Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Jeremiah 2:33
Why trimmest thou thy way to seek love? therefore hast thou also taught the wicked ones thy ways.
33. How trimmest thou thy way ] lit. How thou makest thy way good! i.e. How cleverly thou goest about (to reach an immoral object)!
even the wicked women, etc.] even experts in immorality can learn fresh wickedness from thee. LXX (“thou hast done wickedly in corrupting thy ways”) very possibly represents a text superior to MT.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
Why trimmest thou thy way – literally, Why makest thou thy way good, a phrase used here of the pains taken by the Jews to learn the idolatries of foreign nations.
The wicked ones … – Or, therefore thou hast taught thy ways wickednesses.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Verse 33. Why trimmest thou thy way] Ye have used a multitude of artifices to gain alliances with the neighbouring idolatrous nations.
Hast thou also taught the wicked ones thy ways.] Ye have made even these idolaters worse than they were before. Dr. Blayney translates, “Therefore have I taught calamity thy ways.” A prosopopoeia: “I have instructed calamity where to find thee.” Thou shalt not escape punishment.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
Why trimmest, or deckest, Eze 23:40, thinking thereby to entice others to thy help? thus is the word used, Jer 4:30. Or, Why dost thou use so much art and skill, and take so much pains, to go and send here and there to contract a friendship with foreign people, and to bring them to thy embraces, Isa 57:9,10, or thinking to set a good face or gloss upon the matter, and excuse thyself, as if thou couldst delude God, whereas all thou dost is to get acquaintance with other idolaters?
To seek love, i.e. to commit filthiness with thy idols; a synecdoche of the kind.
Therefore hast thou also taught the wicked ones, i.e. thou art become so vile, that even strumpets themselves may come to learn of thee, 2Ch 33:9. Or by thy example; nations that have been vile enough of themselves, by thy example are become more vile.
Thy ways, i.e. thy actions; a metaphor.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
33. Why trimmestMAURERtranslates, “How skilfully thou dost prepare thy way,”&c. But see 2Ki 9:30.”Trimmest” best suits the image of one deckingherself as a harlot.
waycourse of life.
thereforeaccordingly.Or else, “nay, thou hast even,” &c.
also . . . wicked oneseventhe wicked harlots, that is, (laying aside the metaphor) even theGentiles who are wicked, thou teachest to be still more so [GROTIUS].
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
Why trimmest thou thy way to seek love?…. To seek the love, and gain the affections and esteem, of the idolatrous nations; as a lascivious woman dresses herself out in the best manner to excite the lust and move the affections of her lovers; and as Jezebel, who painted her face, and tired her head, 2Ki 9:30 or dressed it in the best manner, where the same word is used as here; so the Targum,
“why dost thou make thy way beautiful, to procure loves (or lovers) to be joined to the people?”
or the sense is, why art thou so diligent and industrious to make thy way, which is exceeding bad, look a good one, by sacrifices and ceremonies, oblations and ablutions, in order to seek and obtain my love and favour, which is all in vain? it is not to be gained by such methods:
therefore hast thou also taught the wicked ones thy ways; the wicked idolatrous nations, to whom they joined themselves; these they taught their ways of sacrificing, their rites, ceremonies, and superstitions; or, as Jarchi interprets it, thou hast taught thyself the worst way among them all; that is, thou hast used thyself to it: there is a double reading in this clause. The Cetib, or writing, is , “I have taught”; as if they were the words of God, saying, “wherefore I have taught”; or, “will teach”; that is, by punishing thee;
that thy ways are evil; or, as Kimchi explains it,
“I have taught thee by thy ways that they are evil, and evil shall come unto thee because of them.”
The Keri, or reading, is , “thou hast taught”; which is confirmed by the Targum; and is followed by the Septuagint, Vulgate Latin, and other versions. It is by some rendered, “seeing thou hast taught others thy evil ways” p; not content to sin themselves, but taught others to do so, and yet would be thought good.
