Charles Ellicott Commentary Jeremiah 8

At that time. — Clearly, there is no break in the discourse. The time, therefore, is that of the destruction of Jerusalem by the Chaldeans and the burial of the slain. Not even the dead were to sleep in peace.

With a dreadful reiteration of the word, giving the emphasis of a funeral bell's toll, the prophet heaps clause upon clause: the bones of the kings, the bones of the princes, and so on.

The motives for this desecration of the sepulchers might be either the wanton ferocity of barbarian conquerors—bent, in the manner of savage warfare, on mutilating the dead—or the greed for gain and the expectation of finding concealed treasures. Thus, Hyrcanus, to the great scandal of the Jews, broke open the sepulcher of David (Josephus, Antiquities 7.15).

Whom they have loved ... —Here, again, there is a peculiar characteristic emphasis in the piling up, one upon another, of verbs more or less synonymous. So far as there is a traceable order, it is from the first inward impulse prompting to idolatry to the full development of that feeling in ritual. The sun, moon, and stars shall look, not on crowds of adoring worshippers, but on the carcasses of those whose love and worship, transferred from Jehovah to the host of heaven, have brought on them that terrible doom.

The residue of them that remain. —Once more the emphasis of reiteration, “the remnant of a remnant.” The “evil family” is the whole house of Israel, but the words contemplate specifically the exile of Judah and Benjamin, rather than that of the ten tribes.

Shall he turn. —Better, as both clauses are indefinite, Shall men fall and not arise? Shall one turn away and not return? The appeal is made to the common practice of people. Those who fall struggle to their feet again. One who finds that he has lost his way retraces his steps.

In its spiritual aspect, the words assert the possibility of repentance in almost every case, however desperate it may seem. St. Paul’s question, Have they stumbled that they should fall? (Romans 11:11), expresses something of the same belief in the ultimate triumph of the Divine purpose of good. Yet, that purpose, as the next verse shows, seemed to be thwarted.

Slidden back ... backsliding. —The English fails to give the full emphasis of the reiteration of the same word as in the previous verse. Why doth this people of Jerusalem turn away with a perpetual turning? Here, so far, there was no retracing the evil path which they had chosen.

I hearkened and heard. —Jehovah himself is introduced here, as probably in the question of the previous verse, as speaking, listening for cries of penitence, and hearing only the words of the evildoers.

Rusheth. —The word is primarily used of the rushing of a torrent (Isaiah 8:8; Isaiah 10:22; Isaiah 28:17), and is applied to the frantic impetuosity with which Israel was rushing into evil, and therefore into the misery that followed it.