Jeremiah8chapter 8

The chapter opens with the worst thing an ancient conqueror could do to a city. Judeans were buried in rock-cut chambers outside the walls, laid on stone benches until the flesh was gone and the bones were gathered into a pit with the family's ancestors. To break into those chambers and scatter the bones on the ground under the sun and the stars they had worshipped was to attack the dead as well as the living.

Then a bird-watching argument. The stork, the turtledove, the swift and the thrush pass over that country on schedule twice a year — the Jordan valley is one of the world's great migration flyways, and the birds arrive within days of the same date every spring. They keep an appointment they were never taught. Judah cannot manage it.

The reference to the lying pen of the scribes points at a real profession. Scribes copied, taught, drafted contracts, and produced the written material a temple state ran on. They wrote with a cut reed on papyrus or leather using ink made from soot and gum.

Gilead, east of the Jordan, exported a resin used as a wound dressing and traded all over the region. Asking whether there is balm in Gilead is like asking whether the pharmacy is open. Everyone knew it was.