Commentary - Jeremiah 8:8-12

Bird's-eye view

In this passage, Jeremiah confronts the false security of the leadership in Judah. They have the law, they have the temple, they have the scribes, but they have hollowed it all out. Their confidence is a sham because they have rejected the very Author of the law they claim to possess. This is a classic case of what happens when a people retain the outward forms of religion while gutting it of all substance. The result is a society-wide corruption, from the top down, and a people who have become so calloused by their sin that they have forgotten how to blush. God's judgment, therefore, is not just coming, it is righteous and fitting. This is a covenant lawsuit, and the Lord is laying out the charges before He pronounces the inevitable sentence.

Jeremiah's task here is to pull the rug out from under their feet. They believe they are wise because they are the custodians of God's law. But Jeremiah, speaking for Yahweh, says that this very custodianship has become the instrument of their deception. The scribal class, the intellectuals of their day, have used their skills not to clarify God's Word but to twist it, to make it serve their own ends. This leads to a total societal breakdown. When the teachers lie, the whole nation follows suit. Greed and deception become the norm, and the spiritual physicians offer a cheap and easy peace when there is no peace to be had. The final indictment is their utter lack of shame, which is a sign of a seared conscience, a point of no return. The fall is coming, and it will be a fall among the other fallen nations, a judgment they have fully earned.

Outline

Context In Jeremiah

This passage sits within a larger section of Jeremiah's prophecies (chapters 7-10) often called the "Temple Sermon" and its aftermath. Jeremiah has been stationed at the gate of the temple to deliver a blistering word from the Lord. The people have developed a superstitious trust in the temple itself, chanting "The temple of Yahweh, the temple of Yahweh, the temple of Yahweh!" (Jer 7:4) as though the physical building were a magical charm against disaster. They believe that because they have the temple, the law, and the sacrificial system, God is obligated to protect them, regardless of their behavior.

Jeremiah's job is to shatter this illusion. He has already detailed their idolatry, their child sacrifice, and their social injustice. Now, in chapter 8, he turns his attention to the intellectual and spiritual leaders who are propping up this entire rotten system. They are the ones who should know better. They are the experts in the law. But instead of calling the people to repentance, they are using their expertise to reassure the people in their sins. This section is a direct confrontation with the corrupt establishment that has made God's law of none effect by their traditions and interpretations.

Clause-by-Clause Commentary

v. 8 “How can you say, ‘We are wise, And the law of Yahweh is with us’? But behold, the lying pen of the scribes Has made it into a lie.

Jeremiah begins with a rhetorical question that drips with irony. The leaders of Judah are boasting in two things: their wisdom and their possession of the law. This is the classic posture of the self-deceived religious establishment. They equate having the book with knowing the Author. They believe that because they have the scrolls, the ordinances, the statutes, that this makes them wise. But wisdom is not the possession of data; it is the fear of the Lord. They had the law, but the law did not have them.

And then comes the devastating charge. The very instrument that was meant to transmit God's truth, the pen of the scribe, has become an instrument of falsehood. This does not mean they were rewriting the scrolls of Moses wholesale, changing the words on the page. The issue is more subtle and far more insidious. It refers to the interpretive enterprise. The scribes, the lawyers, the theologians of that day, were issuing legal opinions, commentaries, and applications that effectively neutered the law. They were explaining it away. They were using their God-given intellects to build fences around the law, and then teaching the people how to crawl through the holes. They turned the sharp sword of God's Word into a dull, leaden thing. They made it say what the people and their corrupt leaders wanted to hear. This is the perennial temptation of every intellectual class: to become masters of the text rather than servants of it.

v. 9 The wise men are put to shame; They are dismayed and captured; Behold, they have rejected the word of Yahweh, And what kind of wisdom do they have?

The consequences of their intellectual malpractice are laid bare. The ones who claimed to be wise will be publicly and catastrophically shamed. Their wisdom will fail them when it counts. When the Babylonian armies are at the gates, their clever interpretations and theological systems will provide no defense. They will be "dismayed and captured." The verb for "captured" here is one of taking or seizing; their vaunted wisdom will be taken from them, and they themselves will be taken into exile. Their intellectual pride will be their downfall.

And here is the root of the problem, stated plainly: "they have rejected the word of Yahweh." It is not that they denied its existence. They rejected its authority. They rejected its claims upon their lives. They treated it as an object to be studied, managed, and manipulated, rather than as a living and active word from the sovereign God to be obeyed. And so Jeremiah asks the final, devastating question: "what kind of wisdom do they have?" The Hebrew is literally, "the wisdom of what is to them?" If you reject the fountain of all wisdom, then what you are left with is not wisdom at all. It is folly, dressed up in academic robes. It is a sham, an empty shell.

v. 10 Therefore I will give their wives to others, Their fields to new possessors, Because from the least even to the greatest Everyone is greedy for gain; From the prophet even to the priest Everyone practices lying.

