2:30 “It did no good for me to punish your people.
They did not respond to such correction.
You slaughtered your prophets
like a voracious lion.” 1
5:3 Lord, I know you look for faithfulness. 2
But even when you punish these people, they feel no remorse. 3
Even when you nearly destroy them, they refuse to be corrected.
They have become as hardheaded as a rock. 4
They refuse to change their ways. 5
5:2 These people make promises in the name of the Lord. 6
But the fact is, 7 what they swear to is really a lie.” 8
6:1 “Run for safety, people of Benjamin!
Get out of Jerusalem! 9
Sound the trumpet 10 in Tekoa!
Light the signal fires at Beth Hakkerem!
For disaster lurks 11 out of the north;
it will bring great destruction. 12
6:1 “Run for safety, people of Benjamin!
Get out of Jerusalem! 13
Sound the trumpet 14 in Tekoa!
Light the signal fires at Beth Hakkerem!
For disaster lurks 15 out of the north;
it will bring great destruction. 16
6:2 I will destroy 17 Daughter Zion, 18
who is as delicate and defenseless as a young maiden. 19
28:1 The following events occurred in that same year, early in the reign of King Zedekiah of Judah. To be more precise, it was the fifth month of the fourth year of his reign. 20 The prophet Hananiah son of Azzur, who was from Gibeon, spoke to Jeremiah 21 in the Lord’s temple in the presence of the priests and all the people. 22
1 tn Heb “Your sword devoured your prophets like a destroying lion.” However, the reference to the sword in this and many similar idioms is merely idiomatic for death by violent means.
2 tn Heb “O
3 tn Commentaries and lexicons debate the meaning of the verb here. The MT is pointed as though from a verb meaning “to writhe in anguish or contrition” (חוּל [khul]; see, e.g., BDB 297 s.v. חוּל 2.c), but some commentaries and lexicons repoint the text as though from a verb meaning “to be sick,” thus “to feel pain” (חָלָה [khalah]; see, e.g., HALOT 304 s.v. חָלָה 3). The former appears more appropriate to the context.
4 tn Heb “They made their faces as hard as a rock.”
5 tn Or “to repent”; Heb “to turn back.”
6 tn Heb “Though they say, ‘As surely as the
7 tc The translation follows many Hebrew
8 tn Heb “they swear falsely.”
9 tn Heb “Flee for safety, people of Benjamin, out of the midst of Jerusalem.”
10 tn Heb “ram’s horn,” but the modern equivalent is “trumpet” and is more readily understandable.
11 tn Heb “leans down” or “looks down.” This verb personifies destruction leaning/looking down from its window in the sky, ready to attack.
12 tn Heb “[It will be] a severe fracture.” The nation is pictured as a limb being fractured.
13 tn Heb “Flee for safety, people of Benjamin, out of the midst of Jerusalem.”
14 tn Heb “ram’s horn,” but the modern equivalent is “trumpet” and is more readily understandable.
15 tn Heb “leans down” or “looks down.” This verb personifies destruction leaning/looking down from its window in the sky, ready to attack.
16 tn Heb “[It will be] a severe fracture.” The nation is pictured as a limb being fractured.
17 tn The verb here is another example of the Hebrew verb form that indicates the action is as good as done (a Hebrew prophetic perfect).
18 sn Jerusalem is personified as a young maiden who is helpless in the hands of her enemies.
19 tn Heb “The beautiful and delicate one I will destroy, the daughter of Zion. The English versions and commentaries are divided over the rendering of this verse because (1) there are two verbs with these same consonants, one meaning “to be like” and the other meaning “to be destroyed” (intransitive) or “to destroy” (transitive), and (2) the word rendered “beautiful” (נָוָה, navah) can be understood as a noun meaning “pasture” or as a defective writing of an adjective meaning “beautiful, comely” (נָאוָה, na’vah). Hence some render “Fair Zion, you are like a lovely pasture,” reading the verb form as an example of the old second feminine singular perfect. Although this may fit the imagery of the next verse, that rendering ignores the absence of a preposition (לְ or אֶל, lÿ or ’el, both of which can be translated “to”) that normally goes with the verb “be like” and drops the conjunction in front of the adjective “delicate.” The parallel usage of the verb in Hos 4:5 argues for the meaning “destroy.”
20 tc The original text is unusually full here and deemed by many scholars to be corrupt: Heb “And it happened in that year in the beginning of the reign of Zedekiah king of Judah, in the fourth year, in the fifth month Hananiah…said to…” Many scholars see a contradiction between “in the fourth year” and “in the beginning of the reign.” These scholars point to the fact that the Greek version does not have “in that year” and “in the beginning of the reign of”; it merely reads “in the fourth year of Zedekiah king of Judah, in the fifth month.” These scholars generally also regard the heading at 27:1 to be unoriginal and interpret the heading in the MT here as a faulty harmonization of the original (that in the Greek version) with the erroneous one in the Hebrew of 27:1. However, it is just as possible that the Greek version in both places is an attempt to harmonize the data of 27:1 and 28:1. I.e., it left out both the heading at 27:1, and “in that year” and “at the beginning of the reign of” in the heading here because it thought the data was contradictory. However, it is just as likely that there is really no contradiction here. I.e., the term “beginning of the reign” can include the fourth year. E. H. Merrill has argued that the term here refers not to the accession year (see the translator’s note on 26:1) but to the early years in general (“The ‘Accession Year’ and Davidic Chronology,” JANESCU 19 [1989]: 105-6, and cf. note 18 for bibliography on Akkadian parallels). Hence the phrase has been translated both here and in 27:1 “early in the reign of…” For other attempts at harmonization see the discussion in G. L. Keown, P. J. Scalise, T. G. Smothers, Jeremiah 26-52 (WBC), 41, n. 1a.
21 tn Heb “to me.” The rest of the chapter is all in third person narrative (see vv. 5, 6, 10, 11, 12, 15). Hence, many explain the first person here as a misunderstanding of the abbreviation “to Jeremiah” (אֶל יִרְמִיָּה [’el yirmiyyah] = אֵלַי, [’elay]). It is just as likely that there is a similar kind of disjunction here that was found in 27:1-2 only in the opposite direction. There what started out as a third person report was really a first person report. Here what starts out as a first person report is really a third person report. The text betrays both the hands of the narrator, probably Baruch, and the reportee, Jeremiah, who dictated a synopsis of his messages and his stories to Baruch to write down (Jer 36:4, 32).
22 tn Heb “And it happened in that year in the beginning of the reign of Zedekiah king of Judah, in the fourth year, in the fifth month, Hananiah son of Azzur the prophet who was from Gibeon said to me in…” The sentence has been broken up in conformity with contemporary English style and the flavor given in modern equivalent terms.