30:9 For these are rebellious people –
they are lying children,
children unwilling to obey the Lord’s law. 1
59:3 For your hands are stained with blood
and your fingers with sin;
your lips speak lies,
your tongue utters malicious words.
59:4 No one is concerned about justice; 2
no one sets forth his case truthfully.
They depend on false words 3 and tell lies;
they conceive of oppression 4
and give birth to sin.
9:3 The Lord says, 5
“These people are like soldiers who have readied their bows.
Their tongues are always ready to shoot out lies. 6
They have become powerful in the land,
but they have not done so by honest means. 7
Indeed, they do one evil thing after another 8
and do not pay attention to me. 9
9:4 Everyone must be on his guard around his friends.
He must not even trust any of his relatives. 10
For every one of them will find some way to cheat him. 11
And all of his friends will tell lies about him.
9:5 One friend deceives another
and no one tells the truth.
These people have trained themselves 12 to tell lies.
They do wrong and are unable to repent.
11:12 (12:1) 15 Ephraim has surrounded me with lies;
the house of Israel has surrounded me 16 with deceit.
But Judah still roams about with 17 God;
he remains faithful to the Holy One.
2:1 Now 23 when the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place.
1 tn Or perhaps, “instruction” (so NASB, NIV, NRSV); NCV, TEV “teachings.”
2 tn Heb “no one pleads with justice.”
3 tn Heb “nothing”; NAB “emptiness.”
4 tn Or “trouble” (NIV), or “harm.”
5 tn The words “The
6 tn Heb “They have readied [or strung] their tongue as their bow for lies.”
7 tn Heb “but not through honesty.”
8 tn Heb “they go from evil to evil.”
9 tn Or “do not acknowledge me”; Heb “do not know me.” But “knowing” in Hebrew thought often involves more than intellectual knowledge; it involves emotional and volitional commitment as well. For יָדַע meaning “acknowledge” see 1 Chr 28:9; Isa 29:21; Hos 2:20; Prov 3:6. This word is also found in ancient Near Eastern treaty contexts where it has the idea of a vassal king acknowledging the sovereignty of a greater king (cf. H. Huffmon, “The Treaty Background of Hebrew yada,” BASOR 181 [1966]: 31-37).
10 tn Heb “Be on your guard…Do not trust.” The verbs are second masculine plural of direct address and there seems no way to translate literally and not give the mistaken impression that Jeremiah is being addressed. This is another example of the tendency in Hebrew style to turn from description to direct address (a figure of speech called apostrophe).
11 tn Heb “cheating, each of them will cheat.”
12 tn Heb “their tongues.” However, this is probably not a natural idiom in contemporary English and the tongue may stand as a part for the whole anyway.
13 tn Heb “you are erring at the cost of your own lives” (BDB 1073 s.v. תָּעָה Hiph.3 and HALOT 1626 s.v. תָּעָה Hif 4, and cf. BDB 90 s.v. בְּ 3 and see parallels in 1 Kgs 2:23; 2 Sam 23:17 for the nuance of “at the cost of your lives”). This fits the context better than “you are deceiving yourselves” (KBL 1035 s.v. תָּעָה Hif 4). The reading here follows the Qere הִתְעֵיתֶם (hit’etem) rather than the Kethib which has a metathesis of י (yod) and ת (tav), i.e., הִתְעֵתֶים. The Greek text presupposes הֲרֵעֹתֶם (hare’otem, “you have done evil”), but that reading is generally rejected as secondary.
14 tn Heb “According to all which the
15 sn Beginning with 11:12, the verse numbers through 12:14 in the English Bible differ by one from the verse numbers in the Hebrew text (BHS), with 11:12 ET = 12:1 HT, 12:1 ET = 12:2 HT, etc., through 12:14 ET = 12:15 HT. From 13:1 to 13:16 the verse numbers in the English Bible and the Hebrew Bible are again the same.
16 tn The phrase “has surrounded me” is not repeated in the Hebrew text here, but is implied by the parallelism in the preceding line. It is supplied in the translation for stylistic reasons, smoothness, and readability.
17 tn The verb רוּד (rud, “to roam about freely”) is used in a concrete sense to refer to someone wandering restlessly and roaming back and forth (BDB 923 s.v. רוּד; Judg 11:37). Here, it is used figuratively, possibly with positive connotations, as indicated by the preposition עִם (’im, “with”), to indicate accompaniment: “but Judah still goes about with God” (HALOT 1194 s.v. רוד). Some English versions render it positively: “Judah still walks with God” (RSV, NRSV); “Judah is restive under God” (REB); “but Judah stands firm with God” (NJPS); “but Judah yet ruleth with God” (KJV, ASV). Other English versions adopt the negative connotation “to wander restlessly” and nuance עִם in an adversative sense (“against”): “Judah is still rebellious against God” (NAB), “Judah is unruly against God” (NIV), and “the people of Judah are still rebelling against me” (TEV).
18 sn This is a good example of the Greek verb fill (πληρόω, plhrow) meaning “to exercise control over someone’s thought and action” (cf. Eph 5:18).
19 tn The words “from the sale of” are not in the Greek text, but are supplied to clarify the meaning, since the phrase “proceeds from the land” could possibly be understood as crops rather than money from the sale.
20 tn Grk “And he.” Because of the length of the Greek sentence and the tendency of contemporary English style to use shorter sentences, καί (kai) has not been translated here.
21 tn The participle ἐνέγκας (enenka") has been translated as a finite verb due to requirements of contemporary English style.
22 tn Grk “Asia”; in the NT this always refers to the Roman province of Asia, made up of about one-third of the west and southwest end of modern Asia Minor. Asia lay to the west of the region of Phrygia and Galatia. The words “the province of” are supplied to indicate to the modern reader that this does not refer to the continent of Asia.
23 tn Grk “And” Here καί (kai) has been translated as “now” to indicate the transition to a new topic. Greek style often begins sentences or clauses with “and,” but English style does not.
24 tn Or “greatly annoyed,” “provoked.”
25 tn Or “proclaiming.”
26 tn On the term φαρμακεία (farmakeia, “magic spells”) see L&N 53.100: “the use of magic, often involving drugs and the casting of spells upon people – ‘to practice magic, to cast spells upon, to engage in sorcery, magic, sorcery.’ φαρμακεία: ἐν τῇ φαρμακείᾳ σου ἐπλανήθησαν πάντα τὰ ἔθνη ‘with your magic spells you deceived all the peoples (of the world)’ Re 18:23.”
27 tn Grk “idolaters.”
28 tn Grk “their share.”
29 tn Traditionally, “brimstone.”
30 tn Grk “sulfur, which is.” The relative pronoun has been translated as “that” to indicate its connection to the previous clause. The nearest logical antecedent is “the lake [that burns with fire and sulfur],” although “lake” (λίμνη, limnh) is feminine gender, while the pronoun “which” (ὅ, Jo) is neuter gender. This means that (1) the proper antecedent could be “their place” (Grk “their share,”) agreeing with the relative pronoun in number and gender, or (2) the neuter pronoun still has as its antecedent the feminine noun “lake,” since agreement in gender between pronoun and antecedent was not always maintained, with an explanatory phrase occurring with a neuter pronoun regardless of the case of the antecedent. In favor of the latter explanation is Rev 20:14, where the phrase “the lake of fire” is in apposition to the phrase “the second death.”
31 tn On the term φάρμακοι (farmakoi) see L&N 53.101.
32 tn Or “lying,” “deceit.”