Lying Pen?
JER.8.8
Hebrew has no quotation marks, and this passage is written in poetic style, so it is not always clear who is speaking. Translators must decide where the quotes begin and end.
Most Christian and critical scholars read the verse as God accusing the scribes of using their pens to falsify the Torah. Many Jewish interpreters understand it to mean that the scribes’ pens became useless because the people neither believed nor obeyed the Torah they copied. (The 1611 King James Version leans toward this second sense.)
However I believe the best alternative reading treats the words about the “lying pen of the scribes” as something the people themselves are saying. In this view God first quotes the people’s boast (“We are wise, and the law of the Lord is with us”) and then repeats their charge that the scribes have turned the law into a lie.
This charge makes sense in its historical setting. During the reign of King Josiah, the high priest Hilkiah found the Book of the Law while the temple was being repaired. Hilkiah gave the book to the scribe Shaphan, who then read it to the king (see 2 Kings 22 and 2 Chronicles 34). The newly found written Torah contradicted many of the people’s older traditions and practices. Rather than accept the written text, some of the people accused the scribes of making it up or falsifying it. God answers them in verse 9 by pointing out that these “wise” people have rejected the word of the Lord—so their claim to wisdom is empty. On this reading, the phrase “lying pen of the scribes” is not God’s judgment on the scribes but the people’s excuse for holding on to traditions that clashed with the written text.
Full breakdown:
Jeremiah 8:7-10 :
7 Even the stork in the heavens knows her times, and the turtledove, swallow, and crane keep the time of their coming, but my people know not the ordinances of the Lord.
(God/Jeremiah tells the people that they don't know his ordinances, most likely tied to the moedim, migration of people rather than the birds mentioned)
(This next verse is God telling us things he heard, things the people are saying)
8 How can you say, "We are wise, and the law of the Lord is with us?
(The next part is still God mocking what the people are saying, it's the people who don't know the Torah who are accusing the scribes of lying, not God)
8 cont. Behold, the lying pen of the scribes has made it (the Wiseman's false oral Torah, that they keep with them) into a lie."
(These are all sayings of the people, God is re-telling what he's heard them say. Why are the people saying the scribes are lying? Because their traditions were against the written words of the Torah that Josiah enforced [found by Hilkiah, the High Priest of Judah, 2 Kings 22 and 2 Chronicles 34]. Hilkiah the high priest gave the Book of the Law to Shaphan the scribe during the renovation of the temple in Jerusalem. Shaphan then took the book to King Josiah, thus they are accusing the scribes of lying about the written Torah since it was against the Baalim and Asherah Poles in their oral traditions. This is all happening during the time of Jeremiah)
(Then Jeremiah/God responds to what he's heard them say, because they claimed that they were wise and that the Torah was with them, almost like they had a tradition [or a type of oral Torah] that they kept, that contradicted the written word. Which is why they blamed the scribes of lying. They claimed wisdom in this but have rejected the written word of God. Jeremiah is mocking them, even using their same language [Behold!])
9 The wise men shall be put to shame; they shall be dismayed and taken; behold, they have rejected the word of the Lord, so what wisdom is in them?
(Notice, what have they rejected? The Word of the Lord. Which word was that? The Written Torah of the Scribes. The way of a fool is right in his own eyes...)
10 Therefore I will give their wives to others and their fields to conquerors, because from the least to the greatest everyone is greedy for unjust gain; from prophet to priest, everyone deals falsely.