Jeremiah 8

Jeremiah 8 is the eighth chapter of the Book of Jeremiah in the Hebrew Bible or the Old Testament of the Christian Bible. This book contains prophecies attributed to the prophet Jeremiah and is one of the Books of the Prophets. Chapters 7 to 10 constitute an address delivered by Jeremiah at the gate of the Temple in Jerusalem.^[1]

Jeremiah 8
← chapter 7 chapter 9 →
A high resolution scan of the Aleppo Codex showing the Book of Jeremiah (the sixth book in Nevi'im).
Book	Book of Jeremiah
Hebrew Bible part	Nevi'im
Order in the Hebrew part	6
Category	Latter Prophets
Christian Bible part	Old Testament
Order in the Christian part	24

Text

The original text was written in Hebrew language. This chapter is divided into 22 verses in Christian Bibles, but 23 verses in the Hebrew Bible, Hebrew manuscripts and in the JPS Version, where Jeremiah 9:1 is recorded as Jeremiah 8:23. This article generally follows the common numbering in Christian English Bible versions, with notes to the numbering in Hebrew Bible versions.

Verses 1-3 are treated as an extension of chapter 7 by the Jerusalem Bible and by commentator A. W. Streane in the Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges.^[2]

Textual witnesses

Some early manuscripts containing the text of this chapter in Hebrew are of the Masoretic Text tradition, which includes the Codex Cairensis (895), the Petersburg Codex of the Prophets (916), Aleppo Codex (10th century), Codex Leningradensis (1008).^[3] Some fragments containing parts of this chapter were found among the Dead Sea Scrolls, i.e., 4QJer^a (4Q70; 225-175 BCE^[4][5]) with extant verses 1‑22,^[6] and 4QJer^c (4Q72; 1st century BC)^[7] with extant verses 1‑3, 21‑22 (similar to Masoretic Text).^[8][9][10]

There is also a translation into Koine Greek known as the Septuagint (with a different verse numbering), made in the last few centuries BCE. Extant ancient manuscripts of the Septuagint version include Codex Vaticanus (B; ${\displaystyle {\mathfrak {G}}}$^B; 4th century), Codex Sinaiticus (S; BHK: ${\displaystyle {\mathfrak {G}}}$^S; 4th century), Codex Alexandrinus (A; ${\displaystyle {\mathfrak {G}}}$^A; 5th century) and Codex Marchalianus (Q; ${\displaystyle {\mathfrak {G}}}$^Q; 6th century).^[11] Verses 10-12 are not included in the Septuagint version.^[12]

Parashot

The parashah sections listed here are based on the Aleppo Codex.^[13] Jeremiah 8 is a part of the Fourth prophecy (Jeremiah 7-10) in the section of Prophecies of Destruction (Jeremiah 1-25). As mentioned in the "Text" section, verses 8:1-23 in the Hebrew Bible below are numbered as 8:1-22 + 9:1 in the Christian Bible. {P}: open parashah; {S}: closed parashah.

[{P} 7:32-34] 8:1-3 {S} 8:4-12 {P}8:13-16 {P} 8:17 {S} 8:18-22 {S} 8:23 {S}

Verse 1

“At that time,” says the Lord, “they shall bring out the bones of the kings of Judah, and the bones of its princes, and the bones of the priests, and the bones of the prophets, and the bones of the inhabitants of Jerusalem, out of their graves.^[14]

Cross reference: Ezekiel 6:5

According to the first-century Jewish historian Josephus, Hyrcanus and Herod broke into the sepulchre of David to take the treasures, but the tombs of the kings were inaccessible.^[15]

Verse 2

They shall spread them before the sun and the moon and all the host of heaven, which they have loved and which they have served and after which they have walked, which they have sought and which they have worshiped.^[16]

According to Streane, the bones were laid out before the sun and the moon so that "the objects of their former devotion might look down on the indignities to which those who had served them were subject".^[2]

Verse 7

Even the stork in the heavens knows her appointed times; and the turtledove, the swift, and the swallow observe the time of their coming.

