Jeremiah 10:8 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

But they are altogether brutish Or, all alike brutish. They that make images, saith the psalmist, Psalms 115:8, are like unto them, equally stupid and insensible. The stock is a doctrine of vanities Or lies. The use of images in worship is grounded on a false and foolish opinion, that God is like the work of men's hands, and that images have some divine power lodged within them, and in this opinion it has a direct tendency to confirm the ignorant. Hence an image is called by Habakkuk, A teacher of lies. Instead of the stock, &c., Dr. Waterland reads, Vain institutions! very wood! Blaney, in consistency with his interpretation of the 7th verse, given above, renders this, But they, when they approach, (namely, to worship,) are stupid and sottish, the very wood itself being a rebuker of vanities. On which he observes, “The contrast is thus strongly marked between the true God, and the objects of heathen superstition. The servants of the former, when they approached him in their devotions, could not but be impressed with a reverential awe of a being so transcendently glorious. But those who drew near to worship the latter, manifested the greatest stupidity, in not discovering what was so obvious to common apprehension, the gross unworthiness of the objects to which their adorations were addressed.” On the latter clause, The very wood itself, &c., he remarks, “The true meaning and force of this passage seem to have escaped the notice of all the commentators. מוסר, (which our translators render doctrine,) properly signifies rectifying, or correcting, a false notion by just reproof; and by vanities are meant idols, so called from their being of no real use or advantage to those who had recourse to their assistance. And this unprofitableness of the idol, the very dull and senseless matter, says the prophet, out of which it was formed, is capable of demonstrating. But the rebuke, strictly speaking, is not directed to the idol, but to those who had not sense to perceive, that all the efforts of human art could never change an inanimate log of wood into an animated being, possessed of power and intelligence far surpassing those of the person from whom its origin was derived. There are, therefore, an energy and pointedness in this short sentence, at least equal to whatever has been said on the same subject by the most spirited writer, whether sacred or profane. Not even the keen raillery of the Roman satirist in those celebrated lines, olim truncus eram, &c., cuts with greater severity.” See note on Isaiah 44:12, &c.