Jeremiah 5:3

5:3 Lord, I know you look for faithfulness. ¹ 

But even when you punish these people, they feel no remorse. ² 

Even when you nearly destroy them, they refuse to be corrected.

They have become as hardheaded as a rock. ³ 

They refuse to change their ways. ⁴ 

Jeremiah 8:4-5

Willful Disregard of God Will Lead to Destruction

8:4 The Lord said to me, ⁵ 

“Tell them, ‘The Lord says,

Do people not get back up when they fall down?

Do they not turn around when they go the wrong way? ⁶ 

8:5 Why, then, do these people of Jerusalem ⁷ 

continually turn away from me in apostasy?

They hold fast to their deception. ⁸ 

They refuse to turn back to me. ⁹ 

Isaiah 9:13

9:13 The people did not return to the one who struck them,

they did not seek reconciliation ¹⁰  with the Lord who commands armies.

Amos 4:10-12

4:10 “I sent against you a plague like one of the Egyptian plagues. ¹¹ 

I killed your young men with the sword,

along with the horses you had captured.

I made the stench from the corpses ¹²  rise up into your nostrils.

Still you did not come back to me.”

The Lord is speaking!

4:11 “I overthrew some of you the way God ¹³  overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah. ¹⁴ 

You were like a burning stick ¹⁵  snatched from the flames.

Still you did not come back to me.”

The Lord is speaking!

4:12 “Therefore this is what I will do to you, Israel.

Because I will do this to you,

prepare to meet your God, Israel! ¹⁶ 

Zechariah 1:4

1:4 “Do not be like your ancestors, to whom the former prophets called out, saying, ‘The Lord who rules over all says, “Turn now from your evil wickedness,”’ but they would by no means obey me,” says the Lord.

[5:3]  ¹ tn Heb “O Lord, are your eyes not to faithfulness?” The question is rhetorical and expects a positive answer.

[5:3]  ² tn Commentaries and lexicons debate the meaning of the verb here. The MT is pointed as though from a verb meaning “to writhe in anguish or contrition” (חוּל [khul]; see, e.g., BDB 297 s.v. חוּל 2.c), but some commentaries and lexicons repoint the text as though from a verb meaning “to be sick,” thus “to feel pain” (חָלָה [khalah]; see, e.g., HALOT 304 s.v. חָלָה 3). The former appears more appropriate to the context.

[5:3]  ³ tn Heb “They made their faces as hard as a rock.”

[5:3]  ⁴ tn Or “to repent”; Heb “to turn back.”

[8:4]  ⁵ tn The words “the Lord said to me” are not in the text but are implicit from the context. They are supplied in the translation to make clear who is speaking and who is being addressed.

[8:4]  ⁶ sn There is a play on two different nuances of the same Hebrew word that means “turn” and “return,” “turn away” and “turn back.”

[8:5]  ⁷ tc The text is quite commonly emended, changing שׁוֹבְבָה הָעָם (shovÿvah ha’am) to שׁוֹבָב הָעָם (shovav ha’am) and omitting יְרוּשָׁלַםִ (yÿrushalaim); this is due to the anomaly of a feminine singular verb with a masculine singular subject and the fact that the word “Jerusalem” is absent from one Hebrew ms and the LXX. However, it is possible that this is a case where the noun “Jerusalem” is a defining apposition to the word “these people,” an apposition which GKC 425 §131.k calls “permutation.” In this case the verb could be attracted to the appositional noun and there would be no reason to emend the text. The MT is undoubtedly the harder reading and is for that reason to be preferred.

[8:5]  ⁸ tn Or “to their allegiance to false gods,” or “to their false professions of loyalty”; Heb “to deceit.” Either “to their mistaken beliefs” or “to their allegiance to false gods” would fit the preceding context. The former is more comprehensive than the latter and was chosen for that reason.

[8:5]  ⁹ sn There is a continuing play on the same root word used in the preceding verse. Here the words “turn away from me,” “apostasy,” and “turn back to me” are all forms from the root that was translated “go the wrong way” and “turn around” in v. 4. The intended effect is to contrast Judah’s recalcitrant apostasy with the usual tendency to try and correct one’s mistakes.

[9:13]  ¹⁰ tn This verse describes the people’s response to the judgment described in vv. 11-12. The perfects are understood as indicating simple past.

[4:10]  ¹¹ tn Heb “in the manner [or “way”] of Egypt.”

[4:10]  ¹² tn Heb “of your camps [or “armies”].”

[4:11]  ¹³ tn Several English versions substitute the first person pronoun (“I”) here for stylistic reasons (e.g., NIV, NCV, TEV, CEV, NLT).

[4:11]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “like God’s overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah.” The divine name may be used in an idiomatic superlative sense here, in which case one might translate, “like the great [or “disastrous”] overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah.”

[4:11]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “like that which is burning.”

[4:12]  ¹⁶ tn The Lord appears to announce a culminating judgment resulting from Israel’s obstinate refusal to repent. The following verse describes the Lord in his role as sovereign judge, but it does not outline the judgment per se. For this reason F. I. Andersen and D. N. Freedman (Amos [AB], 450) take the prefixed verbal forms as preterites referring to the series of judgments detailed in vv. 6-11. It is more likely that a coming judgment is in view, but that its details are omitted for rhetorical effect, creating a degree of suspense (see S. M. Paul, Amos [Hermeneia], 149-50) that will find its solution in chapter 5. This line is an ironic conclusion to the section begun at 4:4. Israel thought they were meeting the Lord at the sanctuaries, yet they actually had misunderstood how he had been trying to bring them back to himself. Now Israel would truly meet the Lord – not at the sanctuaries, but face-to-face in judgment.