Charles Ellicott Commentary Jeremiah 7

This chapter and the three that follow once again form a great prophetic sermon, delivered to the crowds that flocked to the Temple. Nothing in the discourse definitively fixes its date.

However, the description of prevalent idolatry, and possibly the reference to the presence of the Chaldean invader in Jeremiah 8:16; Jeremiah 10:22, aligns more with the reign of Jehoiakim than with that of Josiah. Furthermore, given the specific reference to Shiloh in Jeremiah 26:6; Jeremiah 26:9 (a reference found in a prophecy delivered at the beginning of that reign), it was likely this discourse—or a similar one delivered around the same time—that provoked the king’s displeasure .

The gate of the Lord’s house. — As a priest, Jeremiah would have access to all parts of the Temple. On some day when the courts were thronged with worshippers (Jeremiah 7:10), probably a fast-day specially appointed, he stands at the inner gate of one of the courts, possibly, as in Jeremiah 17:19, the one through which the king entered in ceremonial state, and, looking out over the multitudes that thronged it, speaks to them "the word of the Lord," the message which he had been specially commissioned to deliver.

Your ways and your doings. —“Ways,” as in Zechariah 1:6, are general habits; “doings” are separate acts.

I will cause you to dwell. —The English suggests the thought of something new, but what Jeremiah promises is simply the continuance of the blessings they had previously enjoyed. I will let you dwell.

Trust ye not in lying words ... —The emphatic threefold repetition of the words thus condemned, “The temple of the Lord,” points to it having been the main theme of the discourses of the false prophets, possibly to the solemn repetition of the words in the litanies of the supplicants. With no thought of the Divine Presence of which it was the symbol, they were continually harping on its greatness, identifying themselves and the people with that greatness, and predicting its perpetuity.

So in Matthew 24:1 the disciples of our Lord point, as with a national pride, to the buildings of the later Temple. The plural “these” is used rather than the singular, as representing the whole complete fabric of courts and porticoes. The higher truth that the “congregation” of Israel was the living Temple (1 Corinthians 3:16; 1 Peter 2:5), was not likely to be in the thoughts of those whom Jeremiah rebuked.

A man and his neighbour. —The Jewish idiom for the English “one man and another.”