Jeremiah 2:37

2:37 Moreover, you will come away from Egypt

with your hands covering your faces in sorrow and shame ¹ 

because the Lord will not allow your reliance on them to be successful

and you will not gain any help from them. ² 

Jeremiah 21:4-5

21:4 that the Lord, the God of Israel, says, ³  ‘The forces at your disposal ⁴  are now outside the walls fighting against King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon and the Babylonians ⁵  who have you under siege. I will gather those forces back inside the city. ⁶  21:5 In anger, in fury, and in wrath I myself will fight against you with my mighty power and great strength! ⁷ 

Jeremiah 33:5

33:5 ‘The defenders of the city will go out and fight with the Babylonians. ⁸  But they will only fill those houses and buildings with the dead bodies of the people that I will kill in my anger and my wrath. ⁹  That will happen because I have decided to turn my back on ¹⁰  this city on account of the wicked things they have done. ¹¹ 

Jeremiah 37:10

37:10 For even if you were to defeat all the Babylonian forces ¹²  fighting against you so badly that only wounded men were left lying in their tents, they would get up and burn this city down.”’” ¹³ 

Numbers 14:41

14:41 But Moses said, “Why ¹⁴  are you now transgressing the commandment ¹⁵  of the Lord? It will not succeed!

Numbers 14:2

14:2 And all the Israelites murmured ¹⁶  against Moses and Aaron, and the whole congregation said to them, “If only we had died ¹⁷  in the land of Egypt, or if only we had perished ¹⁸  in this wilderness!

Numbers 13:12

13:12 from the tribe of Dan, Ammiel son of Gemalli;

Numbers 24:20

Balaam’s Final Prophecies

24:20 Then Balaam ¹⁹  looked on Amalek and delivered this oracle: ²⁰ 

“Amalek was the first ²¹  of the nations,

but his end will be that he will perish.”

Proverbs 21:30

21:30 There is no wisdom and there is no understanding,

and there is no counsel against ²²  the Lord. ²³ 

Ezekiel 17:9-10

17:9 “‘Say to them: This is what the sovereign Lord says:

“‘Will it prosper?

Will he not rip out its roots

and cause its fruit to rot ²⁴  and wither?

All its foliage ²⁵  will wither.

No strong arm or large army

will be needed to pull it out by its roots. ²⁶ 

17:10 Consider! It is planted, but will it prosper?

Will it not wither completely when the east wind blows on it?

Will it not wither in the soil where it sprouted?’”

Ezekiel 17:15

17:15 But this one from Israel’s royal family ²⁷  rebelled against the king of Babylon ²⁸  by sending his emissaries to Egypt to obtain horses and a large army. Will he prosper? Will the one doing these things escape? Can he break the covenant and escape?

¹ tn Heb “with your hands on your head.” For the picture here see 2 Sam 13:19.

² tn Heb “The Lord has rejected those you trust in; you will not prosper by/from them.”

³ tn Heb “Tell Zedekiah, ‘Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel.’” Using the indirect quote eliminates one level of embedded quotation and makes it easier for the reader to follow.

⁴ tn Heb “the weapons which are in your hand.” Weapons stands here by substitution for the soldiers who wield them.

⁵ sn The Babylonians (Heb “the Chaldeans”). The Chaldeans were a group of people in the country south of Babylon from which Nebuchadnezzar came. The Chaldean dynasty his father established became the name by which the Babylonians are regularly referred to in the book of Jeremiah. Jeremiah’s contemporary Ezekiel uses both terms.

