Jeremiah 10:2, commentary and pictures

The verse is a command spoken to the house of Israel, to God's people, not to learn the way of unbelievers or of the heathen and not to fear or be dismayed at signs in the sky in heaven as unbelievers and the heathen are dismayed at them. The way of the heathen is to trust in man and in human power, to make flesh one's arm and strength, to depart from the Lord in heart, and to forsake the Lord as the fountain of living waters. That way brings a curse and leaves a person like a desert shrub or heath in the desert, dwelling in parched places and salt land and wasteland, who does not see or misses good when it comes. The way commanded instead is to trust in the Lord and to make the Lord one's hope, which makes a person like a tree planted beside the waters that spreads out roots toward the river, stays green when heat comes, does not worry or become anxious in drought, and does not cease producing fruit.

The command rests on the fact that the Lord is the true God, the living God, and an everlasting King at whose wrath the earth trembles and shakes and whose indignation the nations cannot abide. He made the earth by His power, ordered and established the world by His wisdom, spread out and stretched the heavens by His understanding and discretion, and at His voice governs the multitude of waters in heaven, vapors, lightning with rain, and wind from His treasures. By contrast the gods that did not make heaven and earth and the heavens shall perish from the earth and from under heaven, and every graven and molten idol is breathless deception and falsehood without breath, futility and vanity, and faulty workmanship and the work of errors destined to perish in the time of visitation. The Portion of Jacob is unlike them because He is the Maker and Former of all things, and Israel is the rod of His inheritance.

Professed believers in the truth and professed Christians who profess to believe the truth yet drink at contaminated and polluted fountains of infidelity and unbelief, and by instruction and precept and by teaching and example lead and draw others away from the pure, refreshing, cold snow-waters of truth, violate this command. They show folly while claiming and professing themselves to be wise. The verse warns against adopting the customs of other nations, which requires rejecting the bringing of worldly and fashionable nonbelieving and Gentile practices into a school as if they were essential to education, in favor of what is fitting and appropriate for the school.