Jeremiah 11:15 - Exposition

What hath my beloved to do in mine house ? "My beloved" is evidently the Jewish people, who in Jeremiah 12:7 is called "the dearly beloved of my soul." The Divine Speaker expresses surprise that one who has now so poor a claim to the title of "my beloved" should appear in his holy house. It is spoken in the spirit of that earlier revelation of Isaiah, "When ye come to appear before me, who hath required this at your hand, to trample my courts?" ( Isaiah 1:12 ). The Jews, it would seem, came to the temple to pray, but their prayer is not accepted, because it is associated with unholy practices. They thought by formal prayers and sacrifices to pay off their debt to the Deity, and so be free to go on with their old devices (as in Jeremiah 7:15 ). This seems the best view of the difficult words which follow, but it implies a correction of the certainly ungrammatical rendering of the Authorized Version— seeing she hath wrought lewdness —into to work the wicked device . But here begins the most obscure part of the verse. With many cannot be right; for "with" has nothing corresponding to it in the Hebrew; the word in the original simply means "the many," and as it is immediately followed by a noun in the singular with "and," and a verb in the plural, it is plain that it must (if correctly read) be part of the subject of the latter. The Septuagint, however, has a different reading, which may very well be correct, and out of which the received Hebrew reading may easily have grown—"Can vows and holy [i.e. hallowed] flesh remove from thee thy wickedness [or perhaps, 'thy calamity']?" The connection thus becomes easy. "Vows and holy flesh" (i.e. the flesh of sacrifices, Haggai 2:12 ), naturally go together; the only other possible way of taking the passage (assuming the correctness of the 'received text)—" the great ones and the holy flesh shall pass away from thee"—is obviously inadmissible. "Vows and sacrifices," however, precisely express the true association of ideas. A man made a vow, and he generally paid it in the form of a sacrifice. But, inquires Jehovah, "Can such vows and such Victims please God, and expiate thy wickedness [or, 'avert thy calamity']? Then thou mightest rejoice ." The latter words are not, indeed, more exact than those of the Authorized Version, but are in accordance with grammar, and suit the preceding question. It is not certain, however, that the text is right here; the Septuagint has ἢτούτοις διαφεύξῃ . (Notice that Keil, conservative to a fault in matters affecting the received text, agrees with the above correction, which is also adopted by Ewald, Hitzig, and Graf.)