Jeremiah 10:3 - Exposition

The customs of the people . "People" should, as usual, be corrected into peoples —the heathen nations are referred to. The Hebrew has "the statutes;" but the Authorized Version is substantially right, customs having a force as of iron in Eastern countries. It seems to be implied that the "customs" are of religious origin

in a field of cucumbers . This is the interpretation given to our passage in Verse 70 of the apocryphal Epistle o! Jeremiah (written in the Maccabean period, evidently with reference to our prophecy), and is much more striking than the rival translation, "like a palm tree of turned work," i . e . stiff, immovable. They must needs be borne … they cannot do evil ; a reminiscence, apparently, of Isaiah 46:7 ; Isaiah 41:23 .