What Does Jeremiah 2:34 Mean?

(34) **Also in thy skirts . . .**—The general meaning is clear, and points to the guilt of Israel in offering her children—the “poor innocents”—in horrid sacrifice to Molech; perhaps, also, to her maltreatment of the prophets. Their “blood” is on the “skirts” of her raiment; perhaps, if we take another reading, on the “palms” of her hands. The last clause is, however, obscure enough. We have to choose, according to variations of reading and construction, between (1) *I have not found it as by secret search *(literally, *by digging, *as men dig through the wall of a house in search of plunder), *but under every oak *or *terebinth, *or, more probably, as in the Authorised version, *upon all these*—*i.e., *the sin was patent, flagrant, everywhere; and (2) *Thou didst not find them *(those who had been put to death) *in the place of breaking through*—*i.e., in the act of the robber that would have deserved death *(Exodus 22:2; Job 24:16); *but because of all this*—*i.e., *thou didst slay them through thy passion for idolatry. Of these (1) commends itself most.