ירמיהו, פרק ח׳, פסוק ח׳

A profound gap often exists between what people claim to believe and how they actually live. The prophet confronts the nation with this exact hypocrisy, challenging their pride in possessing wisdom and God's teachings while their actions tell a completely different story. He wonders how [מצודת ציון] they can boast about their spiritual knowledge when their daily behavior drains the written word of all its meaning.

The primary approach among commentators is that the people took pride in simply owning the physical scrolls of the Torah and accumulating outside wisdom, even as they completely ignored the practical demands of the laws. However, a deeper level of rebellion was also at play. Some explain that the people claimed the laws were based entirely on human intellect and natural logic, completely rejecting the concept of prophecy and a Torah given by God [מלבי״ם]. Under this mindset, they believed the only important thing was to understand the moral or conceptual purpose behind a commandment. Once a person grasped the idea in their mind, they felt there was no longer any need to physically perform the action [חומת אנך].

Because of this attitude, the prophet declares that the pen [מצודת ציון] has worked for nothing [רד״ק, מצודת ציון]. Scribes specifically refer to those who write in books, rather than those who engrave on materials like stone or tablets [מלבי״ם באור המילות]. Since the nation refused to put the teachings into practice, all the effort put into creating the pen and writing the texts was entirely wasted, yielding no benefit at all [רד״ק, מצודת דוד, ביאור שטיינזלץ].

Beyond just wasted effort, this falsehood reflects the people's actual attitude toward the text. By treating God's teachings as merely an intellectual exercise devoid of divine authority or practical obligation, they effectively dismissed the physical scrolls, the practical commandments, and the prophets who recorded them as lies [מלבי״ם, חומת אנך]. Taking a different perspective, another approach links this falsehood directly to the nation's leadership. In this view, the useless work of the scribes refers to the false prophets themselves, who fed the public empty wisdom and false healing [רש״י].