Jeremiah 10: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

The LORD tells Israel not to copy the other nations or fear signs in the sky, and describes how an idol is made: cut from a tree, covered with silver and gold, nailed down so it will not tip, unable to speak, walk, help, or harm. Against that, the chapter praises the LORD as the true and living God who made the earth and stretched out the heavens, and says the gods that made nothing will perish. It then turns to coming disaster: the people are told to pack up, an invader is coming from the north, the shepherds have failed, and the speaker asks God to correct him with justice rather than anger and to pour out his anger on the nations that devoured Jacob.

Claim by Claim

1. 10:1
   • The house of Israel is commanded to hear the word.
   • The word is one the LORD speaks to them.
2. 10:2
   • The LORD says this.
   • They are commanded not to learn the way of the nations.
   • They are commanded not to be terrified by the signs of the heavens.
   • The nations are terrified by the signs of the heavens.
3. 10:3
   • The customs of the peoples are worthless.
   • Someone cuts a tree out of the forest.
   • The tree becomes the work of a craftsman's hands.
   • The craftsman works it with a cutting tool.
4. 10:4
   • They beautify it with silver and with gold.
   • They fasten it with nails and with hammers.
   • They fasten it so that it will not totter.
5. 10:5
   • The idols are like a post set up in a cucumber field.
   • The idols do not speak.
   • The idols must be carried.
   • The idols cannot walk.
   • The people are commanded not to fear the idols.
   • The idols cannot do harm.
   • The idols cannot do good.
6. 10:6
   • There is none like the LORD.
   • The LORD is great.
   • The LORD's name is great in might.
7. 10:7
   • No one would fail to fear the King of the nations.
   • The LORD is addressed as King of the nations.
   • Fear is due to the LORD.
   • Among all the wise men of the nations there is none like the LORD.
   • In all their kingdoms there is none like the LORD.
8. 10:8
   • They are altogether stupid and foolish.
   • The instruction given by worthless idols is wood.
9. 10:9
   • Beaten silver is brought from Tarshish.
   • Gold is brought from Uphaz.
   • The idols are the work of a craftsman.
   • The idols are the work of a goldsmith's hands.
   • Blue and purple are the idols' clothing.
   • They are all the work of skilled men.
10. 10:10
    • The LORD is the true God.
    • The LORD is the living God.
    • The LORD is an everlasting king.
    • At his wrath the earth trembles.
    • The nations cannot endure his indignation.
11. 10:11
    • They are to say this to them.
    • The gods that did not make the heavens and the earth will perish from the earth.
    • Those gods will perish from under these heavens.
12. 10:12
    • He made the earth by his power.
    • He established the world by his wisdom.
    • He stretched out the heavens by his understanding.
13. 10:13
    • When he utters his voice, there is a tumult of waters in the heavens.
    • He causes clouds to rise from the end of the earth.
    • He makes lightnings for the rain.
    • He brings out wind from his storehouses.
14. 10:14
    • Every man is stupid, without knowledge.
    • Every goldsmith is put to shame by his carved image.
    • His molten image is a lie.
    • There is no breath in them.
15. 10:15
    • They are worthless.
    • They are a work of mockery.
    • In the time of their punishment they will perish.
16. 10:16
    • The portion of Jacob is not like these.
    • He is the one who formed all things.
    • Israel is the tribe of his inheritance.
    • The LORD of hosts is his name.
17. 10:17
    • The one addressed is commanded to gather her bundle from the ground.
    • The one addressed is dwelling under siege.
18. 10:18
    • The LORD says this.
    • The LORD is about to sling out the inhabitants of the land at this time.
    • The LORD will bring distress on them.
    • The purpose is that they may find, with what they find left unstated.
19. 10:19
    • The speaker cries woe over his brokenness.
    • The speaker's wound is grievous.
    • The speaker said this is truly his sickness.
    • The speaker said he must bear it.
20. 10:20
    • The speaker's tent is destroyed.
    • All the speaker's tent cords are snapped.
    • The speaker's sons have gone out from him.
    • The speaker's sons are no more.
    • There is no one left to spread out the speaker's tent.
    • There is no one left to set up the speaker's curtains.
21. 10:21
    • The shepherds have become stupid.
    • The shepherds have not sought the LORD.
    • Therefore they have not acted wisely.
    • All their flock is scattered.
22. 10:22
    • The sound of a report is coming.
    • A great commotion is coming from the land of the north.
    • It will make the cities of Judah a desolation.
    • It will make the cities of Judah a haunt of jackals.
23. 10:23
    • The speaker knows something and addresses the LORD.
    • A man's way is not his own.
    • It is not for a man who walks to direct his own steps.
24. 10:24
    • The speaker asks the LORD to correct him.
    • The speaker asks to be corrected only with justice.
    • The speaker asks not to be corrected in the LORD's anger.
    • The speaker fears the LORD would otherwise bring him to nothing.
25. 10:25
    • The speaker asks the LORD to pour out his fury on the nations that do not know him.
    • The speaker asks the LORD to pour out his fury on the families that do not call on his name.
    • They have eaten up Jacob.
    • They have devoured him.
    • They have consumed him.
    • They have made his habitation desolate.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

10:1

"LORD" in capitals stands in for the personal name of Israel's God, written in Hebrew with four consonants (YHWH). Ancient Jewish readers said "Lord" aloud in its place, and English Bibles have followed that practice ever since; where the ordinary word for "lord" or "master" appears, it is printed without the capitals.

10:2

"Signs in the sky" means omens read from the heavens, eclipses, comets, unusual movements of the planets and stars. In Babylon this was a trained profession: astrologers kept records and advised kings on what such events foretold. Jeremiah is telling his hearers not to take up that fear.