Here we see the covenantal consequences of their rejection of God's word. The curses of Deuteronomy 28 are being brought to bear. The loss of wives and land were specific, tangible judgments for covenant unfaithfulness. When a nation abandons God's law, God removes His hand of protection, and the basic structures of a stable society, family and property, disintegrate. The Babylonians will come and take what is theirs because they have forsaken the One who gave it to them in the first place.

The reason for this judgment is the total saturation of the society with sin. It is not just a few bad apples. The corruption runs "from the least even to the greatest." This is a society that is rotten from the bottom up and the top down. And the defining characteristic of this corruption is a lust for "gain." Everyone is on the make. This is the result of rejecting God's Word. When you no longer have a transcendent standard of justice and righteousness, every man does what is right in his own eyes, which usually means looking out for number one. And the spiritual leaders are the worst of all. "From the prophet even to the priest," the very men who were supposed to represent God to the people and the people to God, are all practitioners of falsehood. They are in it for the money, the prestige, the power. They are liars.

v. 11 They heal the brokenness of the daughter of My people superficially, Saying, ‘Peace, peace,’ But there is no peace.

This is one of the most poignant and powerful verses in Jeremiah. The "brokenness" of God's people is a deep, mortal wound. It is the wound of sin, of idolatry, of covenant rebellion. And the false prophets and priests are treating this mortal wound as though it were a scratch. The word "superficially" means lightly, slightly. They are applying a band-aid to a cancer. They are offering cheap grace.

Their message is "Peace, peace." This is the message everyone wants to hear. It is the message of "positive and encouraging" preaching. It is the message that God is a God of love and He would never bring judgment. It is the message that everything is going to be okay, that there is no need for repentance, no need for a radical break with sin. But it is a lie. Yahweh thunders back, "But there is no peace." There can be no peace with God when a people are at war with Him. There can be no external peace from invading armies when there is no internal peace with their covenant Lord. To preach peace in such a situation is not pastoral care; it is pastoral malpractice of the highest order. It is to soothe people on their way to hell.

v. 12 Were they ashamed because of the abomination they had done? They certainly were not ashamed, And they did not know how to feel dishonor; Therefore they shall fall among those who fall; At the time of their punishment they shall be brought down,” Says Yahweh.

The final charge is perhaps the most damning. God asks if they were ashamed of their sin. The answer is a resounding no. They were not ashamed. In fact, it is worse than that. They "did not know how to feel dishonor." They had lost the very capacity for shame. Their consciences were so seared, their hearts so hardened, that they could commit abomination and not even blush. This is the final stage of apostasy. When a culture loses its sense of shame, it has lost its moral compass entirely. It has become reprobate.

Because of this, the judgment is fixed. "Therefore they shall fall among those who fall." They will not get a special exemption. They will go down with all the other pagan nations that have defied God. They thought they were special because they had the law and the temple, but their sin has made them just like everyone else. When the "time of their punishment" comes, the day of God's visitation, they will be brought down. This is not a possibility; it is a certainty, declared by Yahweh Himself. The sentence has been passed, and the execution is coming.

Application

The message of Jeremiah 8 is a perennial one. The temptation to trust in the outward forms of religion, to boast that "we have the Bible" or "we are Reformed" or "we have a Christian heritage," while our hearts are far from God, is ever-present. We must constantly be on guard against the "lying pen of the scribes," which today takes the form of theological liberalism that denies the authority of Scripture, or a soft-headed evangelicalism that preaches "peace, peace" when what is needed is a sharp call to repentance.

A society's health can be measured by its capacity for shame. When we as a people can look at sin, at abortion, at sexual perversion, at public dishonesty, and not blush, we are in the same place as Jeremiah's Judah. We have lost the ability to feel dishonor. Our only hope is to reject the superficial healing offered by the court prophets of our day and to return to the Word of God that they have rejected. We need to hear the hard words of the law that expose our sin, so that we might flee to the true peace that is found only in the gospel of Jesus Christ.

The good news is that for all who reject their own wisdom and turn to Christ, there is a true healing for our brokenness. Jesus did not come to apply a superficial band-aid. He went to the cross to deal with the cancer of our sin once and for all. He is the true Word of Yahweh, and in Him, and in Him alone, is there true wisdom and true peace.