‏ Jeremiah 5:23-24

Jer 5:23-24

But this people has a stubborn and rebellious heart; it bows not beneath the almighty hand of God. "Stubborn and rebellious," joined as in Deu 21:18, Deu 21:20. Hence the following סרוּ is not to be taken from סרר: they defy (Hitz.), but from סוּר: they turn away and go off, and consider not that they owe their daily bread to the Lord. Neither does God’s power move the obdurate people to the fear of Him, nor do the proofs of His love make any impression. They do not consider that God gives them the rain which lends the land its fruitfulness, so that at the fixed time they may gather in the harvest. The ו cop. before יורה is rejected by the Masoretes in the Keri as out of place, since גּשׁם is not any special rain, co-ordinate to the early and late rain (Hitz.), or because they had Deu 11:14; Joe 2:23 before them. But in this they failed to notice that the ו before יורה and that before מלקושׁ are correlative, having the force of et - et. שׁבעת is stat. constr. from שׁבעת, weeks, and to it חקּות is co-ordinated in place of an adjective, so that קציר is dependent on two co-ordinate stat. constr., as in Jer 46:9, Jer 46:11; Zep 2:6. But the sense is not, the weeks, the statutes, of the harvest, i.e., the fixed and regulated phenomena which regulate the harvest (Graf), but, appointed weeks of harvest. The seven weeks between the second day of the passover and the feast of harvest, or of weeks, Exo 23:16; Exo 34:22; Deu 16:9., are what is here meant. We must reject the rendering, "oath as to the harvest-time" (L. de Dieu, J. D. Mich., and Ew.), since Scripture knows nothing of oaths taken by God as to the time of harvest; in Gen 8:22 there is no word of an oath.
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