Jeremiah 6:2 - Exposition

I have likened … a comely and delicate woman . This passage is one of the most difficult in the book, and if there is corruption of the text anywhere, it is here. The most generally adopted rendering is, "The comely and delicate one will I destroy, even the daughter of Zion," giving the verb the same sense as in Hosea 4:5 (literally it is, I have brought to silence , or perfect of prophetic certitude). The context, however, seems to favor the rendering "pasturage" (including the idea of a nomad settlement), instead of "comely;" but how to make this fit in with the remainder of the existing text is far from clear. The true and original reading probably only survives in fragments.