Jeremiah 10:6

Forasmuch as there is none like unto thee, O LORD; thou art great, and thy name is great in might.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(6) Forasmuch as.—A somewhat flat addition to the Hebrew text, which opens with a vigorous abruptness, None is there like unto thee . . .

Great in might.—The latter is an almost technical word (as in Isaiah 33:13; Psalm 21:13; Psalm 145:11) for the Divine Omnipotence. (Compare “the Mighty God” of Isaiah 9:6.)

Benson Commentary

Jeremiah 10:6-7. Forasmuch as there is none like unto thee — This verse would be better rendered, O Lord, thou art great, so that there is none like unto thee, and thy name is great, because of thy might. Who would not fear thee? — Rather, who would not reverence, or stand in awe of thee? For to thee doth it appertain — That is, as some interpret the phrase, To thee doth it appertain to be feared and reverenced; to thee fear and reverence are due. The Hebrew, however, may be rendered, Who would not fear thee when he shall come, or draw near to thee? accordingly Blaney translates the verse thus: Who will not fear thee, O king of nations, when he shall approach unto thee? Forasmuch as among all the wisest of the nations, and in all their kingdoms, there is none like unto thee — On the clause, among the wisest of the nations, he observes, “These words may signify, either all those nations which were most distinguished for the cultivation and improvement of their rational faculties; or else those sage individuals among them, from whose learning and philosophy some better notions of God and religion might have been expected than from the rude and illiterate vulgar. And yet the fact was, that all their boasted wisdom and knowledge had failed of leading them to an object of worship, in any degree corresponding with the infinite perfections and majesty of the divine nature.”

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

10:1-16 The prophet shows the glory of Israel's God, and exposes the folly of idolaters. Charms and other attempts to obtain supernatural help, or to pry into futurity, are copied from the wicked customs of the heathen. Let us stand in awe, and not dare provoke God, by giving that glory to another which is due to him alone. He is ready to forgive, and save all who repent and believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ. Faith learns these blessed truths from the word of God; but all knowledge not from that source, leads to doctrines of vanity.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

For as much as - Or, "No one is like unto thee, O Jehovah." In Jeremiah 10:6-11, the prophet contrasts God's greatness with the impotence of idols.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

6. none—literally, "no particle of nothing": nothing whatever; the strongest possible denial (Ex 15:11; Ps 86:8, 10).

Matthew Poole's Commentary

Forasmuch; this particle Nj min, is to be taken here causally, and refers either to what goes before, showing there is no comparison between God and idols; or rather, to what follows, as the ground and reason of all due subjection to God, as in the next verse.

Thy name is great, or, thou art transcendently great,

in might, i.e. though idols may have something of a name in the world among the heathen, yet there was nothing of their real power or might seen; or if the devil might act something through them to delude the world, yet nothing to be compared with that might that hath manifested itself in God’s works, Psalm 106:8 111:6. All the works of idols are either none, or feeble and weak, Jeremiah 10:8.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

Forasmuch as there is none like unto thee, O Lord,.... None like him, for the perfections of his nature, for the works of his hands, and for the instances of his kindness and beneficence, both in a way of grace and providence; there is none like him for doing good, or doing evil; that is, for bestowing favours, or inflicting punishments; there is none like him for goodness or greatness, as follows:

thou art great; in his nature; of great power, wisdom, faithfulness, truth, and goodness; and in his works of creation and providence, and in everything in which he is concerned; and greatness is to be ascribed to him, and greatly is he to be praised; and all the glory due unto his name is to be given him:

and thy name is great in might; his name is himself, and his greatness much appears in the exertion of the attribute of his power and might; in making all things out of nothing, in upholding the whole creation, and in the government of the universe; or the fame of him is great through the effects of his power, which are to be seen throughout the earth.

Geneva Study Bible

Forasmuch as there is none like thee, O LORD; {d} thou art great, and thy name is great in might.

(d) He teaches the people to lift up their eyes to God, who has all power and therefore ought only to be feared: and in this he shows them not only the evil that they ought to hate: but the good which they ought to follow, Re 15:4.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

6. There is none] This sense can only be got by omitting the first letter in MT. The omission can, however, be justified, as it may be an accidental repetition by a scribe of the last letter of Jeremiah 10:5. Keeping the Hebrew consonants with a slight change of vowels, we get the sense “Whence is any like unto thee!” The same difficulty arises in Jeremiah 10:7.

6–8. Omitted, most probably rightly, by LXX. See above.

6–16. See summary at commencement of the ch.