p “Quandoquidem etiam (alios) malas docuisti vias tuas”, Noldius, p. 507. vid. No. 1998.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
In Jer 2:33 the style of address is ironical. How good thou makest thy way! i.e., how well thou knowest to choose out and follow the right way to seek love. sig. usually: strive after a good walk and conversation; cf. Jer 7:3, Jer 7:5; Jer 18:11, etc.; here, on the other hand, to take the right way for gaining the end in view. “Love” here is seen from the context to be love to the idols, intrigues with the heathen and their gods. Seek love = strive to gain the love of the false gods. To attain this end thou hast taught thy ways misdeeds, i.e., accustomed thy ways to misdeeds, forsaken the commandments of thy God which demand righteousness and the purifying of one’s life, and accommodated thyself to the immoral practices of the heathen. , with the article as in Jer 3:5, the evil deeds which are undisguisedly visible; not: the evils, the misfortunes which follow thee closely, as Hitz. interprets in the face of the context. For in Jer 2:34 we have indisputable evidence that the matter in hand is not evils and misfortunes, but evil deeds or misdemeanours; since there the cleaving of the blood of innocent souls to the hems of the garments is mentioned as one of the basest “evils,” and as such is introduced by the of gradation. The “blood of souls” is the blood of innocent murdered men, which clings to the skirts of the murderers’ clothes. are the skirts of the flowing garment, Eze 5:3; 1Sa 15:27; Zec 8:23. The plural before is explained by the fact that is the principal idea. are not merely those who live in straitened circumstances, but pious oppressed ones as contrasted with powerful transgressors and oppressors; cf. Ps. 40:18; Psa 72:13., Psa 86:1-2, etc. By the next clause greater prominence is given to the fact that they were slain being innocent. The words: not , at housebreaking, thou tookest them, contain an allusion to the law in Exo 22:1 and onwards; according to which the killing of a thief caught in the act of breaking in was not a cause of blood-guiltiness. The thought runs thus: The poor ones thou hast slain were no thieves or robbers whom thou hadst a right to slay, but guiltless pious men; and the killing of them is a crime worthy of death. Exo 21:12. The last words are obscure, and have been very variously interpreted. Changes upon the text are not to the purpose. For we get no help from the reading of the lxx, of the Syr. and Arab., which seem to have read as , and which have translated oak or terebinth; since “upon every oak” gives no rational meaning. Nor from the connection of the words with the next verse (Venem., Schnur., Ros., and others): yet with all this, or in spite of all this, thou saidst; since neither does mean yet, nor can the before , in this connection, introduce the sequel thought. The words manifestly belong to what goes before, and contain a contrast: not in breaking in by night thou tookest them, but upon, or on account of all this. in the sig. upon gives a suitable sense only if, with Abarb., Ew., Ng. , we refer to and take as 1st pers.: I found it (the blood of the slain souls) not on the place where the murder took place, but upon all these, sc. lappets of the clothes, i.e., borne openly for display. But even without dwelling on the fact that does not mean the scene of a murder or breaking in, this explanation is wrecked on the unmistakeably manifest allusion to the law, , Exo 21:1, which is ignored, or at least obscured, by that view. The allusion to this passage of the law shows that is not 1st but 2nd pers., and that the suffix refers to the innocent poor who were slain. Therefore, with Hitz. and Graf, we take in the sig. “on account of all this,” and refer the “all this” to the idolatry before mentioned. Consequently the words bear this meaning: Not for a crime thou killedst the poor, but because of thine apostasy from God and thy fornication with the idols, their blood cleaves to thy raiment. the words seem, as Calv. surmised, to point to the persecution and slaying of the prophets spoken of in Jer 2:30, namely, to the innocent blood with which the godless king Manasseh filled Jerusalem, 2Ki 21:16; 2Ki 24:4; seeking as he did to crush out all opposition to the abominations of idolatry, and finding in his way the prophets and the godly of the land, who by their words and their lives lifted up their common testimony against the idolaters and their abandoned practices.
Fuente: Keil & Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament
This verse is differently explained: but the Prophet simply means; that the Jews were like lascivious women, who not only despise their husbands at home, but ramble here and there in all directions, and also paint their faces and seek for themselves all the charms of wantonness. He says that the Jews had acted in this way; and hence he says that they made beautiful their ways The verb in Hebrew has a wide meaning: it means to prepare, to conciliate favor. But its import here is, as though the Prophet had said, “Why dost thou disguise and paint thyself like strumpets, who use many artifices to allure young men and to inflame their lusts? why then dost thou undertake so much labor to gain a meretricious hire?” We shall hereafter see why he says this; for he upbraids them for applying to the Assyrians and the Egyptians.
