Jeremiah8chapter 8

Jeremiah 8:1-3

they shall bring out the bones of the kings of Judah: The bones of Judah's kings, princes, priests, prophets and common people alike are pictured dragged from their graves and spread before the sun, moon and host of heaven they had worshipped, the exact objects of devotion turned into witnesses of the corpse's shame. Death shall be chosen rather than life by all the residue of them that remain states the depth of the coming siege and exile in one line, a captivity so bitter that survivors will envy the dead rather than the living. The bench reads the scene as judgment answering idolatry in kind, worship offered to the sky repaid by exposure under it.

Jeremiah 8:4-7

Shall they fall, and not arise? shall he turn away, and not return?: Shall they fall, and not arise, shall he turn away, and not return, describes the ordinary law of gravity and repentance that Judah alone seems to have suspended, a perpetual backsliding that holds fast deceit and refuses to return. The stork, turtle, crane and swallow keep their appointed migrations by instinct while my people know not the judgment of the Lord, an argument from creation's obedience against the one creature made to know better, which the older writers read as the sharpest of the book's nature comparisons. No man repented him of his wickedness, saying, What have I done, pictures a nation that has stopped even asking the question.

Jeremiah 8:8-9

the law of the Lord is with us: The wise men's own claim, We are wise, and the law of the Lord is with us, is answered by their possession of a document without its obedience, the pen of the scribes is in vain naming a scholarship that copies the law without keeping it. The wise men are ashamed, they are dismayed and taken because the wisdom they trusted turns out to be no wisdom at all once the word of the Lord it claimed to hold is rejected in practice. Gill reads the verse as a warning against confusing the possession of Scripture with the possession of its God.

Jeremiah 8:10-12

give their wives unto others: The penalty answers the sin in kind, wives and fields given to others because everyone from least to greatest is given to covetousness, priest and prophet alike dealing falsely. The famous line falls at verse 11, they have healed the hurt of the daughter of my people slightly, saying, Peace, peace; when there is no peace, false comfort diagnosed as a wound bandaged without being cleaned, the same charge repeated word for word at 6:14. Verse 12 removes the last excuse, were they ashamed... nay, they were not at all ashamed, neither could they blush, shame itself worn out by repetition.

Jeremiah 8:13-14

there shall be no grapes on the vine: I will surely consume them announces a harvest failure as judgment's own picture, no grapes on the vine, nor figs on the fig tree, the leaf fading before its season, ordinary agricultural language carrying the covenant curses of Deuteronomy 28. The people's own voice answers at verse 14, why do we sit still? assemble yourselves, and let us enter into the defenced cities, a call to retreat behind walls that will not hold, water of gall given to drink because we have sinned against the Lord naming the cause the crowd itself supplies.

Jeremiah 8:15-17

We looked for peace, but no good came: We looked for peace, but no good came; and for a time of health, and behold trouble! answers the false prophets of 6:14 and 8:11 directly, the peace they promised failing to arrive on schedule. The snorting of his horses was heard from Dan announces the invasion from the north by its sound before its sight, Dan marking Israel's northernmost point and the direction every threat in the book approaches from. Serpents, cockatrices, among you, which will not be charmed pictures an enemy immune to the usual remedies, the snake charmer's art itself defeated, which the bench reads as judgment beyond any human counter-measure.

Jeremiah 8:18-22

When I would comfort myself against sorrow, my heart is faint in me: When I would comfort myself against sorrow, my heart is faint in me opens the chapter's turn from third-person indictment to the prophet's own grief, Jeremiah heard weeping inside his own oracle rather than merely delivering it. The exiles' own bewildered question, is not the Lord in Zion, is not her king in her, is answered only by the silence of verse 20, the harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved, opportunity named as having simply run out. Is there no balm in Gilead, is there no physician there, closes the unit as the book's most quoted line of grief, Gilead's balm a real regional export named for its medicinal trade, asked here as a question with no answer supplied in the text itself.