⁶ tn The structure of the Hebrew sentence of this verse is long and complex and has led to a great deal of confusion and misunderstanding. There are two primary points of confusion: 1) the relation of the phrase “outside the walls,” and 2) the antecedent of “them” in the last clause of the verse that reads in Hebrew: “I will gather them back into the midst of the city.” Most take the phrase “outside the walls” with “the Babylonians….” Some take it with “turn back/bring back” to mean “from outside….” However, the preposition “from” is part of the idiom for “outside….” The phrase goes with “fighting” as J. Bright (Jeremiah [AB], 215) notes and as NJPS suggests. The antecedent of “them” has sometimes been taken mistakenly to refer to the Babylonians. It refers rather to “the forces at your disposal” which is literally “the weapons which are in your hands.” This latter phrase is a figure involving substitution (called metonymy) as Bright also correctly notes. The whole sentence reads in Hebrew: “I will bring back the weapons of war which are in your hand with which you are fighting Nebuchadrezzar the King of Babylon and the Chaldeans who are besieging you outside your wall and I will gather them into the midst of the city.” The sentence has been restructured to better reflect the proper relationships and to make the sentence conform more to contemporary English style.

⁷ tn Heb “with outstretched hand and with strong arm.” These are, of course, figurative of God’s power and might. He does not literally have hands and arms.

⁸ tn Heb “The Chaldeans.” See the study note on 21:4 for further explanation.

⁹ sn This refers to the tearing down of buildings within the city to strengthen the wall or to fill gaps in it which had been broken down by the Babylonian battering rams. For a parallel to this during the siege of Sennacherib in the time of Hezekiah see Isa 22:10; 2 Chr 32:5. These torn-down buildings were also used as burial mounds for those who died in the fighting or through starvation and disease during the siege. The siege prohibited them from taking the bodies outside the city for burial and leaving them in their houses or in the streets would have defiled them.

¹⁰ tn Heb “Because I have hidden my face from.” The modern equivalent for this gesture of rejection is “to turn the back on.” See Ps 13:1 for comparable usage. The perfect is to be interpreted as a perfect of resolve (cf. IBHS 488-89 §30.5.1d and compare the usage in Ruth 4:3).

¹¹ tn The translation and meaning of vv. 4-5 are somewhat uncertain. The translation and precise meaning of vv. 4-5 are uncertain at a number of points due to some difficult syntactical constructions and some debate about the text and meaning of several words. The text reads more literally, “33:4 For thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, concerning the houses of this city and concerning the houses of the kings of Judah which have been torn down on account the siege ramps and the sword 33:5 going to fight the Chaldeans and to fill them with the dead bodies of the men whom I have killed in my anger and in my wrath and on account of all whose wickedness I have hidden my face from this city.” There are two difficult syntactical forms (1) the participle at the beginning of v. 5 “going [or those going] to fight” (בָּאִים, ba’im) and (2) the infinitive plus suffix that introduces the next clause “and to fill them” (וּלְמַלְאָם, ulÿmal’am). The translation has interpreted the former as a verbal use of the participle with an indefinite subject “they” (= the defenders of Jerusalem who have torn down the buildings; cf. GKC 460-61 §144.i for this point of grammar). The conjunction plus preposition plus infinitive construct has been interpreted as equivalent to a finite verb (cf. IBHS 611 §36.3.2a, i.e., “and they will fill them [the houses and buildings of v. 4]”). Adopting the Greek text of these two verses would produce a smoother reading. It reads “For thus says the Lord concerning the houses of this city and concerning the houses of the kings of Judah which have been pulled down for mounds and fortifications to fight against the Chaldeans and to fill it [should be “them”] with the corpses of men whom I smote in my anger and my wrath and I turned away my face from them [rather than from “this city” of the Hebrew text] for all their wickedness: Behold I will…” The Greek does not have the problem with the participle because it has seen it as part of a word meaning fortification. This also eliminates the problem with the infinitive because it is interpreted as parallel with “to fight.” I.e., the defenders used these torn-down buildings for defensive fortifications and for burial places. It would be tempting to follow this reading. However, there is no graphically close form for “fortification” that would explain how the more difficult בָּאִים הֶחָרֶב (hekharev ba’im) of the Hebrew text arose and there is doubt whether סֹלְלוֹת (solÿlot) can refer to a defense mound. W. L. Holladay (Jeremiah [Hermeneia], 2:221, 225) has suggested reading הַחֲרַכִּים (hakharakim) in place of הֶחָרֶב (hekharev) in the technical sense of “crenels,” the gaps between the raised portion on top of the wall (which raised portion he calls “merlons” and equates with סֹלְלוֹת, solÿlot). He does not, however, further suggest seeing בָּאִים (ba’im) as part of this corrupted form, choosing to see it rather as a gloss. His emendation and interpretation, however, have been justly criticized as violating the usage of both סֹלְלוֹת which is elsewhere “siege mound” and חֲרַכִּים (kharakim) which elsewhere refers only to the latticed opening of a window (Song 2:9). Until a more acceptable explanation of how the difficult Hebrew text could have arisen from the Greek, the Hebrew should be retained, though it is admittedly awkward. G. L. Keown, P. J. Scalise, and T. G. Smothers (Jeremiah 26-52 [WBC], 166, 172) have perhaps the best discussion of the issues and the options involved here.

