Jeremiah 6:27 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

I have set thee for a tower, &c. According to this reading, God speaks here by way of encouragement to the prophet, and tells him he had made him a fortified tower, that he might be safe, notwithstanding all the attempts of the wicked against him. But Lowth, with some others, thinks that “the sense would be plainer if the words were translated thus: I have set thee (in) a watch-tower, and (in) a fortress;” that is, God tells the prophet that he hath placed him as a watchman in a high tower, or fortress, to take an account of the people's behaviour, and to warn them accordingly. That thou mayest know and try their way That is, their actions and manners, and how they stand affected toward God and his word; that thou mayest bring their whole conduct under thy strict observation and scrutiny, as refiners do metals. Hereby the prophet is encouraged to reprove them more freely, and with authority, because God promises to defend him from injury, and would give him prudence to see what was amiss, and undauntedness to oppose it. It may be proper to observe here, that this latter clause of the verse favours the sense in which the LXX. and the Vulgate have taken the preceding clause. They render the word בחון, which we translate a tower, δοκιμαστην, probatorem, a prover, or trier, which Blaney interprets thus: “I have appointed thee the office of an assay-master among my people, as to the gold thereof; that is, to try what is in them of genuine worth and excellence, which, like pure gold, will stand the utmost test.” Dr. Dodd considers the passage in the same light, observing, “The prophet in these verses evidently takes his ideas from metals, and the trial of them; and the verbs in the latter clause of this verse, referring to such trial, manifestly require something corresponding in the preceding part. But what has a tower and fortress to do with the trying of metals? In this view the reader will agree with me, that the passage is rendered much more properly in some of the versions, and indeed more agreeably to the Hebrew, I have given, or established, thee as a strong prover, or trier of metals among my people that thou mightest know, &c.”