Jeremiah 44:9

Have ye forgotten the wickedness of your fathers, and the wickedness of the kings of Judah, and the wickedness of their wives, and your own wickedness, and the wickedness of your wives, which they have committed in the land of Judah, and in the streets of Jerusalem?

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(9) The wickedness of their wives.—As in the first introduction of idolatry under Solomon (1Kings 11:4) so in the reigns of his successors, as in the case of Asa (1Kings 15:13) and Ahaziah (2Chronicles 22:2), the queens for the time being, often of alien birth, seem to have been the chief patrons of foreign and idolatrous worship, and their example was naturally followed by the wives of the nobles and other citizens.

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

44:1-14 God reminds the Jews of the sins that brought desolations upon Judah. It becomes us to warn men of the danger of sin with all seriousness: Oh, do not do it! If you love God, do not, for it is provoking to him; if you love your own souls, do not, for it is destructive to them. Let conscience do this for us in the hour of temptation. The Jews whom God sent into the land of the Chaldeans, were there, by the power of God's grace, weaned from idolatry; but those who went by their own perverse will into the land of the Egyptians, were there more attached than ever to their idolatries. When we thrust ourselves without cause or call into places of temptation, it is just with God to leave us to ourselves. If we walk contrary to God, he will walk contrary to us. The most awful miseries to which men are exposed, are occasioned by the neglect of offered salvation.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

The wickedness of their wives - Many accept the reading of the Septuagint: the "wickedness of your princes." "The kings, the princes, the people," and finally "their wives," is a summary enumeration of all classes, by whose united persistence in sin the ruin of their country had been consummated.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

9. Have you forgotten how the wickednesses of your fathers were the source of the greatest calamities to you?

their wives—The Jews' worldly queens were great promoters of idolatry (1Ki 11:1-8; 15:13; 16:31).

the land of Judah—They defiled the land which was holy unto God.

Matthew Poole's Commentary

God accounteth men and women to have forgotten that, the sight and reflection upon which hath made no such impression upon them, as to produce a practice suitable to those notices, according to the conduct of a reasonable soul, which teacheth every man, having notice of a great evil brought upon a man by such or such practices, to avoid running into the like danger. It was the aggravation of this people’s sins, that they were committed in the holy land, and in a city which God had more favoured than any other place: to have done these things in any place had been guilt enough, but more to do it

in the land of Judah, and in the streets of Jerusalem.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

Have ye forgotten the wickedness of your fathers,.... And what judgments it brought upon them; meaning not their more remote ancestors in the wilderness, and the idolatry they committed, and the punishment inflicted upon them for it; but more near, such who lived a little before the destruction of Jerusalem, and whose sins had brought on that; and therefore could not be easily forgotten by them; or, if they were forgotten, it argued great stupidity:

and the wickedness of the kings of Judah, and the wickedness of their wives; by whom they were drawn into idolatry, particularly Solomon; and it is in the original text, "the wickedness of his wives" (z); and Dr. Lightfoot thinks respect is had to Solomon's wives; but it may be understood distributively of everyone of their wives, as Kimchi and Ben Melech interpret it (a):

and your own wickedness, and the wickedness of your wives, which you have committed in the land of Judah, and in the streets of Jerusalem? where they had built altars, and worshipped strange gods, they, and their wives, as well as those who were carried captive; and which were the cause of all those evils that came upon them; these, being recent things, could not be forgotten by them; or however should have been remembered, and that so as to have deterred them from going into such practices again, as they now did in Egypt.

(z) "mala mulierum ejus", Schmidt; "et mala foeminarum ejus", Cocceius; "uxorum ejus", V. L. Montanus. (a) "Et mala uxorum cujusque illorum", Junius & Tremellius, Piscator.

Geneva Study Bible

Have ye forgotten the wickedness of your fathers, and the wickedness of the {d} kings of Judah, and the wickedness of their wives, and your own wickedness, and the wickedness of your wives, which they have committed in the land of Judah, and in the streets of Jerusalem?

(d) He shows that we ought to keep in memory God's plagues from the beginning that considering them, we might live in his fear, and know if he did not spare our fathers, yea kings, princes, rulers and also whole countries and nations for their sins that we vile worms cannot look to escape punishment for ours.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

9. their wives] rightly, by a slight deviation from MT. Cp. Jeremiah 44:17; Jeremiah 44:21 (so Gi., Du. and Co.). LXX your princes.