¹² tn Heb “all the army of the Chaldeans.” For the rendering “Babylonian” in place of Chaldean see the study note on 21:4.

¹³ tn The length and complexity of this English sentence violates the more simple style that has been used to conform such sentences to contemporary English style. However, there does not seem to be any alternative that would enable a simpler style and still retain the causal and conditional connections that give this sentence the rhetorical force that it has in the original. The condition is, of course, purely hypothetical and the consequence a poetic exaggeration. The intent is to assure Zedekiah that there is absolutely no hope of the city being spared.

¹⁴ tn The line literally has, “Why is this [that] you are transgressing….” The demonstrative pronoun is enclitic; it brings the force of “why in the world are you doing this now?”

¹⁵ tn Heb “mouth.”

¹⁶ tn The Hebrew verb “to murmur” is לוּן (lun). It is a strong word, signifying far more than complaining or grumbling, as some of the modern translations have it. The word is most often connected to the wilderness experience. It is paralleled in the literature with the word “to rebel.” The murmuring is like a parliamentary vote of no confidence, for they no longer trusted their leaders and wished to choose a new leader and return. This “return to Egypt” becomes a symbol of their lack of faith in the Lord.

¹⁷ tn The optative is expressed by לוּ (lu) and then the verb, here the perfect tense מַתְנוּ (matnu) – “O that we had died….” Had they wanted to die in Egypt they should not have cried out to the Lord to deliver them from bondage. Here the people became consumed with the fear and worry of what lay ahead, and in their panic they revealed a lack of trust in God.

¹⁸ tn Heb “died.”

¹⁹ tn Heb “he”; the referent (Balaam) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

²⁰ tn Heb “and he lifted up his oracle and said.” So also in vv. 21, 23.

²¹ sn This probably means that it held first place, or it thought that it was “the first of the nations.” It was not the first, either in order or greatness.

²² tn The form לְנֶגֶד (lÿneged) means “against; over against; in opposition to.” The line indicates they cannot in reality be in opposition, for human wisdom is nothing in comparison to the wisdom of God (J. H. Greenstone, Proverbs, 232).

²³ sn The verse uses a single sentence to state that all wisdom, understanding, and advice must be in conformity to the will of God to be successful. It states it negatively – these things cannot be in defiance of God (e.g., Job 5:12-13; Isa 40:13-14).

²⁴ tn The Hebrew root occurs only here in the OT and appears to have the meaning of “strip off.” In application to fruit the meaning may be “cause to rot.”

²⁵ tn Heb “all the טַרְפֵּי (tarpey) of branches.” The word טַרְפֵּי occurs only here in the Bible; its precise meaning is uncertain.

²⁶ tn Or “there will be no strong arm or large army when it is pulled up by the roots.”

²⁷ tn Heb “he”; the referent (the member of the royal family, v. 13) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

²⁸ tn Heb “him”; the referent (the king of Babylon) has been specified in the translation for clarity.