John Calvin Commentary Jeremiah 5:27

"As a cage is full of birds, so are their houses full of deceit: therefore they are become great, and waxed rich." — Jeremiah 5:27 (ASV)

Jeremiah continues with the same subject. He used, as we have said, a similitude taken from fowling: he now applies this similitude to the Jews—that their houses were full of fraud, as the cage (some render it basket) is full of birds: for fowlers, when they go for game, carry with them either bags, cages, or baskets.

So then Jeremiah says that they collected plunder on every side, so that their houses were full of frauds; but by fraud he means spoils, which they acquired by unjust means. It may at first glance seem an obscure language, but if we take the word מרמה, mereme, in a passive sense, there will be nothing ambiguous.

The Prophet then does not use language that is strictly correct when he says that their houses were full of deceit or fraud; rather, they were full of spoils which they had acquired by deceit and fraud. Hence, what he means by fraud are the plunders by which they had become rich, as he afterwards explains.

We now perceive that the meaning of the Prophet is this: proof was no longer required that the Jews circumvented the helpless and the poor, for their houses were filled with such spoils as made their wickedness evident. They had scraped together their riches by depriving the helpless and the poor of their substance.

And for this reason he adds, By this have they increased and become rich. It is probable that they gloried in their wealth, like thieves whose trade is to plunder; for when they increased, they thought themselves raised above all danger. They were like courtiers who by rapines, frauds, and tyrannical violence, draw to themselves from all quarters the possessions of others, so that one acquired annually sixty thousand and another a hundred thousand. Then they became more ferocious, because they thought that they could not be called to an account, being blinded by the splendor of their riches.

But the Prophet here derides this besotted glorying and says, “Behold, they have become great in the world, and they would have themselves be exalted on this account.” Increased have they, he says, and become rich; that is, “If anyone will now search their houses, he will indeed find many things by which they make a display before the eyes of the simple; but these are nothing but rapines, plunders, frauds, spoils, thefts, and, in a word, robberies.” This is what he simply means. He afterwards adds—