Jeremiah 18:16

18:16 So their land will become an object of horror. ¹ 

People will forever hiss out their scorn over it.

All who pass that way will be filled with horror

and will shake their heads in derision. ² 

Jeremiah 24:9

24:9 I will bring such disaster on them that all the kingdoms of the earth will be horrified. I will make them an object of reproach, a proverbial example of disaster. I will make them an object of ridicule, an example to be used in curses. ³  That is how they will be remembered wherever I banish them. ⁴ 

Jeremiah 25:9

25:9 So I, the Lord, affirm that ⁵  I will send for all the peoples of the north ⁶  and my servant, ⁷  King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon. I will bring them against this land and its inhabitants and all the nations that surround it. I will utterly destroy ⁸  this land, its inhabitants, and all the nations that surround it ⁹  and make them everlasting ruins. ¹⁰  I will make them objects of horror and hissing scorn. ¹¹ 

Jeremiah 26:6

26:6 If you do not obey me, ¹²  then I will do to this temple what I did to Shiloh. ¹³  And I will make this city an example to be used in curses by people from all the nations on the earth.’”

Jeremiah 29:18

29:18 I will chase after them with war, ¹⁴  starvation, and disease. I will make all the kingdoms of the earth horrified at what happens to them. I will make them examples of those who are cursed, objects of horror, hissing scorn, and ridicule among all the nations where I exile them.

Jeremiah 29:22

29:22 And all the exiles of Judah who are in Babylon will use them as examples when they put a curse on anyone. They will say, “May the Lord treat you like Zedekiah and Ahab whom the king of Babylon roasted to death in the fire!” ¹⁵ 

Jeremiah 44:12

44:12 I will see to it that all the Judean remnant that was determined to go ¹⁶  and live in the land of Egypt will be destroyed. Here in the land of Egypt they will fall in battle ¹⁷  or perish from starvation. People of every class ¹⁸  will die in war or from starvation. They will become an object of horror and ridicule, an example of those who have been cursed and that people use in pronouncing a curse. ¹⁹ 

Deuteronomy 29:21-22

29:21 The Lord will single him out ²⁰  for judgment ²¹  from all the tribes of Israel according to all the curses of the covenant written in this scroll of the law. 29:22 The generation to come – your descendants who will rise up after you, as well as the foreigner who will come from distant places – will see ²²  the afflictions of that land and the illnesses that the Lord has brought on it.

Deuteronomy 29:1

Narrative Interlude

29:1 (28:69) ²³  These are the words of the covenant that the Lord commanded Moses to make with the people of Israel in the land of Moab, in addition to the covenant he had made with them at Horeb. ²⁴ 

Deuteronomy 9:7-9

The History of Israel’s Stubbornness

9:7 Remember – don’t ever forget ²⁵  – how you provoked the Lord your God in the desert; from the time you left the land of Egypt until you came to this place you were constantly rebelling against him. ²⁶  9:8 At Horeb you provoked him and he was angry enough with you to destroy you. 9:9 When I went up the mountain to receive the stone tablets, the tablets of the covenant that the Lord made with you, I remained there ²⁷  forty days and nights, eating and drinking nothing.

Isaiah 65:15

65:15 Your names will live on in the curse formulas of my chosen ones. ²⁸ 

The sovereign Lord will kill you,

but he will give his servants another name.

Zechariah 8:13

8:13 And it will come about that just as you (both Judah and Israel) were a curse to the nations, so I will save you and you will be a blessing. Do not be afraid! Instead, be strong!’

¹ tn There may be a deliberate double meaning involved here. The word translated here “an object of horror” refers both to destruction (cf. 2:15; 4:17) and the horror or dismay that accompanies it (cf. 5:30; 8:21). The fact that there is no conjunction or preposition in front of the noun “hissing” that follows this suggests that the reaction is in view here, not the cause.

² tn Heb “an object of lasting hissing. All who pass that way will be appalled and shake their head.”

³ tn Or “an object of reproach in peoples’ proverbs…an object of ridicule in people’s curses.” The alternate translation treats the two pairs which are introduced without vavs (ו) but are joined by vavs as examples of hendiadys. This is very possible here but the chain does not contain this pairing in 25:18; 29:18.

⁴ tn Heb “I will make them for a terror for disaster to all the kingdoms of the earth, for a reproach and for a proverb, for a taunt and a curse in all the places which I banish them there.” The complex Hebrew sentence has been broken down into equivalent shorter sentences to conform more with contemporary English style.

⁵ tn Heb “Oracle of the Lord.”

⁶ sn The many allusions to trouble coming from the north are now clarified: it is the armies of Babylon which included within it contingents from many nations. See 1:14, 15; 4:6; 6:1, 22; 10:22; 13:20 for earlier allusions.

