But since we stopped burning incense to the queen of the sky, and pouring out drink offerings to her, we have lacked all things, and have been consumed by the sword and by the famine.
Parallel Translations
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But since we stopped burning incense to the queen of the sky, and pouring out drink offerings to her, we have lacked all things, and have been consumed by the sword and by the famine.
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But since we left off to burn incense to the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink offerings unto her, we have wanted all things, and have been consumed by the sword and by the famine.
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But since we let off to offer to the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink-offerings unto her, we have wanted all things, and have been consumed by the sword and by the famine.
Cross-references (5)
Passages linked to Jeremiah 44:18 in the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge, ordered by reader-vote popularity; verse text shown in World English Bible.
- Malachi 3:13-15 “Your words have been stout against me,” says Yahweh. “Yet you say, ‘What have we spoken against you?’ You have said, ‘It is vain to serve God;’ and ‘What profit is it that we have followed his instructions, and that we have walked mournfully before Yahweh of Armies? Now we call the proud happy; yes, those who work wickedness are built up; yes, they tempt God, and escape.’
- Numbers 11:5-6 We remember the fish, which we ate in Egypt for nothing; the cucumbers, and the melons, and the leeks, and the onions, and the garlic; but now we have lost our appetite. There is nothing at all except this manna to look at.”
- Job 21:14-15 They tell God, ‘Depart from us, for we don’t want to know about your ways. What is the Almighty, that we should serve him? What profit should we have, if we pray to him?’
- Jeremiah 40:12 then all the Jews returned out of all places where they were driven, and came to the land of Judah, to Gedaliah, to Mizpah, and gathered very much wine and summer fruits.
- Psalms 73:9-15 They have set their mouth in the heavens. Their tongue walks through the earth. Therefore their people return to them, and they drink up waters of abundance. They say, “How does God know? Is there knowledge in the Most High?” Behold, these are the wicked. Being always at ease, they increase in riches. Surely I have cleansed my heart in vain, and washed my hands in innocence, For all day long I have been plagued, and punished every morning. If I had said, “I will speak thus”; behold, I would have betrayed the generation of your children.
Cross-references from openbible.info (CC BY 4.0)
Explain this verse (13 sources)
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John Calvin 1540 · Public Domain Here he enlarges on their ingratitude, that they attributed…
Here he enlarges on their ingratitude, that they attributed to God the fault of all their calamities, when yet God would have drawn them, as the Prophet will hereafter tell us, as it were out of darkness into light, had they been reclaimable. They ought to have been restored, by punishments, to their right mind. But this had been so far from being the case, that the effect of God’s scourges had been to render them more and more obstinate.
They then said, that from the time they left off to worship idols, they had been miserable, that they had labored under the want of everything, and had been consumed by famine and the sword. They had before been consumed, as it is well known, by the famine and the sword, and as we have said, they had before suffered many calamities. Why then did they not refer to these punishments which they had suffered for having so often, and for so long a time, rebelled against God? But they willfully covered over God’s judgments: and yet they said that they had been in every way miserable, since they had ceased from false worship. But was it for this reason they became miserable, because they no longer poured out libations to stars and idols? Nay, the reason was very different, as the Prophet will presently answer them. But we must repeat all their words; we shall come afterwards to the refutation given by the Prophet.
John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain Or, want.
Or, want.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain Jer 44:18 But since we left off to burn…
Jer 44:18 But since we left off to burn incense to the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink offerings unto her, we have wanted all [things], and have been consumed by the sword and by the famine.
