Thy covetousness. — More literally, thy gain, the word used implying (as in Jeremiah 6:13; Jeremiah 8:10) the idea of violence and oppression as the means by which it was obtained. The verb from which the noun is derived is so translated — “ violence” (literally, “crushing”) — in Deuteronomy 28:33. The marginal reading, “incursion,” has nothing to commend it. In “the blood of the innocent” here, as in Jeremiah 22:3, we have an allusive reference to many, for the most part unrelenting, acts of cruelty. One of these, the murder of Urijah, meets us in Jeremiah 26:23.
Related Commentaries of Jeremiah 22:17
Jeremiah 22:17
17 But thine eyes and thine heart are not but for thy covetousness, and for to shed innocent blood, and for oppression, and for violence,b to do it.