10:3

"The customs of these peoples" is not about foreign manners in general. Verses 3 to 5 describe one specific practice: making an image of a god out of wood, plating it with metal, and treating it as a god. The Hebrew word behind "worthless" is one Jeremiah uses often; it means something like a puff of breath or vapor, not evil so much as empty, with nothing to it.

10:4

An idol of this kind was a carved wooden core covered in beaten silver or gold, then pinned to a base or a wall so it would not topple. Jeremiah is describing the manufacturing process step by step on purpose.

10:5

The Hebrew here is uncertain and translators divide. The King James took the phrase to mean the idols stand stiff and straight like a palm trunk; many modern translations read the same words as "like a scarecrow in a cucumber field", a figure propped up in a garden that looks like a person but does nothing. Either way the point of the image is a thing shaped like a living being that cannot move or speak.

10:7

"For to thee doth it appertain" means this belongs to you, this is what you are owed. "Appertain" is the same word as modern "pertain."

10:8

"Brutish" means stupid, at the level of an animal, not cruel or violent. "The stock" is the trunk or block of wood the idol was cut from, so the sentence means their whole education comes from a log.

10:9

Tarshish and Uphaz are named as far-off sources of precious metal, the way one might say "silver from the ends of the earth." Tarshish was a distant port reached by long sea voyage, probably in the western Mediterranean; readers knew it chiefly as the place fine metal came from. Uphaz is otherwise unknown and may be a variant spelling of Ophir, the region proverbial for gold. Blue and purple were the most expensive dyes in the ancient world, extracted in tiny quantities from shellfish and normally reserved for royalty and temple cloth, so the idols are dressed like kings.

10:10

"Abide his indignation" means withstand or endure his anger, not live alongside it.

10:11

This one verse is written in Aramaic, not Hebrew, the only such verse in the book. Aramaic was the common international language of the Near East in Jeremiah's day, the language you would use to speak to foreigners. The verse reads like a short set formula handed to Israelites to say back to the nations around them, in a language those nations would understand.

10:12

"Stretched out the heavens" pictures the sky as a great sheet of tent cloth pulled taut and pegged in place. The comparison would have been immediate to people who put up tents; it recurs throughout the Hebrew prophets.

10:13

The ancient picture is of weather kept in storerooms, the way a household or palace kept grain, oil and treasure locked up until needed. Wind, rain, snow and hail are imagined as stock held in reserve and issued when their owner chooses.

10:14

A "founder" is a metalworker who melts metal and pours it into molds, and "confounded" means publicly humiliated. The chapter keeps two kinds of idol distinct: a "graven image" is carved, a "molten image" is cast from liquid metal.

10:15

"The time of their visitation" is a set biblical phrase for the moment when God arrives to inspect and settle accounts. It means a reckoning, not a friendly visit.

10:16

"Jacob's share" uses the language of dividing land. When Israel settled Canaan, each tribe received a portion of territory as its inheritance (except the priestly tribe of Levi, who were told that the LORD himself was their portion instead. The phrase here applies that to the whole people: their inheritance is not property but God. The second half reverses it) Israel is the portion that belongs to him. The Hebrew word behind "tribe" also means a rod or staff, which is why the King James reads "the rod of his inheritance." "LORD of Armies" (older English: "LORD of hosts") is a title picturing God at the head of massed armies, whether the armies of Israel or the ranks of heaven.

10:17

"Wares" are goods and belongings, here bundled up to be carried. "Inhabitant of the fortress" means someone shut inside a walled city with an enemy army outside. The instruction is what you say to a refugee: pack what you can carry, you are leaving.

10:18

A sling was a leather pouch on two cords, whirled and released to hurl a stone a great distance, an ordinary shepherd's and soldier's weapon. The image is of people flung out of their land in a single motion, the way a stone is slung away and never recovered.

10:19

The voice changes here. The land, or the city of Jerusalem, speaks in the first person as a wounded person describing an injury, a common way for Hebrew poetry to give a whole community a single voice. Some readers take these lines as Jeremiah speaking on the people's behalf instead.

10:20

The speaker talks as if the whole nation were one household living in a tent: goat-hair cloth held up by poles, stretched tight by ropes running to pegs in the ground, with hangings dividing the inside. Cut the ropes and the whole thing collapses. Pitching and striking a tent took several pairs of hands, so "no one is left to put my tent up again" means the family that would have done it is gone.

10:21

Calling rulers "shepherds" was standard political language across the ancient Near East, used of kings in Egypt, Mesopotamia and Israel alike. It is not a religious metaphor here but the ordinary word for those in charge (kings, officials, priests) and the "flock" is the population they were responsible for.

10:22

Invading armies reached Judah from the north even when they came from Babylon in the east, because the direct route lay across impassable desert; armies followed the Euphrates upstream and came down through Syria. "From the north" therefore meant invasion to Jeremiah's hearers. Jackals were scavenging dogs that moved into abandoned sites; naming them is a standard way of saying a city has been emptied of people, its ruins left to wild animals.

10:24

"Correct me" is the language of discipline by a parent or a teacher, not of proofreading. "But with judgment" means in measure, in proportion, the way a judge fits a sentence to the offense. The speaker is asking to be punished by a rule rather than by rage.

10:25

"Call on your name" is the ordinary Hebrew expression for worshiping and praying to a god, invoking that god by name in oaths, appeals and sacrifice. To say a people does not call on the LORD's name is to say they have no dealings with him, not that they are ignorant of the word. "Family groups" translates a word for clans or extended kinship groups, here used of the nations as a whole.