Jeremiah 23:10 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

For the land is full of adulterers Under this term, which properly respects those who violate the marriage-bed, persons offending by any species of uncleanness are comprehended, as also such as by fraud and falsehood circumvented others, and tempted them to join in the commission of those illicit actions which implied breach of faith and duty toward God. Because of swearing the land mourneth By swearing here, it seems, is not only meant false swearing, or perjury, but also profane and idle swearing, or taking the name of God in vain. Compare this verse with Hosea 4:2. The Hebrew word, אלה, signifies indifferently swearing or cursing. The Jewish forms of adjuration, used in their courts of justice for the discovery of the truth, had usually an imprecation joined to them; and the prophet's words here may import, that men ventured to forswear themselves, and incur the imprecation implied in an oath, rather than discover the truth in cases wherein they were called upon to be witnesses. The land is said to mourn when it is afflicted with drought, barrenness, or any other uncommon calamity. And the swearing here spoken of is represented by the prophet as one of those crying sins for which God had visited the nation with these and other severe judgments. And the sins here mentioned, which abounded so much among the people, were in a great measure owing to the bad example and corrupt doctrine of the priests and prophets. See Jeremiah 23:11-15. The pleasant places, or the pastures, of the wilderness Or, of the plain, as the words may be properly rendered; are dried up The wrath of God is extended to all places, whether more or less inhabited. See note on Jeremiah 12:4. And their course is evil, &c. This seems to be intended of the prophets and priests, to whom this discourse is chiefly directed, (see Jeremiah 23:9-11,) and it implies that they not only erred in single acts, but that the whole course of their actions was evil, and particularly their power, rule, and government. For they both made use of ill arts to establish their authority over the people, and they employed it, not for the bettering, but rather for the corrupting of their manners.