Jeremiah 8:8

8:8 How can you say, “We are wise!

We have the law of the Lord”?

The truth is, ¹  those who teach it ²  have used their writings

to make it say what it does not really mean. ³ 

Jeremiah 16:11

16:11 Then tell them that the Lord says, ⁴  ‘It is because your ancestors ⁵  rejected me and paid allegiance to ⁶  other gods. They have served them and worshiped them. But they have rejected me and not obeyed my law. ⁷ 

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¹ tn Heb “Surely, behold!”

² tn Heb “the scribes.”

³ tn Heb “The lying pen of the scribes have made [it] into a lie.” The translation is an attempt to make the most common interpretation of this passage understandable for the average reader. This is, however, a difficult passage whose interpretation is greatly debated and whose syntax is capable of other interpretations. The interpretation of the NJPS, “Assuredly, for naught has the pen labored, for naught the scribes,” surely deserves consideration within the context; i.e. it hasn’t done any good for the scribes to produce a reliable copy of the law, which the people have refused to follow. That interpretation has the advantage of explaining the absence of an object for the verb “make” or “labored” but creates a very unbalanced poetic couplet.

⁴ tn These two sentences have been recast in English to break up a long Hebrew sentence and incorporate the oracular formula “says the Lord (Heb ‘oracle of the Lord’)” which occurs after “Your fathers abandoned me.” In Hebrew the two sentences read: “When you tell them these things and they say, ‘…’, then tell them, ‘Because your ancestors abandoned me,’ oracle of the Lord.”

⁵ tn Heb “fathers” (also in vv. 12, 13, 15, 19).

⁶ tn Heb “followed after.” See the translator’s note at 2:5 for the explanation of the idiom.

⁷ tn Heb “But me they have abandoned and my law they have not kept.” The objects are thrown forward to bring out the contrast which has rhetorical force. However, such a sentence in English would be highly unnatural.