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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Jeremiah 2:20 - 2:20
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All along Israel has been refractory; it cannot and will not cease from idolatry. Jer 2:20. "For of old time thou hast broken thy yoke, torn off thy bands; and hast said: I will not serve; but upon every high hill, and under every green tree, thou stretchedst thyself as a harlot. Jer 2:21. And I have planted thee a noble vine, all of genuine stock: and how hast thou changed thyself to me into the bastards of a strange vine? Jer 2:22. Even though thou washedst thee with natron and tookest much soap, filthy remains thy guilt before me, saith the Lord Jahveh. Jer 2:23. How canst thou say, I have not defiled me, after the Baals have I not gone? See thy way in the valley, know what thou hast done-thou lightfooted camel filly, entangling her says. Jer 2:24. A wild she-ass used to the wilderness, that in her lust panteth for air; her heat, who shall restrain it? all that seek her run themselves weary; in her month they will find her. Jer 2:25. Keep thy foot from going barefoot, and thy throat from thirst; but thou sayest, It is useless; no; for I have loved strangers, and after them I go." Jer 2:20. מֵעֹולָם, from eternity, i.e., from immemorial antiquity, has Israel broken the yoke of the divine law laid on it, and torn asunder the bands of decency and order which the commands of God, the ordinances of the Torah, put on, to nurture it to be a holy people of the Lord; torn them as an untamed bullock (Jer 31:18) or a stubborn cow, Hos 4:16. מֹוסֵרֹות, bands, are not the bands or cords of love with which God drew Israel, Hos 11:4 (Graf), but the commands of God whose part it was to keep life within the bounds of purity, and to hold the people back from running riot in idolatry. On this head see Jer 5:5; and for the expression, Psa 2:3. The Masoretes have taken שׁברתי and נתקתי for the 1st person, pointing accordingly, and for אֶעֱבֹוד, as unsuitable to this, they have substituted אֶעֱבֹור. Ewald has decided in favour of these readings; but he is thus compelled to tear the verse to pieces and to hold the text to be defective, since the words from וַתֹּאמְרִי onwards are not in keeping with what precedes. Even if we translate: I offend transgress not, the thought does not adapt itself well to the preceding; I have of old time broken thy yoke, etc.; nor can we easily reconcile with it the grounding clause; for on every high hill,...thou layest a whoring, where Ew. is compelled to force on כִּי the adversative sig. Most commentators, following the example of the lxx and Vulg., have taken the two verbs for 2nd person; and thus is maintained the simple and natural thought that Israel has broken the yoke laid on it by God, renounced allegiance to Him, and practised idolatry on every hand. The spelling ,נִתַּקְתְּי ,שָׁבַרְתְּי i.e., the formation of the 2nd pers. perf. with y, is frequently found in Jer.; cf. Jer 2:33; Jer 3:4; Jer 4:19; Jer 13:21, etc. It is really the fuller original spelling tiy which has been preserved in Aramaic, though seldom found in Hebrew; in Jer. it must be accounted an Aramaism; cf. Ew. §190, c; Gesen. §44, 2, Rem. 4. With the last clause, on every high hill, etc., cf. Hos 4:13 and Eze 6:13 with the comm. on Deu 12:2. Stretchest thyself as a harlot or a whoring, is a vivid description of idolatry. צָעָה, bend oneself, lie down ad coitum, like κατακλίνεσθαι, inclinari.
Jer 2:21
In this whoring with the false gods, Israel shows its utter corruption. I have planted thee a noble vine; not, with noble vines, as we translate in Isa 5:2, where Israel is compared to a vineyard. Here Israel is compared to the vine itself, a vine which Jahveh has planted; cf. Psa 80:9; Hos 10:1. This vine was all (כֻּלֹּה, in its entirety, referred to שֹׂוֹרק, as collect.) genuine seed; a proper shoot which could bear good grapes (cf. Eze 17:5); children of Abraham, as they are described in Gen 18:19. But how has this Israel changed itself to me (לִי, dativ. incommodi) into bastards! סוּרֵי is accus., dependent on נֶהְפַכְתְּ; for this constr. cf. Lev 13:25; Psa 114:8. סוּרִים sig. not shoots or twigs, but degenerate sprouts or suckers. The article in הַגֶּפֶן is generic: wild shoots of the species of the wild vine; but this is not the first determining word; cf. for this exposition of the article Jer 13:4; 2Sa 12:30, etc., Ew. §290, a3); and for the omission of the article with נָכְרִיָּה, cf. Ew. §293, a. Thus are removed the grammatical difficulties that led Hitz. to take ' סוּרֵי וגוquite unnaturally as vocative, and Graf to alter the text. "A strange vine" is an interloping vine, not of the true, genuine stock planted by Jahveh (Jer 2:10), and which bears poisonous berries of gall. Deu 32:32.
