Jeremiah 2:20

The Lord Expresses His Exasperation at Judah’s Persistent Idolatry

2:20 “Indeed, ¹  long ago you threw off my authority

and refused to be subject to me. ² 

You said, ‘I will not serve you.’ ³ 

Instead, you gave yourself to other gods on every high hill

and under every green tree,

like a prostitute sprawls out before her lovers. ⁴ 

Jeremiah 8:2

8:2 They will be spread out and exposed to the sun, the moon and the stars. ⁵  These are things they ⁶  adored and served, things to which they paid allegiance, ⁷  from which they sought guidance, and worshiped. The bones of these people ⁸  will never be regathered and reburied. They will be like manure used to fertilize the ground. ⁹ 

Jeremiah 11:10

11:10 They have gone back to the evil ways ¹⁰  of their ancestors of old who refused to obey what I told them. They, too, have paid allegiance to ¹¹  other gods and worshiped them. Both the nation of Israel and the nation of Judah ¹²  have violated the covenant I made with their ancestors.

Jeremiah 13:10

13:10 These wicked people refuse to obey what I have said. ¹³  They follow the stubborn inclinations of their own hearts and pay allegiance ¹⁴  to other gods by worshiping and serving them. So ¹⁵  they will become just like these linen shorts which are good for nothing.

Jeremiah 16:11

16:11 Then tell them that the Lord says, ¹⁶  ‘It is because your ancestors ¹⁷  rejected me and paid allegiance to ¹⁸  other gods. They have served them and worshiped them. But they have rejected me and not obeyed my law. ¹⁹ 

Jeremiah 16:13

16:13 So I will throw you out of this land into a land that neither you nor your ancestors have ever known. There you must worship other gods day and night, for I will show you no mercy.’”

Jeremiah 17:4

17:4 You will lose your hold on the land ²⁰ 

which I gave to you as a permanent possession.

I will make you serve your enemies in a land that you know nothing about.

For you have made my anger burn like a fire that will never be put out.” ²¹ 

Jeremiah 27:6

27:6 I have at this time placed all these nations of yours under the power ²²  of my servant, ²³  King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon. I have even made all the wild animals subject to him. ²⁴ 

Jeremiah 27:9

27:9 So do not listen to your prophets or to those who claim to predict the future by divination, ²⁵  by dreams, by consulting the dead, ²⁶  or by practicing magic. They keep telling you, ‘You do not need to be ²⁷  subject to the king of Babylon.’

Jeremiah 27:12

27:12 I told King Zedekiah of Judah the same thing. I said, ²⁸  “Submit ²⁹  to the yoke of servitude to ³⁰  the king of Babylon. Be subject to him and his people. Then you will continue to live.

Jeremiah 34:10

34:10 All the people and their leaders had agreed to this. They had agreed to free their male and female slaves and not keep them enslaved any longer. They originally complied with the covenant and freed them. ³¹ 

Jeremiah 34:14

34:14 “Every seven years each of you must free any fellow Hebrews who have sold themselves to you. After they have served you for six years, you shall set them free.” ³²  But your ancestors did not obey me or pay any attention to me.

¹ tn Or “For.” The Hebrew particle (כִּי, ki) here introduces the evidence that they had no respect for him.

² tn Heb “you broke your yoke…tore off your yoke ropes.” The metaphor is that of a recalcitrant ox or heifer which has broken free from its master.

³ tc The MT of this verse has two examples of the old second feminine singular perfect, שָׁבַרְתִּי (shavarti) and נִתַּקְתִּי (nittaqti), which the Masoretes mistook for first singulars leading to the proposal to read אֶעֱבוֹר (’e’evor, “I will not transgress”) for אֶעֱבֹד (’e’evod, “I will not serve”). The latter understanding of the forms is accepted in KJV but rejected by almost all modern English versions as being less appropriate to the context than the reading accepted in the translation given here.

⁴ tn Heb “you sprawled as a prostitute on….” The translation reflects the meaning of the metaphor.

⁵ tc MT, 4QJer^a and LXX read “the sun and the moon and all the host of heaven,” but 4QJer^c reads “the sun and all the stars.”

⁶ tn Heb “the sun, moon, and host of heaven which they…”

⁷ tn Heb “followed after.” See the translator’s note at 2:5 for the idiom.

⁸ tn Heb “they will not” but the referent is far enough removed that it might be ambiguous.

⁹ tn Heb “like dung/manure on the surface of the ground.”

⁹ tn Or “They have repeated the evil actions of….”

¹⁰ tn Heb “have walked/followed after.” See the translator’s note at 2:5 for the idiom.

