Jeremias 23:30
Therefore behold I am against the prophets, saith the Lord: who steal my words every one from his neighbour.
Open Jeremias 23:30 in the Motif Searcher, word by word across all five texts →Show on the spiral →The verse in its languages
- Vulgate (Clementine)
- Propterea ecce ego ad prophetas, ait Dominus, qui furantur verba mea unusquisque a proximo suo.
- Septuagint (Swete)
- Swete's Greek text skips verses 30-31. The scribe jumped from 'against the prophets' in verse 30 to the same words in verse 32, so the line about stealing God's words is missing.
- Hebrew (WLC)
- לָכֵ֛ן הִנְנִ֥י עַל הַנְּבִאִ֖ים נְאֻם יְהוָ֑ה מְגַנְּבֵ֣י דְבָרַ֔י אִ֖ישׁ מֵאֵ֥ת רֵעֵֽהוּ
Haydock's commentary
Neighbour, causing those whom I have sent to be disregarded.
From Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary, 1859, in the transcription made by Todd Easton and kept online by John Paul Wohlschied at johnblood.gitlab.io/haydock.
The Fathers on this verse
St Cyprian The Epistles of Cyprian, Epistle LXII
18. To neglect these things any further, and to persevere in the former error, what is it else than to fall under the Lord’s rebuke, who in the psalm reproveth, and says, “What hast thou to do to declare my statutes, or that thou shouldest take my covenant into thy mouth, seeing thou hatest instruction and castest my words behind thee? When thou sawest a thief, thou consentedst with him, and hast been partaker with adulterers.” For to declare the righteousness and the covenant of the Lord, and not to do the same that the Lord did, what else is it than to cast away His words and to despise the Lord’s instruction, to commit not earthly, but spiritual thefts and adulteries? While any one is stealing from evangelical truth the words and doings of our Lord, he is corrupting and adulterating the divine precepts, as it is written in Jeremiah. …
St Augustine On Christian Doctrine, It is Permissible for a Preacher to Deliver to the People What Has Been Written by a More Eloquent Man Than Himself
63. There are, indeed, some men who have a good delivery, but cannot compose anything to deliver. Now, if such men take what has been written with wisdom and eloquence by others, and commit it to memory, and deliver it to the people, they cannot be blamed, supposing them to do it without deception. For in this way many become preachers of the truth (which is certainly desirable), and yet not many teachers; for all deliver the discourse which one real teacher has composed, and there are no divisions among them. Nor are such men to be alarmed by the words of Jeremiah the prophet, through whom God denounces those who steal His words every one from his neighbor. For those who steal take what does not belong to them, but the word of God belongs to all who obey it; and it is the man who speaks well, but lives badly, who really takes the words that belong to another. …