⁷ sn Nebuchadnezzar is called the Lord’s servant also in Jer 27:6; 43:10. He was the Lord’s servant in that he was the agent used by the Lord to punish his disobedient people. Assyria was earlier referred to as the Lord’s “rod” (Isa 10:5-6) and Cyrus is called his “shepherd” and his “anointed” (Isa 44:28; 45:1). P. C. Craigie, P. H. Kelley, and J. F. Drinkard (Jeremiah 1-25 [WBC], 364) make the interesting observation that the terms here are very similar to the terms in v. 4. The people of Judah ignored the servants, the prophets, he sent to turn them away from evil. So he will send other servants whom they cannot ignore.

⁸ tn The word used here was used in the early years of Israel’s conquest for the action of killing all the men, women, and children in the cities of Canaan, destroying all their livestock, and burning their cities down. This policy was intended to prevent Israel from being corrupted by paganism (Deut 7:2; 20:17-18; Josh 6:18, 21). It was to be extended to any city that led Israel away from worshiping God (Deut 13:15) and any Israelite who brought an idol into his house (Deut 7:26). Here the policy is being directed against Judah as well as against her neighbors because of her persistent failure to heed God’s warnings through the prophets. For further usage of this term in application to foreign nations in the book of Jeremiah see 50:21, 26; 51:3.

⁹ tn Heb “will utterly destroy them.” The referent (this land, its inhabitants, and the nations surrounding it) has been specified in the translation for clarity, since the previous “them” referred to Nebuchadnezzar and his armies.

¹⁰ sn The Hebrew word translated “everlasting” is the word often translated “eternal.” However, it sometimes has a more limited time reference. For example it refers to the lifetime of a person who became a “lasting slave” to another person (see Exod 21:6; Deut 15:17). It is also used to refer to the long life wished for a king (1 Kgs 1:31; Neh 2:3). The time frame here is to be qualified at least with reference to Judah and Jerusalem as seventy years (see 29:10-14 and compare v. 12).

¹¹ tn Heb “I will make them an object of horror and a hissing and everlasting ruins.” The sentence has been broken up to separate the last object from the first two which are of slightly different connotation, i.e., they denote the reaction to the latter.

¹² tn 26:4-6 are all one long sentence containing a long condition with subordinate clauses (vv. 4-5) and a compound consequence in v. 6: Heb “If you will not obey me by walking in my law…by paying attention to the words of the prophets which…and you did not pay heed, then I will make…and I will make…” The sentence has been broken down in conformity to contemporary English style but an attempt has been made to reflect all the subordinations in the English translation.

¹³ sn See the study note on Jer 7:13.

¹⁴ tn Heb “with the sword.”

¹⁵ sn Being roasted to death in the fire appears to have been a common method of execution in Babylon. See Dan 3:6, 19-21. The famous law code of the Babylonian king Hammurabi also mandated this method of execution for various crimes a thousand years earlier. There is a satirical play on words involving their fate, “roasted them to death” (קָלָם, qalam), and the fact that that fate would become a common topic of curse (קְלָלָה, qÿlalah) pronounced on others in Babylon.

¹⁶ tn Heb “they set their face to go.” Compare 44:11 and 42:14 and see the translator’s note at 42:15.

¹⁷ tn Heb “fall by the sword.”

¹⁸ tn Or “All of them without distinction,” or “All of them from the least important to the most important”; Heb “From the least to the greatest.” See the translator’s note on 42:1 for the meaning of this idiom.

¹⁹ tn See the study note on 24:9 and the usage in 29:22 for the meaning and significance of this last phrase.

²⁰ tn Heb “set him apart.”

²¹ tn Heb “for evil”; NAB “for doom”; NASB “for adversity”; NIV “for disaster”; NRSV “for calamity.”

²² tn Heb “will say and see.” One expects a quotation to appear, but it seems to be omitted. To avoid confusion in the translation, the verb “will say” is omitted.

²³ sn Beginning with 29:1, the verse numbers through 29:29 in the English Bible differ from the verse numbers in the Hebrew text (BHS), with 29:1 ET = 28:69 HT, 29:2 ET = 29:1 HT, 29:3 ET = 29:2 HT, etc., through 29:29 ET = 29:28 HT. With 30:1 the verse numbers in the ET and HT are again the same.

²⁴ sn Horeb is another name for Mount Sinai (which some English versions substitute here for clarity, cf. NCV, TEV, CEV, NLT).

²⁵ tn By juxtaposing the positive זְכֹר (zekhor, “remember”) with the negative אַל־תִּשְׁכַּח (’al-tishÿkakh, “do not forget”), Moses makes a most emphatic plea.

²⁶ tn Heb “the Lord” (likewise in the following verse with both “him” and “he”). See note on “he” in 9:3.

²⁷ tn Heb “in the mountain.” The demonstrative pronoun has been used in the translation for stylistic reasons.

²⁸ tn Heb “you will leave your name for an oath to my chosen ones.”