Jeremiah 16:12

16:12 And you have acted even more wickedly than your ancestors! Each one of you has followed the stubborn inclinations of your own wicked heart and not obeyed me. ¹ 

Jeremiah 23:35

23:35 So I, Jeremiah, tell you, ²  “Each of you people should say to his friend or his relative, ‘How did the Lord answer? Or what did the Lord say?’ ³ 

Jeremiah 34:9

34:9 Everyone was supposed to free their male and female Hebrew slaves. No one was supposed to keep a fellow Judean enslaved. ⁴ 

¹ sn For the argumentation here compare Jer 7:23-26.

² tn The words “So, I, Jeremiah tell you” are not in the text. They are supplied in the translation for clarity to show that it is he who is addressing the people, not the Lord. See “our God” in v. 38 and “Here is what the Lord says…” which indicate the speaker is other than he.

³ tn This line is sometimes rendered as a description of what the people are doing (cf. NIV). However, repetition with some slight modification referring to the prophet in v. 37 followed by the same kind of prohibition that follows here shows that what is being contrasted is two views toward the Lord’s message, i.e., one of openness to receive what the Lord says through the prophet and one that already characterizes the Lord’s message as a burden. Allusion to the question that started the discussion in v. 33 should not be missed. The prophet alluded to is Jeremiah. He is being indirect in his reference to himself.

³ tn Heb “after King Zedekiah made a covenant…to proclaim liberty to them [the slaves mentioned in the next verse] so that each would send away free his male slave and his female slave, the Hebrew man and the Hebrew woman, so that a man would not hold them in bondage, namely a Judean, his brother [this latter phrase is explicative of “them” because it repeats the preposition in front of “them”].” The complex Hebrew syntax has been broken down into shorter English sentences but an attempt has been made to retain the proper subordinations.