Ver. 18. But since we have left off to burn incense to the queen of heaven, we have wanted all things.] This was non causa pro causa. Not unlike hereunto was that gross mistake of certain Lutheran ministers, who not long since, consulting at Hamburg about the causes and cure of Germany’s calamities, concluded it was because their images in churches were not adorned enough, which therefore they would procure done. {a}
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{a} Burroughs on Hos., tom. i. p. 465.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain But since we left off to burn incense to…
But since we left off to burn incense to the queen of heaven,.... Or were restrained from it, as the Targum, through the force of the prophet's sermons, or by the authority of their governors: this Abarbinel thinks was in the times of Jehoiakim, Jehoiakim and Zedekiah; but perhaps it only regards some space of time in the latter part of Zedekiah's reign, a little before the destruction of Jerusalem, when they refrained from their idolatry; fearing the wrath of God, and what was coming upon them; though Kimchi is of opinion that they never ceased; but they would say, when any evil came upon them, it was because they ceased to burn incense to the queen of heaven, of were not so ready to it as at first:
and to pour out drink offerings to her: another part of worship they performed to her but for a while left off: and from that time they say,
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we have wanted all things, and have been consumed by the sword, and by the famine; wanted all the necessaries of life, meat and drink, and clothing and a habitation to dwell in; and multitudes were destroyed by the sword of the king of Babylon; and others perished with famine during the siege; these evils they imputed to their cessation from idolatry, when it was the very thing that brought them on them.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain The suppression of this popular idolatry had apparently been…
The suppression of this popular idolatry had apparently been regarded with much ill-will in Josiah’s time, and many may even have ascribed to it his defeat at Megiddo. Probably Jehoiakim had again permitted it, but Zedekiah, during the miseries of his reign, had forbidden it, and the people ascribed the fall of Jerusalem to the neglect of their favorite goddess.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain Famine. They think nothing of the transgression of the…
Famine. They think nothing of the transgression of the law, &c., ver. 23. Could obduracy and blindness go greater lengths? (1 Machabees i. 12.)
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain They impute their calamities to their service of God,…
They impute their calamities to their service of God, but these are often marks of His favor, not of wrath, to do His people good at their latter end (Deu 8:16).
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain 18. We have wanted all things — True, but…
18. We have wanted all things — True, but the fact that a given evil followed a certain action is not proof that the evil was the result of that action. It may have been the effect of an anterior action; which it clearly was in this case.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain 18. See introd. note on Jer_7:16-20. The v. alludes…
18. See introd. note on Jer_7:16-20. The v. alludes to the misfortunes reaching from Josiah’s death at Megiddo to the flight into Egypt. The passage is important “as shewing the view taken of these misfortunes by Jews of the average type. Jeremiah regarded the misfortunes of his country as proofs of the displeasure of Jehovah: these Jews on the other hand of His impotence.” Cheyne, ad loc. It also shews the popular opposition to Josiah’s reform and its superficiality.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain (18) To burn incense to the queen of heaven.—This…
(18) To burn incense to the queen of heaven.—This form of worship, characterised specially by its offerings of crescent-shaped cakes, would seem to have been the dominant fashion of the idolatry of the time. (See Note on Jer_7:18.) The men who felt themselves condemned by the prophet’s words vindicate their line of action. They had practised this worship of old, and would practise it still, and they set their experience of the prosperity of those past days against the prophet’s picture of the evil that had followed. Might they not argue, as the Romans did in the calamities that fell on the Empire (Tertull. Apol. c. 40; August. De Civ. Dei, I. c. 36), that they suffered because they had left off the worship under the influence of a different teaching?
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain Chastisement misinterpreted.
Chastisement misinterpreted.
I IT IS POSSIBLE TO MISTAKE THE CAUSE AND PURPOSE OF GOD"S PROVIDENCE IN CHASTISEMENT. Instead of accepting their calamities as punishments for their sins against Jehovah, the Jews in Upper Egypt argue from them to conclusions of unbelief in the power and goodness of the God of their fathers. They are not alone in their error. The problem of suffering and its source and aim is profoundly difficult. The glib repetition of old platitudes only mocks at the mystery it can never solve. Job"s friends were good men, and two of them able men; but "miserable comforters" were they all, because their explanation of the cause of the tragic agony before them was so utterly inadequate. Two reasons for error in the interpretation of chastisement may be detected in the case of Jeremiah"s contemporaries.
