37:28 For the Lord promotes 13 justice,
and never abandons 14 his faithful followers.
They are permanently secure, 15
but the children 16 of evil men are wiped out. 17
89:38 But you have spurned 18 and rejected him;
you are angry with your chosen king. 19
89:39 You have repudiated 20 your covenant with your servant; 21
you have thrown his crown to the ground. 22
89:40 You have broken down all his 23 walls;
you have made his strongholds a heap of ruins.
89:41 All who pass by 24 have robbed him;
he has become an object of disdain to his neighbors.
89:42 You have allowed his adversaries to be victorious, 25
and all his enemies to rejoice.
89:43 You turn back 26 his sword from the adversary, 27
and have not sustained him in battle. 28
89:44 You have brought to an end his splendor, 29
and have knocked 30 his throne to the ground.
89:45 You have cut short his youth, 31
and have covered him with shame. (Selah)
12:7 “I will abandon my nation. 32
I will forsake the people I call my own. 33
I will turn my beloved people 34
over to the power 35 of their enemies.
23:33 The Lord said to me, “Jeremiah, 36 when one of these people, or a prophet, or a priest asks you, ‘What burdensome message 37 do you have from the Lord?’ Tell them, ‘You are the burden, 38 and I will cast you away. 39 I, the Lord, affirm it! 40
5:20 Why do you keep on forgetting 41 us?
Why do you forsake us so long?
5:2 “The virgin 42 Israel has fallen down and will not get up again.
She is abandoned on her own land
with no one to help her get up.” 43
1 tn Heb “on that day.” This same expression also appears later in the verse and in v. 18.
2 tn Heb “him.” Smr, LXX, and the Targums read the plural “them.” See note on the first occurrence of “they” in v. 16.
3 tn Heb “find,” “encounter.”
4 tn Heb “him.” Smr, LXX, and the Targums read the plural “them.” See note on the first occurrence of “they” in v. 16.
5 tn Heb “he.” Smr, LXX, and the Targums read the plural “they.” See note on the first occurrence of “they” in v. 16.
6 tn Heb “evils.”
7 tn Heb “me.” Smr, LXX, and the Targums read the plural “us,” which is necessary in any case in the translation because of contemporary English style.
8 tn Heb “my.”
9 tn Heb “me.” Smr, LXX, and the Targums read the plural “us,” which is necessary in any case in the translation because of contemporary English style.
10 tn Or “am no longer able to lead you” (NIV, NLT); Heb “am no longer able to go out and come in.”
11 tn Heb “his neighbor,” used idiomatically to refer to another person.
12 tn Heb “his neighbor and his brother.” The words “his brother” may be a scribal gloss identifying “his neighbor” (on this idiom, see the preceding note) as a fellow Israelite (cf. v. 3). In this case the conjunction before “his brother” does not introduce a second category, but rather has the force of “that is.”
13 tn Heb “loves.” The verb “loves” is here metonymic; the
14 tn The imperfect verbal form draws attention to this generalizing statement.
15 tn Or “protected forever.”
16 tn Or “offspring”; Heb “seed.”
17 tn Or “cut off”; or “removed.” The perfect verbal forms in v. 28b state general truths.
18 tn The Hebrew construction (conjunction + pronoun, followed by the verb) draws attention to the contrast between what follows and what precedes.
19 tn Heb “your anointed one.” The Hebrew phrase מְשִׁיחֶךָ (mÿshikhekha, “your anointed one”) refers here to the Davidic king (see Pss 2:2; 18:50; 20:6; 28:8; 84:9; 132:10, 17).
20 tn The Hebrew verb appears only here and in Lam 2:7.
21 tn Heb “the covenant of your servant.”
22 tn Heb “you dishonor [or “desecrate”] on the ground his crown.”
23 tn The king here represents the land and cities over which he rules.
24 tn Heb “all the passersby on the road.”
25 tn Heb “you have lifted up the right hand of his adversaries.” The idiom “the right hand is lifted up” refers to victorious military deeds (see Pss 89:13; 118:16).
26 tn The perfect verbal form predominates in vv. 38-45. The use of the imperfect in this one instance may be for rhetorical effect. The psalmist briefly lapses into dramatic mode, describing the king’s military defeat as if it were happening before his very eyes.
27 tc Heb “you turn back, rocky summit, his sword.” The Hebrew term צוּר (tsur, “rocky summit”) makes no sense here, unless it is a divine title understood as vocative, “you turn back, O Rocky Summit, his sword.” Some emend the form to צֹר (tsor, “flint”) on the basis of Josh 5:2, which uses the phrase חַרְבוֹת צֻרִים (kharvot tsurim, “flint knives”). The noun צֹר (tsor, “flint”) can then be taken as “flint-like edge,” indicating the sharpness of the sword. Others emend the form to אָחוֹר (’akhor, “backward”) or to מִצַּר (mitsar, “from the adversary”). The present translation reflects the latter, assuming an original reading תָּשִׁיב מִצָּר חַרְבּוֹ (tashiv mitsar kharbo), which was corrupted to תָּשִׁיב צָר חַרְבּוֹ (tashiv tsar kharbo) by virtual haplography (confusion of bet/mem is well-attested) with צָר (tsar, “adversary”) then being misinterpreted as צוּר in the later tradition.
