Jeremiah 7:8-11 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Behold, ye trust in lying words Uttered by your false prophets, who promise you peace, and sooth you up in your impenitence. Will ye steal, murder, &c. Jeremiah does not charge them with the transgression of the ritual law of Moses, but with the breach of the weightier matters of the moral law. Thus the prophets showed the Jews a more excellent way of serving God than by relying upon external ceremonies of their worship, which might have prepared their minds for the reception of the gospel. And come and stand before me, &c. Will ye be guilty of the vilest immoralities, even such as the common interest, as well as the common sense, of mankind must reprobate? Will ye swear falsely? A crime which all nations have always held in abhorrence? Will ye burn incense to Baal? A dunghill deity, that sets up as a rival with the great Jehovah; and, not content with that, will you walk after other gods too, whom ye know not And by all these crimes put a daring affront upon the Lord of hosts? Will you exchange a God, of whose power and goodness you have had such long experience, for gods of whose ability and willingness to help you know nothing? And when you have thus done the most you can to affront and insult the infinite and eternal Jehovah, your creator and preserver, your governor and judge, will you have the effrontery and impudence to come and stand before him in this house, which is called by his name, and in which his name is called upon, under a pretence of worshipping and serving him stand before him as servants, waiting his commands, as suppliants, expecting his favour? Will you act in open rebellion against him, and yet rank yourselves among his subjects, among the best of them? By this it would seem you think that either he doth not discover, or doth not dislike your wicked practices; to imagine either of which is to put the highest indignity possible upon him. It is as if you should say, We are delivered to do all these abominations If they had not the face to say this in so many words, yet their actions spoke it aloud. God had many times delivered them, as they could not but acknowledge, and had been a present help to them when otherwise they must have perished. By these means he designed to bring them to himself; by his goodness to lead them to repentance; but they, resolving notwithstanding to persist in their abominations, said, in effect, in direct contradiction to God's true intent, in showing them this kindness, that he had delivered them to put them again into a capacity of rebelling against him. Will ye, says the prophet, interpret the deliverances God hath formerly vouchsafed you, as so many licenses to commit new crimes? Or, do you think, when you offer your propitiatory sacrifices, that they will wipe away the guilt of all your past offences, and that you may securely return to your former wicked practices, having such a certain and easy method of obtaining pardon? Is this house, &c., become a den of robbers in your eyes? Do you think it was built, not only to be a rendezvous of, but a place of shelter to, the vilest malefactors; who perform an outward service to me there, that they may continue the more securely in their sins? Mark well, reader, those that think to excuse themselves in unchristian practices, with the Christian name, and sin the more boldly and securely, because there is a sin-offering provided, do in effect make God's house of prayer a den of thieves; as the priests did in Christ's time, Matthew 21:13. But could they thus impose upon God? no, Behold, I have seen it, saith the Lord Have seen the real iniquity through the counterfeit and dissembled piety. Though men may deceive one another with the show of devotion, yet they cannot deceive God.