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10. God and Idols

¹ Hear what the LORD says to you, people of Israel. ² This is what the LORD says:

   “Do not learn the ways of the nations
   or be terrified by signs in the heavens,
   though the nations are terrified by them.
³ For the practices of the peoples are worthless;
   they cut a tree out of the forest,
   and a craftsman shapes it with his chisel.
⁴ They adorn it with silver and gold;
   they fasten it with hammer and nails
   so it will not totter.
⁵ Like a scarecrow in a cucumber field,
   their idols cannot speak;
they must be carried
   because they cannot walk.
Do not fear them;
   they can do no harm
   nor can they do any good.”

    ⁶ No one is like you, LORD;
   you are great,
   and your name is mighty in power.
⁷ Who should not fear you,
   King of the nations?
   This is your due.
Among all the wise leaders of the nations
   and in all their kingdoms,
   there is no one like you.

    ⁸ They are all senseless and foolish;
   they are taught by worthless wooden idols.
⁹ Hammered silver is brought from Tarshish
   and gold from Uphaz.
What the craftsman and goldsmith have made
   is then dressed in blue and purple—
   all made by skilled workers.
¹⁰ But the LORD is the true God;
   he is the living God, the eternal King.
When he is angry, the earth trembles;
   the nations cannot endure his wrath.

¹¹ “Tell them this: ‘These gods, who did not make the heavens and the earth, will perish from the earth and from under the heavens.’” The text of this verse is in Aramaic.

    ¹² But God made the earth by his power;
   he founded the world by his wisdom
   and stretched out the heavens by his understanding.
¹³ When he thunders, the waters in the heavens roar;
   he makes clouds rise from the ends of the earth.
He sends lightning with the rain
   and brings out the wind from his storehouses.

    ¹⁴ Everyone is senseless and without knowledge;
   every goldsmith is shamed by his idols.
The images he makes are a fraud;
   they have no breath in them.
¹⁵ They are worthless, the objects of mockery;
   when their judgment comes, they will perish.
¹⁶ He who is the Portion of Jacob is not like these,
   for he is the Maker of all things,
including Israel, the people of his inheritance—
   the LORD Almighty is his name.

Coming Destruction

    ¹⁷ Gather up your belongings to leave the land,
   you who live under siege.
¹⁸ For this is what the LORD says:
   “At this time I will hurl out
   those who live in this land;
I will bring distress on them
   so that they may be captured.”

    ¹⁹ Woe to me because of my injury!
   My wound is incurable!
Yet I said to myself,
   “This is my sickness, and I must endure it.”
²⁰ My tent is destroyed;
   all its ropes are snapped.
My children are gone from me and are no more;
   no one is left now to pitch my tent
   or to set up my shelter.
²¹ The shepherds are senseless
   and do not inquire of the LORD;
so they do not prosper
   and all their flock is scattered.
²² Listen! The report is coming—
   a great commotion from the land of the north!
It will make the towns of Judah desolate,
   a haunt of jackals.

Jeremiah’s Prayer

    ²³ LORD, I know that people’s lives are not their own;
   it is not for them to direct their steps.
²⁴ Discipline me, LORD, but only in due measure—
   not in your anger,
   or you will reduce me to nothing.
²⁵ Pour out your wrath on the nations
   that do not acknowledge you,
   on the peoples who do not call on your name.
For they have devoured Jacob;
   they have devoured him completely
   and destroyed his homeland.

This metaphor may have been taken from shepherds, and it seems suitable here; yet the prophets often compare the Church to a tent. Though indeed it is said elsewhere that the Church is built on the holy mountains, (Psalm 87:1) and great firmness is ascribed to it, yet, as to its external condition, it may justly be said to be like a tent, for there is no fixed residence for God’s children on earth, for they are often constrained to ehange their place; and hence Paul speaks of the faithful as unsettled. (1 Corinthians 4:11.) But as, in the next verse, mention is made of shepherds, the Prophet seems here to refer to the tents of shepherds. Though indeed he takes hereafter the similitude more generally, or in a wider sense, yet there is no reason why he should not allude to the shepherds of whom he afterwards speaks, and yet retain the metaphor which so often occurs in all the prophets.

He then says that his tent was pulled down, and that all his cords were broken Some take the tent for the city of Jerusalem, but this is a strained view, and unsuitable. We have already said that the Prophet speaks here in the name of the whole people; and it is the same as though he compared the people to a man dwelling with his family in a tent. He adds, My children are gone forth from me The people then complain that they were deprived of all their children; nor was this all, but they were scattered here and there, which was worse than if they had been taken away by death. He afterwards says, And there is no one to extend my tent, and to set up my curtains Jeremiah shews that the people would be so bereaved as to have none to bring them any assistance, though in much want of it.

No one then thought that such a thing would take place, and Jeremiah was held in contempt, and some raged against him, and yet He shewed what would be. And that what he said might be more forcible, and produce a stronger effect, he speaks in their name, like a poet in a play, who describes a miser, and mentions things suitable to his character, making use of such words and actions, so that he cannot but see, as it were in a mirror, his own disposition and conduct. So also the Prophet does here; for when He saw that the stupid people could not be moved by the simple truth, he told them what they all ought to have felt in their liearts, and to have testified by their mouths, — that they were solitary, deserted by all who belonged to them, and that there was no one to bring them any help. ¹⁹¹⁹     I should render the verse as follows —
   My tent, it is laid waste, And all my curtains, they are broken; My sons, they have left me, and there are none of them; No one extends any more my tent, and sets up my curtains.
   When the noun precedes its verb in Hebrew, I consider that it ought commonly to be rendered as above. “There are none of them,” that is, with me; not that they “were not,” that is, that they were dead. — Ed. But he pursues, as we have said, the same metaphor. It follows —