The Bible’s text

What Jeremiah 8:8 says about the scribes

Muslims often quote Jeremiah 8:8 as a prophet’s own warning that scripture was being changed. Christians answer that it is about false teaching. This topic reads the verse in its setting.

1The question

What is Jeremiah complaining about in Jeremiah 8:8?

2What Christians believe

Christians answer that Jeremiah is criticising the religious leaders of his day, who boasted that they had the law of the Lord while ignoring what it said. On this reading the scribes misused or misinterpreted the Law; they did not rewrite the scriptures.

Christians also note that Jeremiah lived centuries before the Hebrew Bible was complete, and that Jesus later quoted the Law as the word of God. A complaint about scribes in Jeremiah’s time, they argue, cannot show that the later text is corrupt.

3What the texts say

The verse and the next

How do ye say, We are wise, and the law of the LORD is with us? Lo, certainly in vain made he it; the pen of the scribes is in vain.
Jeremiah 8:8 · KJVRead in context →
The wise men are ashamed, they are dismayed and taken: lo, they have rejected the word of the LORD; and what wisdom is in them?
Jeremiah 8:9 · KJVRead in context →

Other complaints in Jeremiah

For I spake not unto your fathers, nor commanded them in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, concerning burnt offerings or sacrifices:
Jeremiah 7:22 · KJVRead in context →
And the burden of the LORD shall ye mention no more: for every man’s word shall be his burden; for ye have perverted the words of the living God, of the LORD of hosts our God.
Jeremiah 23:36 · KJVRead in context →

A book of the law found

And Hilkiah the high priest said unto Shaphan the scribe, I have found the book of the law in the house of the LORD. And Hilkiah gave the book to Shaphan, and he read it.
2 Kings 22:8 · KJVRead in context →

4What scholars say

The King James wording, “the pen of the scribes is in vain”, is hard to follow. Modern translations such as the English Standard Version render the Hebrew as “the lying pen of the scribes has made it into a lie”.

Commentators on Jeremiah, such as William L. Holladay (Jeremiah 1, 1986) and Jack R. Lundbom (Jeremiah 1–20, 1999), discuss whether the verse means that scribes wrote false things into the law, or that they taught it falsely. Some read it alongside Jeremiah 7:22, where God says he did not command the fathers about sacrifices.

Scholars agree that the verse accuses the scribes of handling “the law of the LORD” falsely, and debate how.

5The Islamic perspective

The Qur’an speaks of both ways that scripture can be corrupted: by twisting its meaning with the tongue, and by writing with the hand:

And lo! there is a party of them who distort the Scripture with their tongues, that ye may think that what they say is from the Scripture, when it is not from the Scripture. And they say: It is from Allah, when it is not from Allah; and they speak a lie concerning Allah knowingly.
Qur’an 3:78 · PickthallRead in context →
Therefore woe be unto those who write the Scripture with their hands and then say, "This is from Allah," that they may purchase a small gain therewith. Woe unto them for that their hands have written, and woe unto them for that they earn thereby.
Qur’an 2:79 · PickthallRead in context →
And because of their breaking their covenant, We have cursed them and made hard their hearts. They change words from their context and forget a part of that whereof they were admonished. Thou wilt not cease to discover treachery from all save a few of them. But bear with them and pardon them. Lo! Allah loveth the kindly.
Qur’an 5:13 · PickthallRead in context →

Muslims do not claim that this one verse proves the whole Bible was rewritten. They see in it a prophet of Israel warning that the scribes’ pen had worked falsely, which shows that corruption of scripture was a concern inside the Bible itself, long before Islam.

6Objections and responses

“Jeremiah means false interpretation, not changing the text.”

Response: The Hebrew can be read either way, and scholars debate it. The Qur’an speaks of both, the tongue (3:78) and the hand (2:79). Either way, a prophet says that those trusted with God’s law had made it serve a lie.

“Jesus treated the Law as reliable, so it had not been corrupted.”

Response: Muslims agree that the Torah was revealed by God and that much truth remained in it, which is why Jesus could quote it. But Jesus also accused the religious teachers of making “the commandment of God of none effect by your tradition” (Matthew 15:6).

7Conclusion

Both sides agree that Jeremiah accuses the scribes of handling the law of the Lord falsely. Christians read this as false teaching in Jeremiah’s day. Muslims read it as a prophet’s warning that scripture could be bent by those who copied and taught it.

Read Jeremiah 8:4–12 in a modern translation and decide what the scribes were doing.

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