Bible Strands
Jeremiah 10:8
But they are altogether senseless and foolish, instructed by worthless idols made of wood!
Berean Standard Bible
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Study note
Setting — Jeremiah addresses Israel and the surrounding nations, placing this rebuke between a declaration of Yahweh’s unmatched sovereignty (Jeremiah 10:7) and a detailed catalog of artisanal idol-making (Jeremiah 10:9).
The words — יִבְעֲר֣וּ (yiv.'a.Ru) literally means “they are stupid,” paired with מוּסַ֥ר (mu.Sar), meaning “correction” or instruction, to show that idol worship substitutes divine wisdom with hollow training.
The thread — This condemnation of wooden idols and the resulting spiritual dullness reappears in Jeremiah 10:14, Zechariah 10:2, and Psalms 115:8, where crafted images and their worshippers are consistently linked to deception and moral conformity.
Why it lands — The text demands that readers acknowledge idolatry as a deliberate rejection of true knowledge, leaving worshippers intellectually and spiritually bankrupt rather than guided.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
But they are altogether brutish and foolish: the stock is a doctrine of vanities.
Cross-references
- Jeremiah 10:14 Every man is senseless and devoid of knowledge; every goldsmith is put to shame by his idols. For his molten images are a fraud, and there is no breath in them.
- Zechariah 10:2 For idols speak deceit and diviners see illusions; they tell false dreams and offer empty comfort. Therefore the people wander like sheep, oppressed for lack of a shepherd.
- Psalms 115:8 Those who make them become like them, as do all who trust in them.
- Psalms 135:18 Those who make them become like them, as do all who trust in them.
- Isaiah 41:29 See, they are all a delusion; their works amount to nothing; their images are as empty as the wind.
- Jeremiah 51:17 Every man is senseless and devoid of knowledge; every goldsmith is put to shame by his idols. For his molten images are a fraud, and there is no breath in them.
- Habakkuk 2:18 What use is an idol, that a craftsman should carve it—or an image, a teacher of lies? For its maker trusts in his own creation; he makes idols that cannot speak.
- Romans 1:21 For although they knew God, they neither glorified Him as God nor gave thanks to Him, but they became futile in their thinking and darkened in their foolish hearts.
- Isaiah 44:19 And no one considers in his heart, no one has the knowledge or insight to say, “I burned half of it in the fire, and I baked bread on its coals; I roasted meat and I ate. Shall I make something detestable with the rest of it? Shall I bow down to a block of wood?”
- Jeremiah 2:27 say to a tree, ‘You are my father,’ and to a stone, ‘You gave me birth.’ They have turned their backs to Me and not their faces. Yet in the time of trouble, they say, ‘Rise up and save us!’