28:22 During his time of trouble King Ahaz was even more unfaithful to the Lord.
36:15 The Lord God of their ancestors 2 continually warned them through his messengers, 3 for he felt compassion for his people and his dwelling place. 36:16 But they mocked God’s messengers, despised his warnings, 4 and ridiculed his prophets. 5 Finally the Lord got very angry at his people and there was no one who could prevent his judgment. 6
1:5 7 Why do you insist on being battered?
Why do you continue to rebel? 8
Your head has a massive wound, 9
your whole body is weak. 10
9:13 The people did not return to the one who struck them,
they did not seek reconciliation 11 with the Lord who commands armies.
2:30 “It did no good for me to punish your people.
They did not respond to such correction.
You slaughtered your prophets
like a voracious lion.” 12
5:3 Lord, I know you look for faithfulness. 13
But even when you punish these people, they feel no remorse. 14
Even when you nearly destroy them, they refuse to be corrected.
They have become as hardheaded as a rock. 15
They refuse to change their ways. 16
6:29 The fiery bellows of judgment burn fiercely.
But there is too much dross to be removed. 17
The process of refining them has proved useless. 18
The wicked have not been purged.
3:2 She is disobedient; 26
she refuses correction. 27
She does not trust the Lord;
she does not seek the advice of 28 her God.
1 tn Heb “like the abominable practices of the nations.”
2 tn Heb “fathers.”
3 tn Heb “and the
4 tn Heb “his words.”
5 tn All three verbal forms (“mocked,” “despised,” and “ridiculed”) are active participles in the Hebrew text, indicating continual or repeated action. They made a habit of rejecting God’s prophetic messengers.
6 tn Heb “until the anger of the
7 sn In vv. 5-9 Isaiah addresses the battered nation (5-8) and speaks as their representative (9).
8 tn Heb “Why are you still beaten? [Why] do you continue rebellion?” The rhetorical questions express the prophet’s disbelief over Israel’s apparent masochism and obsession with sin. The interrogative construction in the first line does double duty in the parallelism. H. Wildberger (Isaiah, 1:18) offers another alternative by translating the two statements with one question: “Why do you still wish to be struck that you persist in revolt?”
9 tn Heb “all the head is ill”; NRSV “the whole head is sick”; CEV “Your head is badly bruised.”
10 tn Heb “and all the heart is faint.” The “heart” here stands for bodily strength and energy, as suggested by the context and usage elsewhere (see Jer 8:18; Lam 1:22).
11 tn This verse describes the people’s response to the judgment described in vv. 11-12. The perfects are understood as indicating simple past.
12 tn Heb “Your sword devoured your prophets like a destroying lion.” However, the reference to the sword in this and many similar idioms is merely idiomatic for death by violent means.
13 tn Heb “O
14 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.
15 tn Heb “They made their faces as hard as a rock.”
16 tn Or “to repent”; Heb “to turn back.”
17 tn Heb “The bellows blow fiercely; the lead is consumed by the fire.” The translation tries to clarify a metaphor involving ancient metallurgy. In the ancient refining process lead was added as a flux to remove impurities from silver ore in the process of oxidizing the lead. Jeremiah says that the lead has been used up and the impurities have not been removed. The translation is based on the recognition of an otherwise unused verb root meaning “blow” (נָחַר [nakhar]; cf. BDB 1123 s.v. I חָרַר and HALOT 651 s.v. נָחַר) and the Masoretes’ suggestion that the consonants מאשׁתם be read מֵאֵשׁ תַּם (me’esh tam) rather than as מֵאֶשָּׁתָם (me’eshatam, “from their fire”) from an otherwise unattested noun אֶשָּׁה (’eshah).
18 tn Heb “The refiner refines them in vain.”
19 tn Heb “the word [or message] you have spoken to us in the name of the
20 tn Heb “that went out of our mouth.” I.e., everything we said, promised, or vowed.
21 tn Heb “sacrifice to the Queen of Heaven and pour out drink offerings to her.” The expressions have been combined to simplify and shorten the sentence. The same combination also occurs in vv. 18, 19.
22 tn Heb “saw [or experienced] no disaster/trouble/harm.”
23 tn Heb “we have been consumed/destroyed by sword or by starvation.” The “we” cannot be taken literally here since they are still alive.
24 tc The words “And the women added” are not in the Hebrew text. They are, however, implicit in what is said. They are found in the Syriac version and in one recension of the Greek version. W. L. Holladay (Jeremiah [Hermeneia], 2:279, n. 19a) suggests that these words are missing from the Hebrew text because of haplography, i.e., that the scribe left out וַהַנָּשִׁים אָמְרוּ כִי (vahannashim ’omru khi) because his eye jumped from the ו at the beginning to the כִּי (ki) that introduced the temporal clause and left out everything in between. It is, however, just as likely, given the fact that there are several other examples of quotes which have not been formally introduced in the book of Jeremiah, that the words were not there and are supplied by these two ancient versions as a translator’s clarification.
25 tn Or “When we sacrificed and poured out drink offering to the Queen of Heaven and made cakes in her image, wasn’t it with the knowledge and approval of our husbands?” Heb “When we sacrificed to the Queen of Heaven and poured out drink offerings [for the use of לְ (lamed) + the infinitive construct to carry on the tense of the preceding verb see BDB 518 s.v. לְ 7.b(h)] to her, did we make cakes to make an image of her and pour out drink offerings apart from [i.e., “without the knowledge and consent of,” so BDB 116 s.v. בִּלְעֲדֵי b(a)] our husbands?” The question expects a positive answer and has been rendered as an affirmation in the translation. The long, complex Hebrew sentence has again been broken in two and restructured to better conform with contemporary English style.
26 tn Heb “she does not hear a voice” Refusing to listen is equated with disobedience.
27 tn Heb “she does not receive correction.” The Hebrew phrase, when negated, refers elsewhere to rejecting verbal advice (Jer 17:23; 32:33; 35:13) and refusing to learn from experience (Jer 2:30; 5:3).
28 tn Heb “draw near to.” The present translation assumes that the expression “draw near to” refers to seeking God’s will (see 1 Sam 14:36).