Jer 2:22
Though thou adoptedst the most powerful means of purification, yet couldst thou not purify thyself from the defilement of thy sins. נֶתֶר, natron, is mineral, and בֹּרִית vegetable alkali. נִכְתָּם introduces the apodosis; and by the participle a lasting condition is expressed. This word, occurring only here in the O.T., sig. in Aram. to be stained, filthy, a sense here very suitable. לְפָנַי, before me, i.e., before my eyes, the defilement of thy sins cannot be wiped out. On this head see Isa 1:18; Psa 51:4, Psa 51:9.
Jer 2:23
And yet Judah professes to be pure and upright before God. This plea Jeremiah meets by pointing to the open practising of idolatrous worship. The people of Judah personified as a woman - זֹונָה in Jer 2:20 - is addressed. אֵיךְ is a question expressing astonishment. נִדְמֵאתִי, of defilement by idolatry, as is shown by the next explanatory clause: the Baals I have not followed. בְּעָלִים is used generically for strange gods, Jer 1:16. The public worship of Baal had been practised in the kingdom of Judah under Joram, Ahaziah, and Athaliah only, and had been extirpated by Jehu, 2Ki 10:18. Idolatry became again rampant under Ahaz (by his instigation), Manasseh, and Amon, and in the first year of Josiah's reign. Josiah began to restore the worship of Jahveh in the twelfth year of his reign; but it was not till the eighteenth that he was able to complete the reformation of the public services. There is then no difficulty in the way of our assuming that there was yet public worship of idols in Judah during the first five years of Jeremiah's labours. We must not, however, refer the prophet's words to this alone. The following of Baal by the people was not put an end to when the altars and images were demolished; for this was sufficient neither to banish from the hearts of the people the proneness to idolatry, nor utterly to suppress the secret practising of it. The answer to the protestation of the people, blinded in self-righteousness, shows, further, that the grosser publicly practised forms had not yet disappeared. "See thy way in the valley." Way, i.e., doing and practising. בַּגַּיְא with the article must be some valley known for superstitions cultivated there; most commentators suggest rightly the valley of Ben or Bne-Hinnom to the south of Jerusalem, where children were offered to Moloch; see on Jer 7:31. The next words, "and know what thou hast done," do not, taken by themselves, imply that this form of idol-worship was yet to be met with, but only that the people had not yet purified themselves from it. If, however, we take them in connection with what follows, they certainly do imply the continued existence of practices of that sort. The prophet remonstrates with the people for its passionate devotion to idolatry by comparing it to irrational animals, which in their season of heat yield themselves to their instinct. The comparison gains in pointedness by his addressing the people as a camel-filly and a wild she-ass. 'בִּכְרָה is vocative, co-ordinate with the subject of address, and means the young filly of the camel. קַלָּה, running lightly, nimbly, swiftly. 'מְשָׂרֶכֶת דר, intertwining, i.e., crossing her says; rushing right and left on the paths during the season of heat. Thus Israel ran now after one god, now after another, deviating to the right and to the left from the path prescribed by the law, Deu 28:14. To delineate yet more sharply the unruly passionateness with which the people rioted in idolatry, there is added the figure of a wild ass running herself weary in her heat. Hitz. holds the comparison to be so managed that the figure of the she-camel is adhered to, and that this creature is compared to a wild ass only in respect of its panting for air. But this view could be well founded only if the Keri נַפְשָׁהּ were the original reading. Then we might read the words thus: (like) a wild ass used to the wilderness she (the she-camel) pants in the heat of her soul for air. But this is incompatible with the Cheth. נַפְשׁו, since the suffix points back to פֶּרֶה, and requires בְּאַוַּת נַפְשׁו to be joined with 'פֶּרֶה ל, so that שָׁאֲפָה must be spoken of the latter. Besides, taken on its own