Jeremiah 18:23 - Exposition

Let them be overthrown before thee ; i.e. count them as those who have been brought to ruin. This explanation seems required by the parallelism, the companion clause meaning " do not regard their sin as cancelled." The ruin may be either spiritual or temporal; the parallelism favors the former (comp. Jeremiah 18:14 ; Hosea 14:1-9 :10, where "fall" should be "stumble"). Deal thus with them . "Thus" is interpolated by the Authorized Version; "deal" should rather be deal terribly ("deal" is constantly used in a pregnant sense; see on Jeremiah 14:7 ).