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 6. - Forasmuch as there is none; rather, so that, etc. But practically it is merely a strengthened negative. There is none like unto thee; none, that is, among those who claim to have Divine power (comp. the phrase, "God of gods," Deuteronomy 10:17; Psalm 136:2). It would appear from some passages, however, as if the heathen did not worship mere nonentities (though idols are sometimes called "things of naught," e.g., ten times by Isaiah) by comparison with Jehovah, but that there was a dark background of awful personal or quasi-personal reality (e.g., Deuteronomy 4:7; 2 Chronicles 28:23). Jeremiah 10:6

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

The almighty power of Jahveh, the living God. - Jeremiah 10:6. "None at all is like Thee, Jahveh; great art Thou, and Thy name is great in might. Jeremiah 10:7. Who would not fear Thee, Thou King of the peoples? To Thee doth it appertain; for among all the wise men of the peoples, and in all their kingdoms, there is none at all like unto Thee. Jeremiah 10:8. But they are all together brutish and foolish; the teaching of the vanities is wood. Jeremiah 10:9. Beaten silver, from Tarshish it is brought, and gold from Uphaz, work of the craftsman and of the hands of the goldsmith; blue and red purple is their clothing; the work of cunning workmen are they all. Jeremiah 10:10. But Jahveh is God in truth, He is living God and everlasting King; at His wrath the earth trembles, and the peoples abide not His indignation. Jeremiah 10:11. Thus shall ye say unto them: The gods that have not made the heavens and the earth, these shall perish from the earth and from under the heavens."

In this second strophe Jahveh is contrasted, as the only true God and Lord of the world, with the lifeless gods. These there is no need to fear, but it behoves all to fear the almighty God, since in His wrath He can destroy nations. When compared with Psalm 86:8, the מן in מאין seems redundant - so much so, that Ven. pronounces it a copyist's error, and Hitz. sets it aside by changing the vowels. The word as it stands contains a double negation, and is usually found only in dependent clauses with a strong negative force: so that there is none. Here it has the same force, but at the beginning of the sentence: none at all is as Thou; cf. Ew. 323, a. Great is Thy name, i.e., the manifestation of Thee in the world, in Thy government of the earth. "In (or with) might" belongs to "great:" great with might, displaying itself in acts of might; cf. Jeremiah 16:21. Who would not fear Thee? a negative setting of the thought: every one must fear Thee. King of the nations; cf. Psalm 22:29; Psalm 47:8; Psalm 96:10. יאתה from יאה, ἁπ. λεγ.. equivalent to נאה (whence נאוה), to be seemly, suitable. Among the wise men of the peoples none is like Thee, so as that any should be able to make head against Thee by any clever stroke; cf. Isaiah 19:12; Isaiah 29:14. Nor is there in any kingdom of the peoples any one like Jahveh, i.e., in might. It is not merely earthly kings that are meant, but the gods of the heathen as well. In no heathen kingdom is there any power to be compared with Jahveh. We are led here to think also of the pagan gods by Jeremiah 10:8, where the wisdom and almighty power of the living God are contrasted with foolishness and vanity of the false gods. בּאחת is not: in uno equals in una re, sc. idololatria (Rabb.); nor is it, as Hitz. in most strained fashion makes it: by means of one thing, i.e., by (or at) a single word, the word which comes immediately after: it is wood. אחת is unquestionably neuter, and the force of it here is collective, equals all together, like the Chald. כחדא. The nominative to "are brutish" is "the peoples." The verb בּער is denom. from בּעיר, to be brutish, occurring elsewhere in the Kal only in Psalm 94:8, Ezekiel 21:36; in the Niph. Jeremiah 10:14, Jeremiah 10:21, Jeremiah 51:17; Isaiah 19:11. כּסל as verb is found only here; elsewhere we have כּסיל, foolish, and כּסל, folly (Sol 7:1-13 :25), and, as a verb, the transposed form סכל. The remaining words of the verse make up one clause; the construction is the same as in Jeremiah 10:3, but the sense is not: "a mere vain doctrine is the wood," i.e., the idol is itself but a doctrine of vanities. In this way Ew. takes it, making "wood" the subject of the clause and מוּסר the predicate. מוּסר הבלים is the antithesis to מוּסר יהוה, Deuteronomy 11:2; Proverbs 3:11; Job 5:17. As the latter is the παιδεία of the Lord, so the former is the παιδεία of the false gods (הבלים, cf. Jeremiah 8:19). The παιδεία of Jahveh displayed itself, acc. to Deuteronomy 11:2, in deeds of might by means of which Jahveh set His people Israel free from the power of Egypt. Consequently it is the education of Israel by means of acts of love and chastenings, or, taken more generally, the divine leading and guidance of the people. Such a παιδεία the null and void gods could not give to their worshippers. Their παιδεία is wood, i.e., not: wooden, but nothing else than that which the gods themselves are - wood, which, however it be decked up (Jeremiah 10:9), remains a mere lifeless block. So that the thought of Jeremiah 10:8 is this: The heathen, with all their wise men, are brutish; since their gods, from which they should receive wisdom and instruction, are wood. Starting from this, Jeremiah 10:9 continues to this effect: However much this wood be decked out with silver, gold, and purple raiment, it remains but the product of men's hands; by no such process does the wood become a god. The description of the polishing off of the wood into a god is loosely attached to the predicate עץ, by way of an enumeration of the various things made use of therefore. The specification served to make the picture the more graphic; what idols were made of was familiar to everybody. מרקּע, beat out into thin plates for coating over the wooden image; cf. Exodus 39:3; Numbers 17:3. As to תּרשׁישׁ, Tartessus in Spain, the source of the silver, see on Ezekiel 27:12. Gold from Ophir; אוּפז here and Daniel 10:5 is only a dialectical variety of אופיר, see on 1 Kings 9:27. As the blue and red purple, see on Exodus 25:4. חכמים, skilful artisans, cf. Isaiah 40:20. They all, i.e., all the idols.