Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Jeremiah · About this commentary
Let Him Glory in This
Jeremiah 9:23-26
23 Yahweh says, “Don’t let the wise man glory in his wisdom. Don’t let the mighty man glory in his might. Don’t let the rich man glory in his riches. · WEB
Three things a person may not boast of are named, and the one permitted boast turns out to be knowledge of what God delights in doing.
Wisdom, might and riches are the three securities of the ancient world and of every other, and each is disallowed by name. What makes the prohibition serious is that none of the three is condemned as evil here. The wise man is not told to become foolish, nor the rich man to become poor. They are told that these things will not bear the weight of a life. The chapter has already shown all three failing: the wise men trapped and dismayed Jeremiah 8:9, the mighty overrun from the north, the rich grown fat on trapped men Jeremiah 5:27–28.
What is permitted instead is stated carefully, and it is not a moral quality. The one thing worth boasting in is understanding and knowing God — and knowing him specifically as the one who exercises loving kindness, justice and righteousness on the earth. The boast is not that a person possesses these virtues. It is that they know a God who practices them. The closing clause explains why that is enough: for I delight in these things. Character is being distinguished from behavior. A God who does justice because it is required could change his requirements. A God who delights in it cannot be other than he is, and a boast placed there is placed on something that will not move.
The three rejected boasts share a feature the permitted one lacks. Wisdom, strength and wealth are all held privately, and all three are the very things that fail when a nation falls. Captivity takes the wealth. The sword takes the strength. The wise men were already disappointed. Knowledge of God is the only item on the list that survives the loss of the other three, which is why it is set here at the end of a chapter about a country losing everything.
The final verses attach a warning that would have been unwelcome. Judah is placed on a list with Egypt, Edom , Ammon and Moab, all described as circumcised only in the flesh — nations that practiced the same rite for their own reasons. The distinguishing mark is treated as a mark of nothing, since everyone on the list has it. The verdict falls in the last clause: all the house of Israel are uncircumcised in heart. A sign given to mark a people out has been reduced to something they hold in common with the neighbors they despise. The only version of it that counts is the one no census can record.
settled What this mark means