But My people do not know the judgment of the Lord.^[17]

The King James Version refers to the turtledove simply as a "turtle";^[18] the name "turtle" is derived from Latin: turtur, which came originally from Latin tortur, onomatopoeic for the song of the bird (scientific name: Streptopelia turtur)^[19] and has no connection with the reptile turtle.

Verse 22

Is there no balm in Gilead,

Is there no physician there?

Why then is there no recovery

For the health of the daughter of my people?^[20]

• "Balm in Gilead" : Storax balsam, medicinal resin produced in north Transjordan (Jeremiah 46:11).^[21]

See also

• Gilead
• Jerusalem
• Related Bible parts: Isaiah 38, Jeremiah 7, Ezekiel 6

Notes and references

1. Streane, A. W. (1913), Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges on Jeremiah 7, accessed 4 January 2019
2. Streane, A. W. (1913), Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges on Jeremiah 8, accessed 5 January 2019
3. Würthwein 1995, pp. 35–37.
4. Cross, F.M. apud Freedman, D.N.; Mathews, K.A. (1985). The Paleo-Hebrew Leviticus Scroll (11QpaleoLev). Winona Lake, Indiana. p. 55
5. Sweeney, Marvin A. (2010). Form and Intertextuality in Prophetic and Apocalyptic Literature. Forschungen zum Alten Testament. Vol. 45 (reprint ed.). Wipf and Stock Publishers. p. 66. ISBN 9781608994182. ISSN 0940-4155.
6. Fitzmyer, Joseph A. (2008). A Guide to the Dead Sea Scrolls and Related Literature. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. p. 37. ISBN 9780802862419. Retrieved February 15, 2019.
7. "The Evolution of a Theory of the Local Texts" in Cross, F.M.; Talmon, S. (eds) (1975) Qumran and the History of Biblical Text (Cambridge, MA - London). p.308 n. 8
8. Tov, Emanuel (1989). "The Jeremiah Scrolls from Qumran". Revue de Qumrân. 14 (2 (54)). Editions Gabalda: 189–206. ISSN 0035-1725. JSTOR 24608791.
9. Fitzmyer 2008, p. 38.
10. Ulrich, Eugene, ed. (2010). The Biblical Qumran Scrolls: Transcriptions and Textual Variants. Brill. pp. 559–561. ISBN 9789004181830. Retrieved May 15, 2017.
11. Würthwein 1995, pp. 73–74.
12. "Table of Order of Jeremiah in Hebrew and Septuagint". www.ccel.org.
13. As reflected in the Jewish Publication Society's 1917 edition of the Hebrew Bible in English.
14. Jeremiah 8:1 NKJV
15. Josephus, Antiquitates, vii. 15. 3. "buried...a thousand and three hundred years afterward Hyrcanus the high priest, when he was besieged by Antiochus, that was called the Pious, the son of Demetrius, and was desirous of giving him money to get him to raise the siege and draw off his army, and having no other method of compassing the money, opened one room of David's sepulcher, and took out three thousand talents, and gave part of that sum to Antiochus; and by this means caused the siege to be raised, ..., after him, and that many years, Herod the king opened another room, and took away a great deal of money, and yet neither of them came at the coffins of the kings themselves, for their bodies were buried under the earth so artfully, that they did not appear to even those that entered into their monuments."
16. Jeremiah 8:2 NKJV
17. Jeremiah 8:7 NKJV
18. Jeremiah 8:7: KJV
19. Oxford Living Dictionary, Turtur in "Turtle dove", accessed 6 January 2019
20. Jeremiah 8:22 NKJV
21. The New Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocrypha, Augmented Third Edition, New Revised Standard Version, Indexed. Michael D. Coogan, Marc Brettler, Carol A. Newsom, Editors. Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA; 2007. p. 1090-1092 Hebrew Bible. ISBN 978-0195288810

Bibliography

• Ulrich, Eugene, ed. (2010). The Biblical Qumran Scrolls: Transcriptions and Textual Variants. Brill.
• Würthwein, Ernst (1995). The Text of the Old Testament. Translated by Rhodes, Erroll F. Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans. ISBN 978-0-8028-0788-5. Retrieved January 26, 2019.

External links

Jewish

• Jeremiah 8 Hebrew with Parallel English

Christian

• Jeremiah 8 English Translation with Parallel Latin Vulgate