Matthew Henry on Jeremiah 2:29–end
The prophet here goes on in the same strain, aiming to bring a sinful people to repentance, that their destruction might be prevented.
I. He avers the truth of the charge. It was evident beyond contradiction; it was the greatest absurdity imaginable in them to think of denying it (Jer 2:29): "Wherefore will you plead with me, and put me upon the proof of it, or wherefore will you go about to plead any thing in excuse of the crime or to obtain a mitigation of the sentence? Your plea will certainly be overruled, and judgment given against you: you know you have all transgressed, one as well as another; why then to you quarrel with me for contending with you?"
II. He heightens it from the consi…
Read the whole note in the consoleJamieson-Fausset-Brown on Jeremiah 2:36
gaddest--runnest to and fro, now seeking help from Assyria (Ch2 28:16-21), now from Egypt (Jer 37:7-8; Isa 30:3).
John Gill on Jeremiah 2:36
Why gaddest thou about so much to change thy way?.... Or, "by changing thy way" (t); sometimes going one way, and sometimes another; sometimes to Egypt, and then to Assyria; seeking sometimes to the one for help, and sometimes to the other; at one time serving the gods of the one, in order to curry favour with them, and then the gods of the other, like a lascivious woman that gads about from place to place to increase her lovers, and satisfy her lust. The Vulgate Latin version is, "how exceeding vile art thou become, changing thy ways"; and so Jarchi says, the word signifies "contempt", or "vileness": deriving it from or to be "vile" or "contemptible"; and to this sense are the Septuagint…
Read the whole note in the consoleJohn Calvin on Jeremiah 2:36
Jeremiah 2:36
36. Why gaddest thou about so much to change thy way? thou also shalt be ashamed of Egypt, as thou wast ashamed of Assyria.
36. Quid discurris tantopere ad mutandum vias tuas? Etiam ab Egypto pudefies, sicuti pudefacta es ab Assur.
The Prophet goes on with the same subject. He had said before that the people were like an unfaithful wife, who having left her husband rambles here and there to gratify her lusts. For this view he now gives the reason; for he might have appeared to treat the people too severely, had not the fact been pointed out as it were by the finger; and this he does now. He says, that they ran here and there, not in a common manner, but in a way to render e…