Jeremiah 5:15 — meaning, Hebrew and Greek word study, commentary
Jeremiah 5:15
Lo, I will bring a nation upon you from far, O house of Israel, saith the LORD: it is a mighty nation, it is an ancient nation, a nation whose language thou knowest not, neither understandest what they say.
a foreign nation · noun, common masculine singular absolute
ancient
מֵעוֹלָם֙me.'o.Lam
H5769
properly · preposition + noun, common masculine singular absolute
nation
גּ֤וֹיGoy
H1471
a foreign nation · noun, common masculine singular absolute
nation
גּ֚וֹיGoy
H1471
a foreign nation · noun, common masculine singular absolute
language
לְשֹׁנ֔וֹle.sho.No
H3956
the tongue (of man or animals) · noun, common both genders singular construct + pronominal suffix, 3rd person masculine singular
knowest
תֵדַ֣עte.Da'
H3045
to know (properly · verb, qal imperfect, 2nd person masculine singular
understandest
תִשְׁמַ֖עtish.Ma'
H8085
to hear intelligently (often with implication of attent… · verb, qal imperfect, 2nd person masculine singular
say
יְדַבֵּֽרye.da.Ber
H1696
perhaps properly · verb, piel imperfect, 3rd person masculine singular
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (James Strong, 1890/1894), public domain; digitized by Open Scriptures (CC BY-SA). KJV word tagging: eBible.org (public domain). Original-language text, parsing and brief lexicon: STEPBible.org data from Tyndale House, Cambridge (CC BY 4.0).
Cross-references
Deuteronomy 28:49 The LORD shall bring a nation against thee from far, from the end of the earth, as swift as the eagle flieth; a nation whose tongue thou sha…
Jeremiah 4:16 Make ye mention to the nations; behold, publish against Jerusalem, that watchers come from a far country, and give out their voice against t…
Isaiah 5:26 And he will lift up an ensign to the nations from far, and will hiss unto them from the end of the earth: and, behold, they shall come with…
Isaiah 28:11 For with stammering lips and another tongue will he speak to this people.
Isaiah 33:19 Thou shalt not see a fierce people, a people of a deeper speech than thou canst perceive; of a stammering tongue, that thou canst not unders…
Jeremiah 25:9 Behold, I will send and take all the families of the north, saith the LORD, and Nebuchadrezzar the king of Babylon, my servant, and will bri…
Jeremiah 1:15 For, lo, I will call all the families of the kingdoms of the north, saith the LORD; and they shall come, and they shall set every one his th…
Isaiah 5:7 For the vineyard of the LORD of hosts is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah his pleasant plant: and he looked for judgment, but behol…
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on Jeremiah 5:10-19
We may observe in these verses, as before,
I. The sin of this people, upon which the commission signed against them is grounded. God disowns them and dooms them to destruction, Jer 5:10. But is there not a cause? Yes; for, 1. They have deserted the law of God (Jer 5:11): The house of Israel and the house of Judah, though at variance with one another, yet both agreed to deal very treacherously against God. They forsook the worship of him, and therein violated their covenants with him; they revolted from him, and played the hypocrite with him. 2. They have defied the judgments of God and given the lie to his threatenings in the mouth of his prophets, Jer 5:12, Jer 5:13. They were often told th…
(Jer 1:15; Jer 6:22). Alluding to Deu 28:49, &c.
Israel--that is, Judah.
mighty--from an Arabic root, "enduring." The fourfold repetition of "nation" heightens the force.
ancient--The Chaldeans came originally from the Carduchian and Armenian mountains north of Mesopotamia, whence they immigrated into Babylonia; like all mountaineers, they were brave and hardy (see on Isa 23:13).