¹¹ tn Heb “house of Israel and house of Judah.”

¹³ tn Heb “to listen to my words.”

¹⁴ tn Heb “and [they follow] after.” See the translator’s note at 2:5 for the idiom.

¹⁵ tn The structure of this verse is a little unusual. It consists of a subject, “this wicked people” qualified by several “which” clauses preceding a conjunction and a form which would normally be taken as a third person imperative (a Hebrew jussive; וִיהִי, vihi). This construction, called casus pendens by Hebrew grammarians, lays focus on the subject, here calling attention to the nature of Israel’s corruption which makes it rotten and useless to God. See GKC 458 §143.d for other examples of this construction.

¹⁷ tn These two sentences have been recast in English to break up a long Hebrew sentence and incorporate the oracular formula “says the Lord (Heb ‘oracle of the Lord’)” which occurs after “Your fathers abandoned me.” In Hebrew the two sentences read: “When you tell them these things and they say, ‘…’, then tell them, ‘Because your ancestors abandoned me,’ oracle of the Lord.”

¹⁸ tn Heb “fathers” (also in vv. 12, 13, 15, 19).

¹⁹ tn Heb “followed after.” See the translator’s note at 2:5 for the explanation of the idiom.

²⁰ tn Heb “But me they have abandoned and my law they have not kept.” The objects are thrown forward to bring out the contrast which has rhetorical force. However, such a sentence in English would be highly unnatural.

²¹ tc Or “Through your own fault you will lose the land…” As W. McKane (Jeremiah [ICC], 1:386) notes the ancient versions do not appear to be reading וּבְךָ (uvÿkha) as in the MT but possibly לְבַדְּךָ (lÿvaddÿkha; see BHS fn). The translation follows the suggestion in BHS fn that יָדְךָ (yadÿkha, literally “your hand”) be read for MT וּבְךָ. This has the advantage of fitting the idiom of this verb with “hand” in Deut 15:2 (see also v. 3 there). The Hebrew text thus reads “You will release your hand from your heritage.”

²² tc A few Hebrew mss and two Greek mss read “a fire is kindled in my anger” (reading קָדְחָה, qodkha) as in 15:14 in place of “you have kindled a fire in my anger” (reading קָדַחְתֶּם, qadakhtem) in the majority of Hebrew mss and versions. The variant may be explained on the basis of harmonization with the parallel passage.

²⁵ tn Heb “have given…into the hand of.”

²⁶ sn See the study note on 25:9 for the significance of the application of this term to Nebuchadnezzar.

²⁷ tn Heb “I have given…to him to serve him.” The verb “give” in this syntactical situation is functioning like the Hiphil stem, i.e., as a causative. See Dan 1:9 for parallel usage. For the usage of “serve” meaning “be subject to” compare 2 Sam 22:44 and BDB 713 s.v. עָבַד 3.

²⁹ sn Various means of divination are alluded to in the OT. For example, Ezek 21:26-27 alludes to throwing down arrows to see which way they fall and consulting the shape of the liver of slaughtered animals. Gen 44:5 alludes to reading the future through pouring liquid in a cup. The means alluded to in this verse were all classified as pagan and prohibited as illegitimate in Deut 18:10-14. The Lord had promised that he would speak to them through prophets like Moses (Deut 18:15, 18). But even prophets could lie. Hence, the Lord told them that the test of a true prophet was whether what he said came true or not (Deut 18:20-22). An example of false prophesying and the vindication of the true as opposed to the false will be given in the chapter that follows this.

³⁰ sn An example of this is seen in 1 Sam 28.

³¹ tn The verb in this context is best taken as a negative obligatory imperfect. See IBHS 508-9 §31.4g for discussion and examples. See Exod 4:15 as an example of positive obligation.

³³ tn Heb “I spoke to Zedekiah…according to all these words, saying.”

³⁴ sn The verbs in this verse are all plural. They are addressed to Zedekiah and his royal advisers (compare 22:2).

³⁵ tn Heb “put their necks in the yoke of.” See the study note on v. 2 for the figure.

³⁷ tn Heb “And they complied, [that is] all the leaders and all the people who entered into the covenant that they would each let his male slave and his female slave go free so as not to hold them in bondage any longer; they complied and they let [them] go.” The verb “they complied” (Heb “they hearkened”) is repeated at the end after the lengthy description of the subject. This is characteristic of Hebrew style. The translation has resolved the complex sentence by making the relative clauses modifying the subject independent sentences describing the situational background before mentioning the main focus, “they had complied and let them go.”

⁴¹ sn Compare Deut 15:12-18 for the complete statement of this law. Here only the first part of it is cited.