It was a common thing with the Prophets to compare the people to lovers; for the Jews, while they ought to have been firmly attached to God, (like a chaste woman, who does not turn her eyes here and there, nor gad about, but has respect to her husband alone,) thought to seek safety now from the Assyrians, then from the Egyptians. This sinful disposition is then what the Prophet here condemns; and hence he speaks of them metaphorically as of an adulterous woman, who despises her husband and rambles after any she can find, and seeks wanton and silly young men in all places, and subjects herself to the gratification of all. We now then understand what the Prophet means.
The words must be noticed: he says, Why makest thou fine thy ways? But he refers here to the care which a wanton woman takes to adorn her person, as though he had said, “Why dost thou thus prepare thyself? and why dost thou seek for thyself what is splendid and elegant, that thy appearance may deceive the eyes of the simple?” For the Jews might have remained safe and secure under God’s protection, and might have been so without any calamity. As a husband is content with the beauty of his wife, and seeks no adventitious and refined elegancies; so God required nothing from that people except fidelity, like a husband, who requires chastity in his wife. The meaning then is, — “As a wife, really attached to her husband, has no need to undergo much labor, for she knows that her own native beauty pleases him, nor does she labor much to gain the heart of her husband, for the best recommendation is her chastity; so ye might have lived without any trouble by only serving me and keeping my law: but now what is your chastity? ye are like wanton women, who labor to gain the hearts of adulterers; for as they burn with lust, so there is no end nor limits to their attempts to seek embellishments; and they torment themselves, only that they might attach adulterers to themselves. Such then are ye (says God;) for ye spend much care and labor in seeking for yourselves strange lovers.”
He afterwards adds, Therefore thou hast also taught lewdnesses He alludes to the words he had before used, Thou hast made fine (or fair) thy ways: and now he says, thou hast also taught wickednesses by thy ways He declares that the Jews were worse than the Assyrians and the Egyptians, as a lascivious woman is far worse than all the adulterers whom she captivates as her paramours. For when a young man is not deceived, and the devil does not apply the fagot, he may continue chaste and pure; but when an impudent and wanton woman entices him, it is all over with him. The Prophet then says, that the Assyrians and the Egyptians were innocent when compared with his own nation. How so? “Because they have been led away,” he says, “by your allurements, like young men, who are destroyed by the fallacious ornaments of strumpets; for it is the same as though they had fallen into snares: the evil then has proceeded from you, and the fault lies with you. (65)
We now understand the Prophet’s meaning: for he condemns the Jews, because they afforded an occasion of evil both to the Assyrians and to the Egyptians, while they of their own accord sought their favor. It now follows —
(65) The exposition of this verse is no doubt materially correct. The words have been variously rendered, On the first clause there is a general agreement, The verb “taught” in the second, is in the first person in the received text; and to this reading Blayney gives the preference, and thus renders the line, —
Therefore also have I taught calamities thy ways.
That is, “that God had directed calamities where to find them.” But this is rather a remote idea. In favor of the second person, “thou hast taught,“ are several MSS., all the early versions and the Targum; and it is what has been by most adopted. “The wicked ones” of our version is a rendering not countenanced by any of the ancient versions, nor by the Targum; all render it evil or evils or wickednesses. — Ed.
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
(33) Why trimmest thou thy way . . .?The verb is the same as that rendered amend in Jer. 7:3; Jer. 7:5, and was probably often on the lips of those who made a show of reformation. Here it is used with a scornful irony, What means this reform, this show of amendment of thy ways, which leads only to a further indulgence in adulterous love?
Hast thou also taught the wicked ones thy ways.Better, hast thou also taught thy ways wickednesses. The professed change for the better was really for the worse.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
Jer 2:33. Why trimmest thou thy way Houbigant renders this verse, Why dost thou strew thy way, that thou mayest find lovers? And teachest thy ways to thy companions? The meaning of the original word teitibei, rendered trimmest, is to make right, or agreeable. The French render this verse, Why wouldst thou justify thy conduct, to enter into favour with me? So long as thou hast taught to others the evil which thou hast done; and while (Jer 2:34.) in thy skirts, &c. Instead of, By secret search, &c. they read, and are followed by Houbigant, I have not found it in the ditches, but in the same places where you have shed it. See Calmet. The words may be rendered, Souls of the poor and innocent. Thou didst not find them in any act of violence: Jer 2:35. Yet over all these things thou sayest, inasmuch as I am innocent, surely his anger is turned away from me; Behold, I will plead with thee upon thy saying, I have not sinned. See Exo 22:2.