language . . . knowest not-- Isa 36:11 shows that Aramaic was not understood by the "multitude," but only by the educated classes [MAURER]. HENDERSON refers it to the original language of the Babylonians, which, he thinks, they brought with them from their native hills, akin to the Persic, not to the Aramaic…
Lo, I will bring a nation upon you from far,.... From Babylon, as in Jeremiah 4:16,
O house of Israel, saith the Lord; though the house of Israel is generally taken for the ten tribes, especially when distinguished from the house of Judah; yet here it seems to design the Jews, the posterity of Jacob, or Israel in the land of Judea; for Israel, or the ten tribes, were carried captive into Assyria before this time:
it is a mighty nation; strong and powerful; so mighty that they would not be able to oppose them, and stand before them: "it is an ancient nation"; the Babylonish monarchy was the most ancient; it began in the times of Nimrod, Genesis 10:10 and therefore must be a nation of great…
The Church Fathers
(Verse 15 and following) Behold, I will bring upon you a nation from afar, O house of Israel, says the Lord: a strong nation, an ancient nation, a nation whose language you will not understand, nor will you know what it speaks. Its quiver is like an open tomb, all mighty warriors. And it will devour your crops and your bread; it will devour your sons and daughters; it will devour your flocks and herds; it will devour your vineyards and fig trees; and it will crush your fortified cities, in which you trust, with the sword. However, in those days, says the Lord, I will not make an end of you. Not much later, and not falsely believed, the Prophets will speak to you in vain, but now I will bring upon you the nation of the Babylonians, who will come from afar: a strong nation, as it is written in Hebrew, Ethan (Gen. X), an ancient nation, once ruled by the giant Nimrod. Whose language you will not understand, as it is written in Hebrew: you will not understand what they say: for it is the solace of evil, if you have those enemies whom you can ask, and who understand your prayers. And what follows: Her quiver is like an open grave; it is not referred to as Babylon in the Septuagint edition, but it signifies the armory. There is no doubt that the kingdom of the Assyrians, Babylonians, Medes, and Persians is extremely skilled in archery. And it also describes the devastation of the land of Judah, the slaughter of sheep, the herding away of livestock, the destruction of cities and walls, because they are all captured by the enemy sword, and yet in such great evils He does not destroy them completely; but He preserves the remaining ones, either those who were led into Babylon and sent back to cultivate the land of Judah, or those who, after the heat of persecution, have kept the faith of the Lord through flight or confession.
The Church Fathers: public-domain translations (Ante-Nicene and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers), verse-indexed by SermonIndex (CC BY 4.0).
Dictionary and topics
Armies · Often went on foreign service — Often went on foreign service
Judgments · Are frequently tempered with mercy — Are frequently tempered with mercy
Language · Interpretation of: The Jews punished by being given up to people of a strange — Interpretation of: The Jews punished by being given up to people of a strange
Dictionary: Easton's (1897) and Smith's (1863), public domain. Topics: Nave's Topical Bible (1896) and Torrey's Topical Textbook (1897), public domain. Both as parsed by NEUU (CC BY 4.0).
Jeremiah 5:15
15. Lo, I will bring a nation upon you from far, O house of Israel, saith the Lord: it is a mighty nation, it is an ancient nation, a nation whose language thou knowest not, neither understandest what they say.
15. Ecce ego adduco super vos gentem e longinquo, domus Israel, dicit Jehova; gentem duram (hoc est, quae dura erit, quia sequitur 'vh,) gentem quae est e seculo, gentem cujus non tenebis (vel, cognosces) linguam (nam relativum est v) et non audies quid loquatur.
The Prophet shews here how the people would become like straw or dry wood; for God would bring a sure calamity which they did not fear. But the context is to be here observed: the Prophet had said, that the w…
But the people is to have proof of the truth of the word of the Lord. Because it, despising the threatening of punishment, says: Misfortune shall not light upon us, the Lord will make the word in the mouth of Jeremiah a fire, and the people wood, that the fire may consume it. On this figure, cf. Isa 1:31; Isa 10:17. Jer 5:15. explain this, and announce the inroad of a dreadful enemy that is to lay waste the land and consume the people. "A people from far," as in Jer 4:16. Judah is called "house of Israel," not so much because it is what remains of Israel, but because, after the captivity of the ten tribes, Judah regarded itself as the only true Israel or people of God. Further description of…
The Babylonian language was a Semitic language like Hebrew, but the Israelites did not understand it.
Rashi on Jeremiah 5:15
mighty Heb. איתן, strong.
It is an ancient nation From days of yore it began to rebel against Me, in the generation of separation in the land of Shinar.
