Jeremiah 5:10

"Go ye up upon her walls, and destroy; but make not a full end: take away her branches; for they are not Jehovah's."

Due to its importance, we shall take a careful look at this verse. Note the figure of pruning the grapevine, "Take away her branches," the ones that do not pertain to Jehovah. The figure here is not that of destroying the vine completely, but that of pruning it severely. This is important in refuting the speculations that would delete the pledge here that God would not allow the complete destruction of Judah. Not only here, but in Jeremiah 5:18 below, and in Jeremiah 4:27 above, this pledge is given no less than three times. It is one of the most important things in Jeremiah. It meant that all of the glorious promises to the patriarchs would yet be fulfilled in that "righteous remnant" announced by Isaiah, which would indeed return from Babylon and form the nucleus of the New Israel in Jesus Christ.

We shall note together what the critics have said about this pledge of "no full end" in both Jeremiah 5:10 and Jeremiah 5:18. Robinson stated that, "Like many similar remarks, this seems to be a later insertion meant to qualify the rigor of the destruction in Jeremiah 5:17."[15] On this expression in Jeremiah 5:10, Hyatt declaimed, "The word `not' is probably a mitigating gloss."[16] Notice the absolute lack of evidence cited in support of these presumptuous and arrogant denials of what the Word of God says. Fortunately, this type of blatant denial has been tempered significantly by current critics, who still mention the old prejudice against these pledges, but point out reasons for rejecting them.

Feinberg, for example, mentioned the old canard about those pledges in Jeremiah 5:10,18. being "later additions or glosses"; but immediately added that, "That view lacks MS authority; furthermore the immediate context speaks of pruning not of destroying the vine." (This comment, written in 1965, shows how far we have come from the arrogant denial of Robinson in 1924). Why do not the critics ever tell us that no MS authority whatever backs up their devices against these verses but that the, "Syriac, Septuagint, and Arabic versions all agree with the words, `Destroy, but make not a full end'? (See Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (London: T. Mason and G. Lane, 1837), p. 369). We learned long ago that the strict fairness of radical critics cannot be counted upon. We also appreciate what Ash said about this: "Some suggest that the word `not' be deleted from Jeremiah 5:10; but since the vine was not uprooted, the idea of its continued existence can be supported from the rest of the verse."[17]

We shall be happier when Christian scholars no longer feel it is necessary to pay lip service to those old shibboleths of the radical critics. They have already been long discredited and rejected by believers.