28 tn Heb “and you have not caused him to stand in the battle.”
29 tc The Hebrew text appears to read, “you have brought to an end from his splendor,” but the form מִטְּהָרוֹ (mittÿharo) should be slightly emended (the daghesh should be removed from the tet [ת]) and read simply “his splendor” (the initial mem [מ] is not the preposition, but a nominal prefix).
30 tn The Hebrew verb מָגַר (magar) occurs only here and perhaps in Ezek 21:17.
31 tn Heb “the days of his youth” (see as well Job 33:25).
32 tn Heb “my house.” Or “I have abandoned my nation.” The word “house” has been used throughout Jeremiah for both the temple (e.g., 7:2, 10), the nation or people of Israel or of Judah (e.g. 3:18, 20), or the descendants of Jacob (i.e., the Israelites, e.g., 2:4). Here the parallelism argues that it refers to the nation of Judah. The translation throughout vv. 5-17 assumes that the verb forms are prophetic perfects, the form that conceives of the action as being as good as done. It is possible that the forms are true perfects and refer to a past destruction of Judah. If so, it may have been connected with the assaults against Judah in 598/7
33 tn Heb “my inheritance.”
34 tn Heb “the beloved of my soul.” Here “soul” stands for the person and is equivalent to “my.”
35 tn Heb “will give…into the hands of.”
36 tn The words “The
37 tn The meaning of vv. 33-40 is debated. The translation given here follows the general direction of NRSV and REB rather than that of NIV and the related direction taken by NCV and God’s Word. The meaning of vv. 33-40 are debated because of (1) the ambiguity involved in the word מָשָּׂא (masa’), which can mean either “burden” (as something carried or weighing heavily on a person; see, e.g., Exod 23:5; Num 4:27; 2 Sam 15:33; Ps 38:4) or “oracle” (of doom; see, e. g., Isa 13:1; Nah 1:1); (the translation is debated due to etymological concerns), (2) the ambiguity of the line in v. 36 which has been rendered “For what is ‘burdensome’ really pertains rather to what a person himself says” (Heb “the burden is to the man his word”), and (3) the text in v. 33 of “you are the burden.” Many commentaries see a wordplay on the two words “burden” and “oracle” which are homonyms. However, from the contrasts that are drawn in the passage, it is doubtful whether the nuance of “oracle” ever is in view. The word is always used in the prophets of an oracle of doom or judgment; it is not merely revelation of God which one of the common people would have been uttering (contra NIV). Jeremiah never uses the word in that sense nor does anyone else in the book of Jeremiah.
38 tc The translation follows the Latin and Greek versions. The Hebrew text reads “What burden [i.e., burdensome message]?” The syntax of “what message?” is not in itself objectionable; the interrogative can function as an adjective (cf. BDB 552 s.v. מָה 1.a[a]). What is objectionable to virtually all the commentaries and lexicons is the unparalleled use of the accusative particle in front of the interrogative and the noun (see, e.g., BDB 672 s.v. III מָשָּׂא and GKC 365-66 §117.m, n. 3). The emendation only involves the redivision and revocalization of the same consonants: אֶת־מַה־מַשָּׂא (’et-mah-masa’) becomes אַתֶּם הַמָּשָּׂא (’atem hammasa’). This also makes a much more natural connection for the vav consecutive perfect that follows (cf. GKC 334 §112.x and compare Isa 6:7; Judg 13:3).
39 tn The meaning “cast you away” is questioned by some because the word is regularly used of “forsaking” or “abandoning” (see, e.g., Jer 7:29; 12:7; 15:6). However, it is clearly use of “casting down” or “throwing away” in Ezek 29:5; 32:4 and that meaning is virtually assured in v. 39 where the verb is combined with the phrase “from my presence” which is elsewhere used in rejection contexts with verbs like “send away,” “throw out,” or “remove” (see BDB 819 s.v. פָּנֶה II.8.a). This is another example of the bracketing effect of a key word and should be rendered the same in the two passages. Moreover, it fits in nicely with the play on “burden” here.
40 tn Heb “Oracle of the
41 tn The Hebrew verb “forget” often means “to not pay attention to, ignore,” just as the Hebrew “remember” often means “to consider, attend to.”
42 tn Or “young lady.” The term “Israel” is an appositional genitive.
43 tn Or “with no one to lift her up.”