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 9. - Have ye forgotten, etc.? The prophet wonderingly asks if they have forgotten the sins of their forefathers and the consequent calamities. No other explanation of this present idolatry seems possible; and yet how passing strange is it! Their wives. The Hebrew has "his wives," i.e. according to Kimchi and Hitzig, the wives of each of the kings (sometimes great patrons of idolatry). But it is better to adopt, with Ewald, Graf, and Dr. Payne Smith, the reading of the Septuagint, "his princes." Jeremiah 44:9

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

In Jeremiah 44:7-10 follows the application of what has been said to those present, who are asked how they come to continue in the old sins, to their own destruction, "doing evil in regard to your souls," i.e., for the injury, destruction of your souls, yourself; cf. Jeremiah 26:19, where על־נ' stands for אל־נ'. This is immediately afterwards more exactly specified by 'להכרית וגו, to exterminate the whole of you, without an exception. As to the enumeration "man and woman," etc., cf. 1 Samuel 15:3; 1 Samuel 22:19. The infs. להכעיסני and לקטּר are used as gerundives: "inasmuch as (through this that) ye provoke me." For the expression "the works of your hands," see on Jeremiah 1:16. In Jeremiah 44:8, an object must be supplied from Jeremiah 44:7 for the expression למען הכרית לכם; for, to take לכם (with Hitzig) in a reflexive sense is a very harsh construction. On 'לקללה וגו, cf. Jeremiah 42:18; Jeremiah 26:6. The answer to the question now asked follows in Jeremiah 44:9 and Jeremiah 44:10, in the form of the further question, whether they have forgotten those former sins, and that these sins have been the cause of the evil which has befallen the land. The interrogation expresses the reproach that they have been able to forget both, as is evidenced by their continuance in sin. In Jeremiah 44:9, the expression "the evil deeds of his wives" (נשׁיו) is remarkable. Hitzig and Ngelsbach, following Kimchi, refer the suffix to the kings, since there was always but one king at a time. But this is an unnatural explanation; the suffix refers to Judah as a nation, and is used in order to comprehend the wives of the fathers and of the kings together. It is quite arbitrary in Ewald and Graf to change נשׁיו to שׂריו, following the lxx τῶν ἀρχόντων ὑμῶν; for these translators have mutilated the text by the omission of the following ואת רעתיכם. רעות נשׁיו is not merely conserved, but even required, by ואת רעת נשׁיכם. But the prophet gives special prominence to the evil deeds of the wives, since it was they who were most zealous in worshipping the queen of heaven; cf. Jeremiah 44:15 and Jeremiah 44:19. לא דכּאוּ, "they have not been crushed," viz., by repentance and sorrow for these sins. The transition to the third person is not merely accounted for by the fact that the subject treated of is the sins of the fathers and of the present generation, - for, as is shown by the expression "till this day," the prophet has chiefly his own contemporaries in view; but he speaks of these in the third person, to signify the indignation with which he turns away from men so difficult to reform. On the expression, "they had not walked in my law," cf. Jeremiah 26:4; Jeremiah 9:12. For this the Lord will punish them severely, Jeremiah 44:11-14. All those who have fled to Egypt, with the intention of remaining there, will be quite exterminated. On "Behold, I will set my face," etc., cf. Jeremiah 21:10. "For evil" is more exactly defined by "to cut off all Judah," i.e., those of Judah who are in Egypt, not those who are in Babylon. This limitation of the words "all Judah" is necessarily required by the context, and is plainly expressed in Jeremiah 44:12, where "Judah" is specified as "the remnant of Judah that were determined to go to Egypt." לקחתּי has the meaning of taking away, as in Jeremiah 15:15. ותמּוּ are to be taken by themselves; and בּארץ מצרים, as is shown by the accents, is to be attached to what follows, on which, too, the emphasis is placed; in like manner, 'בּחרב are to be attached to the succeeding verb. The arrangement of the words, like the accumulation of sentences all expressing the same meaning, reveals the spirit of the address in which God vents His wrath. On "they shall become an execration," etc., see Jeremiah 42:18. In Jeremiah 44:13, Jeremiah 44:14, the threatened extermination is further set forth. Those who dwelling Egypt shall be punished with sword, famine, and plague, like Jerusalem. The inhabitants of Egypt generally are meant; and by the judgment which is to fall on that country, the remnant of Judah there shall be so completely destroyed, that none shall escape. The leading member of the sentence is continued by ולשׁוּב, "and that they should return to the land of Judah, after which their soul longs, that they may live there." A reason is further assigned, and with this the address, reduced within becoming limits, concludes: "for there shall return none except (כּי אם) fugitives," i.e., except a few individual fugitives who shall come back. This last clause shows that we are not to understand the declaration "none shall escape" in the strictest meaning of the words. Those who escape and return to Judah shall be so few, in comparison with those who shall perish in Egypt, as to be quite inconsiderable. Cf. the like instance of a seeming contradiction in Jeremiah 44:27, Jeremiah 44:28. On נשּׂא את־נפשׁם, cf. Jeremiah 22:27.