account, it is a very unnatural hypothesis that the behaviour of the she-camel should be itself compared to the gasping of the wild ass for breath; for the camel is only a figure of the people, and Jer 2:24 is meant to exhibit the unbridled ardour, not of the camel, but of the people. So that with the rest of the comm. we take the wild ass to be a second figure for the people. פֶּרֶה differs only orthographically from פֶּרֶא, the usual form of the word, and which many codd. have here. This is the wood ass, or rather wild ass, since the creature lives on steppes, not in woods. It is of a yellowish colour, with a white belly, and forms a kind of link between the deer species and the ass; by reason of its arrow-like speed not easily caught, and untameable. Thus it is used as an emblem of boundless love of freedom, Gen 16:12, and of unbridled licentiousness, see on Job 24:5 and Job 39:5. פֶּרֶהas nom. epicaen. has the adj. next it, לִמֻּד ,ti t, in the masc., and so too in the apposition בְּאַוַּת נַפְשׁו; the fem. appears first in the statement as to its behaviour, שָׁאֲפָה: she pants for air to cool the glow of heat within. תַּאֲנָה sig. neither copulation, from אָנָה, approach (Dietr.), nor aestus libidinosus (Schroed., Ros.). The sig. approach, meet, attributed to אָנָה, Dietr. grounds upon the Ags. gelimpan, to be convenient, opportune; and the sig. slow is derived from the fact that Arab. ̀ny is used of the boiling of water. The root meaning of אָנָה, Arab. ̀ny, is, according to Fleischer, tempestivus fuit, and the root indicates generally any effort after the attainment of the aim of a thing, or impulse; from which come all the meanings ascribed to the word, and for תַּאֲנָה in the text before us the sig. heat, i.e., the animal instinct impelling to the satisfaction of sexual cravings.
Jer 2:24-25
In Jer 2:24 בְּחָדְשָׁהּ is variously interpreted. Thus much is beyond all doubt, that the words are still a part of the figure, i.e., of the comparison between the idolatrous people and the wild ass. The use of the 3rd person stands in the way of the direct reference of the words to Israel, since in what precedes and in what follows Israel is addressed (in 2nd pers.). חֹדֶשׁ can thus mean neither the new moon as a feast (L. de Dieu, Chr. B. Mich.), still less tempus menstruum (Jerome, etc.), but month; and the suffix in הָדְשָׁהּ is to be referred, not with Hitz. to תַּאֲנָתָהּ, but to פֶּרֶה. The suffixes in מְבַקְשֶׁיהָ and יִמְצָאוּנְהָ absolutely demand this. "Her month" is the month appointed for the gratification of the wild ass's natural impulse, i.e., as Bochart rightly explains it (Hieroz. ii. p. 230, ed. Ros.) mensis quo solent sylvestres asinae maris appetitu fervere. The meaning of the comparison is this: the false gods do not need anxiously to court the favour of the people; in its unbridled desires it gives itself up to them; cf. Jer 3:2; Hos 2:7, Hos 2:15. With this is suitably coupled the warning of Jer 2:25 : hold back, i.e., keep thy foot from getting bare (יָהֵף is subst. not adjective, which would have had to be fem., since רֶגֶל is fem.), and thy throat from thirst, viz., by reason of the fever of running after the idols. This admonition God addresses by the prophet to the people. It is not to wear the sandals off its feet by running after amours, nor so to heat its throat as to become thirsty. Hitz. proposes unsuitably, because in the face of the context, to connect the going barefoot with the visiting of the sanctuary, and the thirsting of the throat (1Ki 18:26) with incessant calling on the gods. The answer of the people to this admonition shows clearly that it has been receiving an advice against running after the gods. The Chet. וגורנך is evidently a copyists's error for וּגְרֹונֵךְ. The people replies: נֹואָשׁ, desperatum (est), i.e., hopeless; thy advice of all in vain; cf. Jer 18:12, and on Isa 57:10. The meaning is made clearer by לֹוא: no; for I love the aliens, etc. זָרִים are not merely strange gods, but also strange peoples. Although idolatry is the matter chiefly in hand, yet it was so bound up with intriguing for the favour of the heathen nations that we cannot exclude from the words some reference to this also.