Carl Friedrich Keil and Franz Delitzsch Old Testament Commentary

In Jer 2:33 the style of address is ironical. How good thou makest thy way! i.e., how well thou knowest to choose out and follow the right way to seek love. היטיב דּרך sig. usually: strive after a good walk and conversation; cf. Jer 7:3, Jer 7:5; Jer 18:11, etc.; here, on the other hand, to take the right way for gaining the end in view. "Love" here is seen from the context to be love to the idols, intrigues with the heathen and their gods. Seek love = strive to gain the love of the false gods. To attain this end thou hast taught thy ways misdeeds, i.e., accustomed thy ways to misdeeds, forsaken the commandments of thy God which demand righteousness and the purifying of one's life, and accommodated thyself to the immoral practices of the heathen. הרעות, with the article as in Jer 3:5, the evil deeds which are undisguisedly visible; not: the evils, the misfortunes which follow thee closely, as Hitz. interprets in the face of the context. For in Jer 2:34 we have indisputable evidence that the matter in hand is not evils and misfortunes, but evil deeds or misdemeanours; since there the cleaving of the blood of innocent souls to the hems of the garments is mentioned as one of the basest "evils," and as such is introduced by the גּם of gradation. The "blood of souls" is the blood of innocent murdered men, which clings to the skirts of the murderers' clothes. כּנפים are the skirts of the flowing garment, Eze 5:3; Sa1 15:27; Zac 8:23. The plural נמצאוּ before דּם is explained by the fact that נפשׁות is the principal idea. אביונים are not merely those who live in straitened circumstances, but pious oppressed ones as contrasted with powerful transgressors and oppressors; cf. Ps. 40:18; Psa 72:13., Psa 86:1-2, etc. By the next clause greater prominence is given to the fact that they were slain being innocent. The words: not בּמּחתּרת, at housebreaking, thou tookest them, contain an allusion to the law in Exo 22:1 and onwards; according to which the killing of a thief caught in the act of breaking in was not a cause of blood-guiltiness. The thought runs thus: The poor ones thou hast slain were no thieves or robbers whom thou hadst a right to slay, but guiltless pious men; and the killing of them is a crime worthy of death. Exo 21:12. The last words כּי על כּל־אלּה are obscure, and have been very variously interpreted. Changes upon the text are not to the purpose. For we get no help from the reading of the lxx, of the Syr. and Arab., which seem to have read אלּה as אלה, and which have translated δρυΐ́ oak or terebinth; since "upon every oak" gives no rational meaning. Nor from the connection of the words with the next verse (Venem., Schnur., Ros., and others): yet with all this, or in spite of all this, thou saidst; since neither does כּי mean yet, nor can the ו before תאמרי, in this connection, introduce the sequel thought. The words manifestly belong to what goes before, and contain a contrast: not in breaking in by night thou tookest them, but upon, or on account of all this. על in the sig. upon gives a suitable sense only if, with Abarb., Ew., Ng., we refer אלּה to בּכנפיך and take מצאתים as 1st pers.: I found it (the blood of the slain souls) not on the place where the murder took place, but upon all these, sc. lappets of the clothes, i.e., borne openly for display. But even without dwelling on the fact that מחתּרת does not mean the scene of a murder or breaking in, this explanation is wrecked on the unmistakeably manifest allusion to the law, אם בּמּחתּרת ימּצא הגּנּב, Exo 21:1, which is ignored, or at least obscured, by that view. The allusion to this passage of the law shows that מצאתים is not 1st but 2nd pers., and that the suffix refers to the innocent poor who were slain. Therefore, with Hitz. and Graf, we take על כּל־ אלּה in the sig. "on account of all this," and refer the "all this" to the idolatry before mentioned. Consequently the words bear this meaning: Not for a crime thou killedst the poor, but because of thine apostasy from God and thy fornication with the idols, their blood cleaves to thy raiment. the words seem, as Calv. surmised, to point to the persecution and slaying of the prophets spoken of in Jer 2:30, namely, to the innocent blood with which the godless king Manasseh filled Jerusalem, Kg2 21:16; Kg2 24:4; seeking as he did to crush out all opposition to the abominations of idolatry, and finding in his way the prophets and the godly of the land, who by their words and their lives lifted up their common testimony against the idolaters and their abandoned practices.