Therefore I said, Surely these are poor; they are foolish: for they know not the way of the LORD, nor the law of their God.
All Commentaries on Jeremiah 5:4 Go To Jeremiah 5
Basil the Great
AD 379
Truly, slander humiliates a person, and slander troubles the poor person. The evil of slander is so great that it brings down both the perfect person … from his height, and the poor person, that is, the one who lacks great learning, as it seems to the prophet, who says, “Perhaps they are poor … therefore they will not hear. I will go to the great ones,” meaning by “the poor” those lacking in intelligence, and here, of course, those not yet made orderly in the inner person or having attained to the perfect measure of their age. These, the proverb says, are troubled and made to waver.
