Jeremiah 7:8–11

Jeremiah 7:8 — "Behold, you trust in lying words that can't profit." The "lying words" (Hebrew: divrê haššeqer) are almost certainly the priestly and popular slogan repeated three times in the preceding verse 4: "The Temple of the LORD, the Temple of the LORD, the Temple of the LORD." Jeremiah does not mock the Temple itself but rather the superstitious invocation of it — a kind of sacred formula divorced from covenantal fidelity. The repetition of "Temple of the LORD" in v. 4 mirrors the incantatory language of pagan religion, where the mere utterance of a divine name was thought to compel protection. By labeling this "lying" (sheqer), Jeremiah employs a word he will use repeatedly throughout the book (cf. 8:10; 14:14; 23:14) to describe prophets and priests who tell people what they want to hear. These words "cannot profit" — a pointed contrast with the covenant promises, which do profit those who keep them (cf. Deut 28). The opening "Behold" (hinneh) commands the reader's full attention, marking what follows as an urgent divine disclosure.

Jeremiah 7:9 — The Decalogue Indicted This verse is not a random catalogue of sins but a deliberate echo of the Ten Commandments (Exod 20; Deut 5). Jeremiah lists violations in rapid, staccato succession: stealing (8th commandment), murder (5th), adultery (6th), false swearing (3rd and 9th), burning incense to Baal (1st and 2nd), and following foreign gods (1st). The effect is comprehensive: Israel has broken the covenant from one end to the other. The specific mention of Baal worship alongside the social sins is theologically crucial — Jeremiah refuses to separate the horizontal (neighbor-directed) sins from the vertical (God-directed) sins. Both flow from the same root corruption: the abandonment of the living God. The phrase "gods that you have not known" recalls Deuteronomy's repeated formula (cf. Deut 11:28; 13:2, 6, 13) and underscores the absurdity of the defection — these are not even gods with whom Israel has a history.

Jeremiah 7:10 — The Logic of False Refuge The conjunction "then" is devastating in its irony. Having done all of the above, the people come and "stand before" God in the Temple — the very posture of the covenant servant presenting himself to his lord. They cry "We are delivered!" (nitsalnu), using a word of divine rescue (from the root natsal) that should denote gratitude for God's deliverance. Instead, it has become a presumptuous declaration of immunity — "we are safe to continue." The phrase "that you may do all these abominations" (to'evoth) makes the indictment explicit: the Temple visit is not penitential but instrumental, a kind of moral laundering. The double occurrence of "this house, which is called by my name" in vv. 10 and 11 underscores how profoundly the people's behavior has desecrated God's own name and honor, a form of blasphemy embedded in piety.

Jeremiah 7:11 — "A Den of Robbers" The metaphor is precise and brutal. A "den of robbers" (me'arat perisim) is not where robbery happens — it is where robbers retreat after committing crimes, a lair of false security. God is not accusing the Temple of being a marketplace (that charge comes in Ezekiel and is echoed by Jesus); He is accusing it of being a hideout. The worshippers are like bandits who terrorize the countryside and then retreat to a cave, confident they cannot be followed. The rhetorical question — "Has this house become…?" — is not a request for information but a challenge that expects the hearer to feel the weight of an affirmative answer. The stunning conclusion — "Behold, I myself have seen it" — demolishes the false security entirely. The very God whose name consecrates the Temple is its witness against those who abuse it. The divine "I" (anoki) is emphatic in the Hebrew, pressing home that no institutional structure, however sacred, can hide sin from its Maker.

Typological and Spiritual Senses In the allegorical sense, the Temple stands for the human soul, the Church, and the sacraments — all of which can be treated as magical guarantors of protection rather than places of genuine encounter and transformation. In the moral sense, the passage is a perennial call to integrity between worship and life. The anagogical dimension points to the eschatological Temple of the New Jerusalem (Rev 21:22), where worship and moral perfection are finally and fully unified.

Catholic tradition illuminates this passage from several intersecting angles.

The Inseparability of Liturgy and Justice. The Second Vatican Council's Sacrosanctum Concilium (§10) teaches that the liturgy is "the summit toward which the activity of the Church is directed" — but this is precisely because authentic liturgy forms the worshipper into justice and charity. Jeremiah's oracle anticipates the conciliar vision by its negative: worship severed from moral conversion is not worship at all. The Catechism of the Catholic Church (§2100) echoes this: "Outward sacrifice… must be the expression of spiritual sacrifice."

The Church Fathers on Formalism. St. John Chrysostom, preaching on Matthew's version of this scene (Mt 21:13), warned his congregation in Antioch that they risked becoming the very Jerusalemites Jeremiah condemned: "You come to church, you hear the Word, and then you go out and defraud your neighbor. Is this not making the Church a den of robbers?" St. Augustine (Enarrationes in Psalmos, Ps. 49) similarly uses the Temple Sermon's logic to argue that sacrifice without justice is an insult to God rather than an honor.

Sacrilege and the Name of God. The twice-repeated phrase "called by my name" has profound theological weight. The Catechism (§2150) treats the honor of God's name as connected to the integrity of those who bear it. For Catholics, this passage is a direct word about the use of the sacraments: reception of the Eucharist or Confession as a routine formality — without conversion of life — degrades what is "called by God's name" in the New Covenant sense (the baptized, the Church, the sacraments themselves). Pope Francis, in Evangelii Gaudium (§94), speaks of a "spiritual worldliness" that uses the appearance of religion while being "obsessed with the law, with the status of those who defend it," a dynamic Jeremiah would recognize.

Covenant Theology. The Catechism (§2060–2063) teaches that the Decalogue is not merely a law but a response to God's covenant love. Jeremiah's recital of Decalogue violations in v. 9 is therefore not simply a moral lecture — it is a diagnosis of covenant death.

For contemporary Catholics, this passage is an uncomfortably precise mirror. The "lying words that cannot profit" may include formulas we unconsciously adopt: attending Sunday Mass while harboring unrepented injustice in our business dealings, our relationships, or our treatment of the poor. The sacraments are not talismans. Confession does not profit the one who approaches it with no intention of amendment; the Eucharist does not protect the one who "eats and drinks without discerning the body" (1 Cor 11:29).

Concretely, Jeremiah invites each Catholic to ask: Is my worship continuous with my Monday morning, or is it a compartment? Do I invoke my Catholic identity as a badge of safety — social, spiritual, or moral — while privately tolerating sins I have not honestly named? The image of the robbers' den is particularly searching: the danger Jeremiah identifies is not the person who never comes to church, but the one who comes precisely in order to feel covered. The antidote is not less worship but more integrated worship — what the tradition calls religio vera, true religion, in which adoration, repentance, and moral transformation are inseparable movements of the same act.