1Would that I were in the wilderness, at a wayfarers’ camp.
I would forsake my people and go off from them.
an assembly of traitors.
2They have drawn their tongue back
on their bow of lies and not of truth.
They have prevailed in the land,
for they have gone on from evil to evil,
and Me they have not known, said the LORD.
3Each man, beware of his fellow,
and trust not in any brother,
for every brother deals crookedly,
and every fellow man spreads slander.
4And each man tricks his fellow,
and truth they do not speak.
They have taught their tongue to speak lies,
they are worn out from wrongdoing.
5Your dwelling is in the midst of deceit.
In deceit they refused to know Me, said the LORD.
6Therefore, thus said the LORD of Armies:
I am about to smelt them and assay them,
for what else would I do because of my People’s Daughter?
7Their tongue is a well-honed arrow,
deceit they speak with their mouths.
Peace a man speaks to his fellow,
and inwardly lays an ambush.
8For these shall I not reckon with them, said the LORD,
from a nation like this shall I not be avenged?
9Over the mountains I raise weeping and wailing,
and over the wilderness pastures, lament,
for they are laid waste, with no man passing through,
and they do not hear the sound of cattle.
From the fowl of the heavens to the beasts,
all have wandered off, gone away.
10And I will make Jerusalem heaps of stones,
a den of jackals,
and the towns of Judah I will make a desolation
with no dweller there.
11Who is the wise man who would understand this, what the mouth of the LORD spoke to him, that he might tell it?
laid waste like the wilderness with none passing through?
12And the LORD said, “Because they forsook My teaching that I set before them and did not heed My voice and did not go according to it. 13And they went after the stubbornness of their heart and after the Baalim that their fathers had taught them. 14Therefore, thus said the LORD of Armies, God of Israel: I am about to feed this people wormwood and make them drink venom-water. 15And I will scatter them among nations that neither they nor their fathers have known, and I will send the sword after them until I have made an end of them.”
16Thus said the LORD of Armies:
Look to it and call to the keening women that they come
and to the wise women send that they come.
17Let them hurry and raise wailing for us,
and let our eyes shed tears
and our eyelids flow with water.
18For the sound of wailing is heard in Zion:
“How we are ruined,
we are gravely shamed!
For we forsook the land,
they have flung us from our dwellings.”
19For hear, O women, the word of the LORD,
and let your ear catch the word of His mouth,
and teach your daughters wailing,
and each woman her friend teach lament.
20For death has come up through our windows,
has entered our citadels,
to cut off the babe from the street,
the young man from the squares.
21Speak thus, said the LORD:
And the human corpses shall fall
like manure on the face of the fields,
and like the sheaf behind the reaper
with none to gather it.
22Thus said the LORD,
Let the wise man not boast of his wisdom,
nor the warrior boast of his might.
Let the rich man not boast of his riches.
23But in this may he who boasts boast:
understanding and knowing Me,
for I am the LORD doing kindness,
justice and righteousness in the land,
for in these I delight, said the LORD.
24Look, a time is coming, said the LORD, when I will make a reckoning with all who have circumcised foreskins, 25with Egypt and with Judah and with Edom and with the Ammonites and with Moab and with all the desert dwellers who have trimmed beards. For all the nations are uncircumcised, but the house of Israel has an uncircumcised heart.
CHAPTER 9 NOTES
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1. I would forsake my people. Jeremiah now expresses the other pole of his oscillating feelings toward his people. He had been devastated by the disaster befalling them; now he is so disgusted by their behavior that he wants to be as far away from them as possible.
For they are all adulterers. Adultery is seized on as a kind of paradigm for all sorts of disloyalty and cheating—hence the parallelism with “betrayers.”
2. They have drawn their tongue back / on their bow of lies. The tongue as the instrument of vicious or lying speech is often thought of in biblical idiom as a weapon. The spreading of slander in the next verse develops this idea
4. they are worn out from wrongdoing. The two Hebrew words translated by this clause look textually suspect, and so the meaning is not certain.
5. Your dwelling is in the midst of deceit. The “your” is singular and thus refers to the prophet, who is condemned to live among a deceitful people.
6. because of my People’s Daughter. This appears to be an ellipsis for “because of the crimes of my People’s Daughter.”
7. with their mouths. This seemingly unneeded specification after “speak” is introduced as a paired term with “tongue” in the first verset.
9. they do not hear the sound of cattle. The wilderness pastures are personified through the verb—the desolation is made more acute by the idea that the empty pastures can hear no sound of living things.
11. Why is the land destroyed. A line of poetry is inserted in the middle of the prose prophecy because this plaintive question amounts to a lament for the destroyed land.
13. the Baalim that their fathers had taught them. Instead of God’s teaching, there was teaching of idolatry. The indication that it was taught by the forefathers means that it goes back a long way in the history of the nation.
15. nations that neither they nor their fathers have known. The fact that these are utterly alien nations, scarcely heard of in Judah, makes the condition of exile all the more terrifying.
16. the keening women. There are many indications in the Bible that there was a class of professional keening women, meqonenot, in ancient Israelite society, as in many other cultures, who performed public rites of wailing at times of bereavement and perhaps also led the general populace in mourning, as the next verse may suggest. The “wise women” of the second verset are the keeners, and one may recall that “wise” in biblical idiom often means “skilled in a craft,” which here would be mourning.
18. they have flung us from our dwellings. The translation emends the Masoretic Text, which reads, literally, “they have flung our dwellings,” hishlikhu mishkenoteinu, to hishilikhunu mimishekenoteinu.
20. For death has come up through our windows. Many commentators detect a mythological reference here to Mot, the Canaanite god of death. That would certainly make the entrance through the windows scarier.
to cut off the babe from the street, / the young man from the squares. The preposition “from” here does not indicate the place where the cutting off is done. Rather, since death has climbed into the homes through the windows, the babes and young men perish in their homes and will no longer be outside, where ordinarily small children might play and young men congregate.
21. like the sheaf behind the reaper / with none to gather it. In the ordinary agricultural process, the reaper would bind up the harvested ears of grain in sheaves, and afterward these would be gathered up. In this field full of corpses, there is no one to do any gathering.
24. with all who have circumcised foreskins. This phrase has caused some consternation among interpreters because what follows is a list of nations in which Judah appears after Egypt and before other traditional enemies. Circumcision may well have been practiced, at least in certain circles, by these sundry peoples—there is evidence, for example, that Egyptian priests were circumcised. But the writer seems to assume that many of these people were uncircumcised: “For all the nations are circumcised.” The point, then, is that God will make no distinction between the uncircumcised and the circumcised in exacting retribution for offending behavior.
25. the desert dwellers who have trimmed beards. The “desert dwellers” are in all likelihood Arabs. Many translators conclude that the descriptive epithet refers to cut-off sidelocks, but the noun peʾah can equally refer to “sidelock” and to “beard” (in an ellipsis for peʾat zaqan, “edge of the beard”).
but the house of Israel has an uncircumcised heart. This is an idea that Jeremiah has already invoked (4:4)—that however obligatory circumcision may be as a mark of belonging to the community of Israel, what is more crucial is the circumcision of the heart, which is to say, possessing a capability of perception that responds to the demands of justice and sees the imperative truth of God’s teaching.