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
Jer 2:33 Why trimmest thou thy way to seek love? therefore hast thou also taught the wicked ones thy ways.
Ver. 33. Why trimmest thou thy way to seek love? ] Cur bonificas? so Calvin rendereth it why dost thou make good thy way? that is, set a good gloss upon it, even the best side outwards. The same word is used of Jezebel’s dressing her head. 2Ki 9:30 What need this whorish trick and trimming, if all were right with thee?
“ Iactas vaenales, quas vis obtrudere, merces. ”
Therefore also hast thou taught the wicked ones thy way.
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
love. Put by Figure of speech Metonymy (of Adjunct), for the object loved. Compare Jer 2:23.
ones. Here “wicked” is Feminine = wicked women.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
Why: Jer 2:23, Jer 2:36, Jer 3:1, Jer 3:2, Isa 57:7-10, Hos 2:5-7, Hos 2:13
hast: 2Ch 33:9, Eze 16:27, Eze 16:47, Eze 16:51, Eze 16:52
Reciprocal: Job 21:31 – declare Pro 7:12 – General Ecc 7:17 – not Isa 1:4 – children Jer 5:28 – overpass 1Co 5:1 – and
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Verse 33. Trimmest is rendered “dresseth in Exo 30:7 about trimming the lamps. The thought is this wife was making herself attractive so as to interest, another lover. She was not content to gratify herself with unrighteous practices, but induced others to do the same if she saw they were already inclined to evil.
Fuente: Combined Bible Commentary
Jer 2:33-34. Why trimmest thou thy way to seek love The prophet, says Lowth, alludes to the practices of common harlots, who deck themselves, and use all inveigling arts, that they may recommend themselves to their gallants; in like manner, the prophet intimates, the Jews tried all methods to gain the friendship and assistance of foreign idolaters, who are called their lovers: see Jer 3:1; Jer 22:22. Houbigants translation of this verse is, Why dost thou strew thy way, that thou mayest find lovers; and teachest thy ways to thy companions? The original word, rendered trimmest, , properly means, to make good, right, or agreeable. Noldius expounds the clause, Why dost thou justify thy ways, or insist upon thy innocence? And the French interpret the verse, Why wouldest thou justify thy conduct, to enter into favour with me? so long as thou hast taught to others the evil which thou hast done; and while (Jer 2:34) in thy skirts, &c. Also in thy skirts is found the blood of the souls, &c. This would be better rendered, Also in thy skirts is found the blood of poor and innocent persons, for by souls is meant persons; and by the blood being found in their skirts, the prophet means their committing murders and oppressions, secretly, perhaps; but their guilt was as manifest as though the blood of the persons slain had been found sprinkled upon their garments. The LXX. render the clause , in thy hands have been found the blood of innocent souls, or persons. Their sacrificing of their little children to their idols, as well as their oppressing and murdering of adult persons, is intended to be comprised here. I have not found it by secret search The LXX., with whom all the ancient versions agree, render the clause , I have not found them in digged holes, or ditches, but upon all these. The LXX. and Syriac render , here, upon every oak. The meaning of which, says Blaney, is this: In the law it is commanded, (Lev 17:13,) that the blood of animals killed in hunting should be covered with dust, in order, no doubt, to create a horror at the sight of blood. In allusion to this command, it is urged against Jerusalem, (Eze 24:7,) that she had not only shed blood in the midst of her, but that she had set it upon the top of a rock, and poured it not upon the ground to cover it with dust; that is, she had seemed to glory in the crime, by doing it in the most open and audacious manner, so as to challenge Gods vengeance. In like manner it is said here, that God had not discovered the blood that was shed in holes under ground, but that it was sprinkled upon every oak before which their inhuman sacrifices had been performed.
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
2:33 Why trimmest thou thy way to {u} seek love? therefore hast thou also taught the wicked ones thy ways.
(u) With strangers.
Fuente: Geneva Bible Notes
Ironically, like an unfaithful wife, Israel had "prepared" herself to seek a new lover. Her behavior had given ideas of unfaithfulness to other nations that did not even know the Lord. As a prostitute, Israel could teach even the heathen harlots a few tricks.
". . . it was true then as now, that the pagan has nothing to teach the hardened apostate, nor the outright unbeliever the religious double-thinker." [Note: Kidner, p. 34.]