Jeremiah 8:10 — meaning, Hebrew and Greek word study, commentary
Jeremiah 8:10
Therefore will I give their wives unto others, and their fields to them that shall inherit them: for every one from the least even unto the greatest is given to covetousness, from the prophet even unto the priest every one dealeth falsely.
great (in any sense) · adjective, masculine singular absolute
given
בֹּצֵ֣עַbo.Tze.a'
H1214
figuratively · verb, qal active participle, masculine singular absolute
covetousness
בָּ֑צַעBa.tza'
H1215
plunder · noun, common masculine singular absolute
prophet
מִנָּבִיא֙mi.na.Vi'
H5030
a prophet or (generally) inspired man · preposition + noun, common masculine singular absolute
priest
כֹּהֵ֔ןko.Hen
H3548
literally one officiating · noun, common masculine singular absolute
dealeth
עֹ֥שֶׂה'O.seh
H6213
to do or make · verb, qal active participle, masculine singular absolute
falsely
שָּֽׁקֶרSha.ker
H8267
an untruth · noun, common masculine singular absolute
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
Jeremiah 6:12-13 And their houses shall be turned unto others, with their fields and wives together: for I will stretch out my hand upon the inhabitants of t…
Ezekiel 33:31 And they come unto thee as the people cometh, and they sit before thee as my people, and they hear thy words, but they will not do them: for…
Deuteronomy 28:30-32 Thou shalt betroth a wife, and another man shall lie with her: thou shalt build an house, and thou shalt not dwell therein: thou shalt plant…
Isaiah 28:7 But they also have erred through wine, and through strong drink are out of the way; the priest and the prophet have erred through strong dri…
Isaiah 56:10-12 His watchmen are blind: they are all ignorant, they are all dumb dogs, they cannot bark; sleeping, lying down, loving to slumber.
Jeremiah 23:11-17 For both prophet and priest are profane; yea, in my house have I found their wickedness, saith the LORD.
Ezekiel 22:27-28 Her princes in the midst thereof are like wolves ravening the prey, to shed blood, and to destroy souls, to get dishonest gain.
Amos 5:11 Forasmuch therefore as your treading is upon the poor, and ye take from him burdens of wheat: ye have built houses of hewn stone, but ye sha…
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on Jeremiah 8:4-12
The prophet here is instructed to set before this people the folly of their impenitence, which was it that brought this ruin upon them. They are here represented as the most stupid senseless people in the world, that would not be made wise by all the methods that Infinite Wisdom took to bring them to themselves and their right mind, and so to prevent the ruin that was coming upon them.
I. They would not attend to the dictates of reason. They would not act in the affairs of their souls with the same common prudence with which they acted in other things. Sinners would become saints if they would but show themselves men, and religion would soon rule them if right reason might. Observe it here.…
Repeated from Jer 6:12-15. See a similar repetition, Jer 8:15; Jer 14:19.
inherit--succeed to the possession of them.
John Gill on Jeremiah 8:10
Therefore will I give their wives unto others,.... To strangers, to the Gentiles; than which nothing could be more disagreeable to them, or a sorer punishment, of a temporal one:
and their fields to them that shall inherit them; or,
to the heirs (i); other and new ones; and who should possess them as if they were the true and rightful heirs of them.
For everyone from the least even to the greatest is given to covetousness; from the prophet even to the priest everyone dealeth falsely; covetousness and false dealing, which prevailed in all ranks and orders of men among them, were the cause of their ruin: covetousness is the root of all evil; and to deal falsely, or make a lie, as the words…
Jeremiah 8:10
10. Therefore will I give their wives unto others, and their fields to them that shall inherit them: for every one from the least even unto the greatest is given to covetousness, from the prophet even unto the priest every one dealeth falsely.
10. Propterea dabo uxores eorum alienis, et agros eorum possessoribus; quia a parvo usque ad magnum omnes cupiditatem concupiverunt (vel, cupiditate concupiverunt;) a propheta usque ad sacerdotem omnes egerunt fallaciter.
GOD here threatens punishment, because he found that he effected nothing, and that he had to do with an obstinate people, having before tried whether they were reclaimable. Having seen that exhortations were of no ava…
The Church Fathers
(Verses 10, 11.) Therefore I will give their women (or wives) to foreigners: their fields to their heirs. Because from the least to the greatest, all are eager for greed; from prophet to priest, all practice falsehood (or iniquity). And they healed the brokenness of my people lightly, saying: Peace, peace, when there is no peace. They received the wages of their works: those who rejected the word of the Lord were rejected by him. Their wives, he says, and possessions I will hand over to the enemy. And so that my opinion may not be considered cruel, let the judge hear the reasons: From the least to the greatest, all are devoted to greed (1 Timothy 6). For greed is the root of all evils. From prophet to priest, who should be preventing others from sinning, the first are guilty of crimes: and all either commit injustice by plundering others, or at least lie, so that there is no truth in their mouths. And after these things, as good physicians, they desired to heal the wounds of others with their words, who themselves were afflicted with wounds of all kinds of crimes. We see this every day also in our own people, with the blessed Apostle Paul saying: 'You who preach against stealing, do you steal?' (Rom. II, 21), and so on. When they see sinners and the wealthy, they desire to heal the contrition of the daughter of the people of God, that is, the Church; to the shame either of those who are deceived or of those who deceive others, so that they may say, with every wicked deed concealed: peace, peace, when there is no peace, and war of sins threatens them.
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
Impenitence · General scriptures concerning — General scriptures concerning
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).
Those who held themselves wise will come to shame, will be dismally disabused of their hopes. When the great calamity comes on the sin-hardened people, they shall be confounded and overwhelmed in ruin (cf. Jer 6:11). They spurn at the word of Jahveh; whose wisdom then have they? None; for the word of the Lord alone is Israel's wisdom and understanding, Deu 4:6.
The threatening in Jer 8:10 includes not only the wise ones, but the whole people. "Therefore" attaches to the central truth of Jer 8:5 and Jer 8:6, which has been elucidated in Jer 8:7-9. The first half of Jer 8:10 corresponds, in shorter compass, to what has been said in Jer 6:12, and is here continued in Jer 8:10-12 in the same wor…
