Jeremiah 10:1

JEREMIAH 10

THE TRUE GOD CONTRASTED WITH IDOLS

In this chapter, we encounter a barrage of critical bias to the effect that, "This chapter presupposes a situation in which the people addressed are living among the heathen and need to be warned against idolatry."[1] "There is an interruption of thought ... Most scholars question the authenticity of a major section of this chapter."[2] "Most scholars wish to date this passage during the exile and consider it post-Jeremiahic."[3] "Jeremiah 10:1-16 here interrupt the connection between Jeremiah 9:22 and Jeremiah 10:17."[4] None of these allegations has any foundation whatever.

This whole chapter was written shortly before the Babylonian capture of Jerusalem the first time. At that time the Jews were a thoroughly idolatrous people. The horrible idolatries under Manasseh were still adored and secretly worshipped by the Jews; and the superficial reforms under Josiah had not really changed the hearts of the people. Idolatry was rampant in Judaea in the closing days of their apostasy and just before their deportation to Babylon. Any notion, therefore that the warning here regarding the "nothingness of idols" was not needed must be classified as ridiculous. Of course, the Jews desperately needed this warning; and, since this chapter mentions the near approach of the Babylonian invasion, it was especially appropriate that Jeremiah should have given the Jews another dramatic warning of the idolatry which they were sure to encounter in Babylon, as well as citing again their own idolatry which was a major cause of their divine punishment.

Of all the critical attacks upon the authenticity of Biblical books which we have encountered, the one here appears as the very weakest and unbelievable of all of them.

Green also agreed that this disputed passage, "could have been Jeremiah's warning to Judah against falling under the spell of the Babylonian brand of idolatry."[5] How blind are the interpreters who do not see such an obvious truth.

There is no interruption of the sequence of thought; there is no break in the intimate connection evident in every line of these chapters. How natural it was that, in the same breath, where Jeremiah hailed the advance of the destroyers (Jeremiah 10:17ff), God's great prophet should have warned the Jews of the Babylonian idolatry.

Another fact of the utmost importance that surfaces in this chapter is the fact that Jeremiah took this description of idols and their worthlessness almost verbatim from Isaiah's description of the same things in chapters 40-44.

"The correspondence between Jeremiah's description and that of Isaiah, is so manifest that no one can doubt that one is modeled upon the other. If Jeremiah, then, took the thoughts and phrases from Isaiah (which he most obviously did do), it is plain that the last twenty-seven chapters of Isaiah were prior in date to the times of Jeremiah, and that they were not written at the close of the Babylonian exile. This passage is a crucial one to the pseudo-Isaiah theory."[6]

The critics, of course, realize that they must reply to this, or lose their case for a Deutero-Isaiah altogether; but R. Payne Smith has effectively refuted their attempted answers.

(1) There is the claim that the pseudo-Isaiah copied from Jeremiah. "This is refuted by the style," which is Isaiah's, not Jeremiah's."[7] (2) An alternative answer would make an interpolation out of the whole passage (Jeremiah 10:1-16). "This is contradicted by the appearance of the passage in LXX."[8] Even some writers who half-heartedly cling to the out-dated critical allegations, such as Dummelow, are impressed with these answers. Dummelow, after mentioning the theories about this chapter, stated that, "It should, however, be said, on the other hand, that the LXX, although omitting much that is in the Hebrew, yet contains this chapter![9]

In our view, such facts as these, coupled with many others cited throughout this series of commentaries, effectively dispose of the whole multiple-Isaiah nonsense.

Jeremiah 10:1-5

THE NOTHINGNESS OF THE FALSE GODS

"Hear ye the word which Jehovah speaketh unto you, O house of Israel: Thus saith Jehovah, learn not the way of the nations, and be not dismayed at the signs of heaven; for the nations are dismayed at them. For the customs of the peoples are vanity; for one cutteth a tree out of the forest, the work of the hands of the workman with the axe. They deck it with silver and with gold; they fasten it with nails and with hammers, that it move not. They are like a palm-tree, of turned work, and speak not: they must be borne, because they cannot go. Be not afraid of them; for they cannot do evil, neither is it in them to do good."

"Learn not the way of the nations ... the nations are dismayed ... the customs of the peoples are vanity ..." (Jeremiah 10:2-3). There is absolutely no way that Jeremiah could have made it any plainer that the admonition of this chapter was designed to aid the Jews in rejecting the idolatry of the Gentiles, such as that they would encounter in Babylon.

Furthermore, this scathing denunciation of idolatry came right out of the experience of Jeremiah who was an eye-witness of the gross conduct of the Jews in that sector throughout his lifetime. "He had known it (the idolatry) first-hand, himself being held in awe only by the monotheistic faith cherished by the best of the people."[10]

The special need for Jeremiah's warning against idolatry was mentioned by Halley. "It seems that the threat of Babylonian invasion had spurred the people of Judah into great activity in manufacturing idols, as if idols could save them. This gave Jeremiah the occasion for these verses."[11]

"Be not dismayed at the signs of heaven ..." (Jeremiah 10:2). "This does not refer to the sun, moon, and stars, or signs of the zodiac, meant by God to be signs (Genesis 1:14), but to unusual phenomena like eclipses, meteorites, comets, etc. which were supposed by the ancients to portend extraordinary events. Such things struck terror into the hearts of ancient pagans. Egypt and Babylon were both addicted to this very thing."[12]

Thus, Jeremiah could not have made it any plainer if he had cited Babylon by name as being the very people against whom the Israelites were here warned against taking up their false gods and customs.

To declare that these verses do not fit is to betray a total lack of understanding of Jeremiah's purpose.

"They cannot do evil ... or do good ..." (Jeremiah 10:5). Harrison paraphrased this verse as follows: "The false gods are like a scarecrow in a patch of cucumbers!"[13]