Jeremiah 7:6

If ye oppress not the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow, and shed not innocent blood in this place, neither walk after other gods to your hurt:

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(6) The stranger, the fatherless, and the widow.—Grouped together, as in Deuteronomy 14:29; Deuteronomy 24:19-21, as the three great representatives of the poor and helpless, standing most in need therefore of man’s justice and of the divine protection.

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

7:1-16 No observances, professions, or supposed revelations, will profit, if men do not amend their ways and their doings. None can claim an interest in free salvation, who allow themselves in the practice of known sin, or live in the neglect of known duty. They thought that the temple they profaned would be their protection. But all who continue in sin because grace has abounded, or that grace may abound, make Christ the minister of sin; and the cross of Christ, rightly understood, forms the most effectual remedy to such poisonous sentiments. The Son of God gave himself for our transgressions, to show the excellence of the Divine law, and the evil of sin. Never let us think we may do wickedness without suffering for it.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

In this place - i. e., in Jerusalem. The prophet refers to innocent blood shed there judicially. Of one such judicial murder Jehoiakim had already been guilty Jeremiah 26:23.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

6. this place—this city and land (Jer 7:7).

to your hurt—so Jer 7:19; "to the confusion or their own faces" (Jer 13:10; Pr 8:36).

Matthew Poole's Commentary

Here they are cautioned against three sins that this people were generally addicted to, oppression, blood, and idolatry; and he instanceth in the worst of oppressions, viz. of such as God hath more especially taken into his immediate protection, because these are most void of help, and most obnoxious to injuries; the

stranger, Exodus 22:21, the

fatherless, and widow, Jeremiah 7:22-24; see them all three together, Deu 10:18 27:19: see on Isaiah 10:1,2: and where God speaks of right administering of justice, he usually makes mention of these three, to prove the integrity and impartiality of justice; and though this may more properly respect the princes and great ones, yet I conceive here the prophet doth not so restrain it.

Shed not innocent blood, either by murder or unrighteous sentence; being one of those sins in special mentioned for which God expresseth his high displeasure, and will send the Chaldeans upon them, 2 Kings 24:4.

In this place; either in this city in special, or the whole land in general; see Jeremiah 7:3; and there he would show what a foolish thing it is that they should boast of their security in this place, and yet shed blood, which pollutes every place, Numbers 35:31, &c.

Neither walk after other gods; abstain from your idolatrous courses and depart not from my pure and uncorrupted worship, unto your superstitious and hypocritical service; and he adds to

your hurt, or your own hurt, to show that they will be the only sufferers by it, not God, Jeremiah 7:19. God is neither benefited nor damaged by any thing that we can do, Job 35:6-8.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

If ye oppress not the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow,.... Who have none to help them, and who ought to have mercy and compassion shown them, as well as justice done them; and should not be injured by private men in their persons and properties, and much less oppressed in courts of judicature by those who should be the patrons and defenders of them:

and shed not innocent blood in this place: in the temple, where the sanhedrim, or great court of judicature, sat; for this does not so much respect the commission of murder by private persons, as the condemnation of innocent men to death by the judges, which is all one as shedding their blood; and by which actions they defiled that temple they cried up, and put their trust in; to shed innocent blood in any place, Kimchi observes, is an evil; but to shed it in this place, in the temple, was a greater evil, because this was the place of the Shechinah, or where the divine Majesty dwelt:

neither walk after other gods to your hurt; the gods of e people, as the Targum; "for this", as the Arabic version renders it, "is pernicious to you"; idolatry was more hurtful to themselves than to God; and therefore it is dissuaded from by an argument taken from their own interest.

Geneva Study Bible

If ye oppress not the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow, and shed not innocent blood in this place, neither walk after other gods to your hurt:

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

6. if ye oppress not the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow] The foreigner, temporarily resident, as having no legal status, specially needed commendation to the kindness of those around him. Harshness to such was strongly denounced in the “Book of the Covenant” (Exodus 21-23, e.g. Jeremiah 22:21, Jeremiah 23:9) and Deut. (e.g. Deuteronomy 24:17).

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 6. - The stranger, the fatherless, and the widow; specially commended to the care of the Israelites (Exodus 22:21, 22 - a passage belonging to one of the most evidently primitive portions of the Pentateuch; Deuteronomy 24:17, 19, 21; Deuteronomy 27:19; comp. Isaiah 1:17, 23; Isaiah 10:2; Ezekiel 22:7). In plus; i.e. specially in Jerusalem, but not altogether excluding the rest of the kingdom (see vers. 3, 7). Jeremiah 7:6

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

Over against such sayings Jeremiah puts that which is the indispensable condition of continued sojourn in the land. כּי, Jeremiah 7:5, after a preceding negative clause, means: but on the contrary. This condition is a life morally good, that shall show itself in doing justice, in putting away all unrighteousness, and in giving up idolatry. With אם begins a list of the things that belong to the making of one's ways and doings good. The adjunct to משׁפּט, right, "between the man and his neighbour," shows that the justice meant is that they should help one man to his rights against another. The law attached penalties to the oppression of those who needed protection - strangers, orphans, widows; cf. Exodus 22:21., Deuteronomy 24:17., Jeremiah 27:19; and the prophets often denounce the same; cf. Isaiah 1:17, Isaiah 1:23; Isaiah 10:2; Ezekiel 22:7; Zechariah 7:10; Malachi 3:5; Psalm 94:6, etc. for 'לא־ת is noteworthy, but is not a simple equivalent for it. Like ου ̓ μή, כ̓ב implies a deeper interest on the part of the speaker, and the sense here is: and ye be really determined not to shed innocent blood (cf. Ew. 320, b). Hitz.'s explanation, that אל is equal to אשׁר לא or אם לא, and that it her resumes again the now remote אם, is overturned by the consideration that אל is not at the beginning of the clause; and there is not the slightest probability in Graf's view, that the אל must have come into the text through the copyist, who had in his mind the similar clause in Jeremiah 22:3. Shedding innocent blood refers in part to judicial murders (condemnation of innocent persons), in part to violent attacks made by the kings on prophets and godly men, such as we hear of in Manasseh's case, 2 Kings 21:16. In this place (Jeremiah 7:7), i.e., first and foremost Jerusalem, the metropolis, where moral corruption had its chief seat; in a wider sense, however, it means the whole kingdom of Judah (Jeremiah 7:3 and Jeremiah 7:7). "To your hurt" belongs to all the above-mentioned transgressions of the law; cf. Jeremiah 25:7. "In the land," etc., explains "this place." "From eternity to eternity" is a rhetorically heightened expression for the promise given to the patriarchs, that God would give the land of Canaan to their posterity for an everlasting possession, Genesis 17:8; although here it belongs not to the relative clause, "that I gave," but to the principal clause, "cause you to dwell," as in Exodus 32:13.