What Does Jeremiah 10:3 Mean?

(3) **The customs of the people.**—Better, *ordinances of the peoples. *The prophet is speaking, not of common customs, but of religious institutions, and of these as belonging, not to “the people,” *i.e., *Israel, but to the nations round them. The verses that follow are so closely parallel to Isaiah 41:7; Isaiah 44:9-17; Isaiah 46:5-7 (where see Notes), that the natural conclusion is that one writer had seen the work of the other. The grandeur and fulness of Isaiah’s language, and the unlikeness of what we find here to Jeremiah’s usual style, makes it more probable that he was the copyist, and so far adds to the argument for the authorship of the chapter ascribed to Isaiah. It is, however, possible, as some critics have thought, that these verses are an interpolation, and in that case they supply no evidence either way. The fact that they are found in the LXX. as well as in the Hebrew is, however, in favour of their genuineness. It may be noted that the substance of what follows has a parallel in the Epistle ascribed to Jeremiah in the apocryphal book of Baruch.