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1. An evil disposition. These men had no desire to recognize the hand of the true God in their experience. They had followed their wives in favouring the immoral rites of a heathenish cult. Jeremiah"s teaching was rejected with insult; the idolatrous religion was grasped with obstinate self-will. Behaving in this way, the Jews in Upper Egypt were not in a fit state to judge fairly of the meaning of God"s dealings with them. Our "views" of truth depend materially on our attitude towards it. Bad passions and a corrupt will prevent men at all times from profiting by chastisement.
2. The delay of chastisement. This was not contemporaneous with the sin. It would seem that the corruption which followed the reformation of Josiah was not so bad as that which preceded it. Yet it was after this that the blow fell. Now, a similar experience may often be noted. Charles II was a worse king than James II, and Louis XV than Louis XVI The revolutions did not occur when things were at their worst. They took time to ripen. The chief causes of them were not their immediate antecedents. The same may be expected in private lives. Therefore it may require searching thought to trace the trouble down to its real root.
II IT IS POSSIBLE TO FALL INTO RELIGIOUS ERROR THROUGH MISINTERPRETING GOD"S PROVIDENCE IN CHASTISEMENT. By a false inference drawn from the experience of trouble, the idolatrous Jews were led to fling off the last relic of their ancient faith, and to renew their allegiance to the heathen religion they had partially renounced in outward act, though not, as it now appears, in the inclinations of their hearts. Consider the process by which this result was reached.
1. A delusion as to the nature of repentance and its effects. The Jewish refugees had imagined that their abandonment of open idolatry would have warded off the impending doom. They were enraged at discovering their mistake, and they took the result as a reason for daring scepticism. Important lessons may be derived from their mistake, e.g.
(1) that outward reformation is useless before God without heartfelt repentance;
(2) that there are necessary consequences of sin which no repentance can obviate improvidence leading to poverty, intemperance to disease, crime to secular punishment, in spite of all the genuine tears of a Magdalene;
(3) that when God accepts repentance and forgives the penitent, it may still be necessary to chastise him for the good of his own soul.
2. The mistake of judging of the truth of a religion by the worldly advantages that accrue from it. Godliness has "promise of the life that now. (1Ti_4:8) Under the Old Testament economy this promise was emphasized. Nevertheless, even in the Jewish religion it was often recognized that suffering might fall upon the people of God. (e.g. Ps 22) With our fuller light, we know that the temporal advantages of religion are but a small part of its blessings; that under certain circumstances it may bring more worldly loss than gain (e.g. to the martyrs, etc.); that there are Christians who reckon that if in this life only they have hoped in Christ, they are of all men most pitiable. (1Co_15:19) Therefore we should settle it well in our minds that, as worldly injustice and calamities of all kinds may fail upon the devoted servants of Christ, the experience of these things should not shake our faith. This fact needs to be well considered and realized, because there is no more frequent cause of sudden and violent scepticism than a series of great and inexplicable troubles.
3. The sin of pursuing religion for its worldly profit. Even if godliness is profitable for all things, it cannot be truly followed for the sake of gain. To choose our religion according to the advantages it may give us, is to subordinate truth to convenience, and to degrade to the position of a servant that which claims to rule as a master, or will have nothing to do with us.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 General Information:
General Information:
The remnant of the people living in Egypt continue to speak. Beginning in Jer 44:19, the women address Jeremiah.
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were dying by sword and famine
Here "sword" represents enemies carrying weapons. AT: "enemy soldiers were killing some of us and some of us were dying of hunger" (See: Metonymy)
was it against our husbands that we did these things ... to her?
The women were claiming to be innocent because their husband approved of what they were doing. AT: "our husbands knew what we were doing ... to her." (See: Rhetorical Question)
cakes in her image
These were probably small cakes shaped like stars or the crescent moon.
translationWords
drink offering
suffer
know
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 44:18 These Judeans believed that worshiping the Queen of…
44:18 These Judeans believed that worshiping the Queen of Heaven provided prosperity and that ceasing to worship her would cause war and famine (cp. Hos 2:8). Their mindset was completely pagan.
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.