Jeremiah 8:8 - Exposition

How do ye say, We are wise ? Jeremiah is evidently addressing the priests and the prophets, whom he so constantly described as among the chief causes of Judah's ruin (comp. verse 10; Jeremiah 2:8 , Jeremiah 2:26 ; Jeremiah 4:9 ; Jeremiah 5:31 ), and who, in Isaiah's day, regarded it as an unwarrantable assumption on the part of that prophet to pretend to instruct them in their duty ( Isaiah 28:9 ). The law of the Lord is with us . "With us;" i . e . in our hands and mouths. (comp. Psalms 1:1-6 :16). The word torah , commonly rendered" Law," is ambiguous, and a difference of opinion as to the meaning of this verse is inevitable. Some think these self-styled "wise" men reject Jeremiah's counsels on the ground that they already have the divinely given Law in a written form (comp. Romans 2:17-20 ), and that the Divine revelation is complete. Others that torah here, as often elsewhere in the prophets (e.g. Isaiah 1:10 ; Isaiah 8:16 ; Isaiah 42:4 ), simply means "instruction," or "direction," and describes the authoritative counsel given orally by the priests ( Deuteronomy 17:11 ) and prophets to those who consulted them on points of ritual and practice respectively. The usage of Jeremiah himself favors the latter view (see Jeremiah 2:8 ; Jeremiah 18:18 ; and especially Jeremiah 26:4 , Jeremiah 26:5 , where "to walk in my Torah " is parallel to "to hearken to the words of my servants the prophets." The context equally points in this direction. The most natural interpretation, then, is this: The opponents of Jeremiah bade him keep his exhortations to himself, seeing that they themselves were wise and the divinely appointed teachers of the people. To this Jeremiah replies, not (as the Authorized Version renders) Lo, certainly in vain made he it , etc.; but, Yea , behold I for a lie hath it wrought—the lying pen of the scribes . Soferim (scribes) is the term proper to all those who practiced the art of writing ( sefer ); it included, therefore, presumably at least, most, if not all, of the priests and prophets of whom Jeremiah speaks. There are indications enough that the Hebrew literature was not entirely confined to those whom we look up to as the inspired writers, and it is perfectly credible that the formalist priests and false prophets should have availed themselves of the pen as a means of giving greater currency to their teaching. Jeremiah warns his hearers to distrust a literature which is in the set-vice of false religious principles—a warning which prophets in the wider sense of the term ('The Liberty of Prophesyings') still have but too much occasion to repeat, tit is right, however, to mention another grammatically possible rendering, which is adopted by those who suppose torah in the preceding clause to mean the Mosaic Law: "Yea, behold, the lying pen of the scribes hath made (it) into a lie;" i . e . the professional interpreters of the Scriptures called scribes have, by their groundless comments and inferences, made the Scriptures (especially the noblest part, the Law) into a lie, so that it has ceased to represent the Divine will and teaching. The objections to this are: