that I might weep day and night
for the slain of my People’s Daughter.
CHAPTER 8 NOTES
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1. they shall take out from their graves the bones. Disinterring the bones is a violation of the sanctity of the buried body and hence a shaming act.
the kings . . . its nobles . . . the priests . . . the prophets. This sort of cumulative emphatic series is often favored in Jeremiah’s prose style. The prophets in question are false prophets, and the kings, nobles, and priests are the ones who have been guilty of reprehensible practices.
2. the sun . . . the moon . . . the array of the heavens. This constitutes another cumulative series. These are all objects of astral worship.
They shall not be gathered. That is, gathered into the grave.
3. all the remnant of those remaining . . . in all the remaining places. Although many scholars attribute the repetitions here to inadvertent scribal duplication (dittography), it is at least as likely that the prophet wants to insist on the idea of “remaining” in order to convey a sense of a scant few survivors, whose lot is even worse than that of all who have perished.
4. If they turn back, will they not turn? The formulation is reminiscent of a riddle; the probable sense is: if they turn back to offend, will they really turn back to God? The verb “turn back” will be picked up with a negative attached to it in the next verse.
7. Even the stork in the heavens. The Land of Israel to this day is a place to which migratory birds from the north came during the cold season. Thus God is seen to have implanted in these birds the instinctual knowledge of when to migrate, but Israel lacks all knowledge of the proper order of things set by God.
8. but a lie / has the scribes’ lying pen made it. The prophet is referring either to written teachings that are turned into lies because they are ignored or, more likely, to false doctrines—perhaps reflecting pagan influences—that the scribes have written down.
10. for from the least to the greatest. Everything from this point to the end of verse 12 replicates 6:13–15, with a few minor variations.
13. I will surely sweep them up. The Hebrew involves a pun: first the infinitive ʾasof, which can mean “to gather,” as in a harvest, a sense developed in the rest of the verse, and then ʾasifeim, “I will make an end of them.”
those they shall serve. The translation reads yaʿavdum, with one Hebrew manuscript, instead of the Masoretic yaʿavrum (“they will pass them”). But the syntax is still suspect.
14. Why are we sitting here? These are the words of the Judahites who now find their land under assault and must seek refuge in fortified towns.
16. From Dan is heard his horses’ snorts. Dan is in the far north of the Land of Israel—as elsewhere, the invading army descends from the north, its terrifying aspect heightened by its mounted troops attacking the Judahites, who have scant cavalry.
17. viper-serpents that cannot be charmed. There is a double meaning in the Hebrew. The word for “charm,” laḥash, means “whisper” or “hiss,” indicating the whispered formula recited to subdue the snake. But there are also vipers that have no hiss, and that thus issue no warning before they bite.
18. I catch my breath from sorrow. The verb here, mavligiti, is much in doubt, and many have proposed emendations. If the text is correct, it refers to the rare verb havleig, which appears in Job and in Psalms and may mean something like “to catch one’s breath,” although that is in no way certain. In any case, the form of the word is anomalous and seems ungrammatical.
19. Why did they vex Me with their idols. This is God’s rejoinder to the people: if you want to know why neither the LORD nor the Davidic king is in Zion, consider your idolatry.
20. The harvest has passed. The people continues its desperate lament: time passes, and there is no sign of their being rescued from the plight of exile.
21. Over the breaking of my People’s Daughter. The prophet now speaks in his own voice, not castigating the people but expressing his distress over the disaster that has befallen them. There is a certain oscillation in Jeremiah between angry denunciation of his fellow Judahites for their appalling acts and compassionate identification with them as they suffer the consequences of those acts
22. Is there no balm in Gilead. Scholars surmise that in the region of Gilead, to the northeast of the country, medicinal herbs were cultivated.
no healer. The Masoretic rofeiʾ, “healer,” though it makes sense, may be a mistake through haplography (the preceding word ends in a mem, which could have been dropped here) for marpeiʾ, “healing.” That would make a neater parallel to “balm.”
mending. The evident sense of the Hebrew idiom is the formation of a scab over a wound.