Jeremiah 2:35,36 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Yet thou sayest Or interrogatively, Darest thou say? Hast thou the impudence to affirm it? Because I am innocent Clear of this whole charge; surely his anger shall turn from me Shall not break out against me, Isaiah 5:25. Behold, I will plead with thee I will proceed in my judgment against thee; because thou sayest, I have not sinned Because thou continuest to justify thyself, as if I had no cause to be angry with thee. Why gaddest thou about so much to change thy way? That is, thy actions. Why hast thou recourse to so many different expedients for relief? Why dost thou seek auxiliaries anywhere rather than cleave to me? Or act like those adulterous women, whose love is never fixed, but sometimes set on one, sometimes on another. This is rendered by the Vulgate, “How vile art thou become, changing or repeating thy ways!” Continuing still to seek new succours from strangers, though thou hast been so often deceived! Egypt now shall fail thee, as Assyria has done before. Blaney renders this last clause, “By means of Egypt also shalt thou be put to shame, even as thou hast been put to shame by Assyria.” “The people of Judah,” he observes, “seem to have courted the assistance of foreign nations, by a sinful compliance with their idolatrous customs. But this measure had already failed them, and they had been disappointed in their expectations from Assyria in the time of King Ahaz, who, as we read 2 Chronicles 28:16-21, called upon the king of Assyria to help him in his need; but he distressed him only, instead of helping him. In the same manner, also, it is here prophesied they would be served by the Egyptians, whose alliance would only disappoint them, and make them ashamed of having trusted to so ineffectual a support; and it turned out accordingly.” See Jeremiah 37:7-8.