21:8 “But 9 tell the people of Jerusalem 10 that the Lord says, ‘I will give you a choice between two courses of action. One will result in life; the other will result in death. 11 21:9 Those who stay in this city will die in battle or of starvation or disease. Those who leave the city and surrender to the Babylonians who are besieging it will live. They will escape with their lives. 12 21:10 For I, the Lord, say that 13 I am determined not to deliver this city but to bring disaster on it. 14 It will be handed over to the king of Babylon and he will destroy it with fire.’” 15
21:11 The Lord told me to say 16 to the royal court 17 of Judah,
“Listen to what the Lord says,
21:12 O royal family descended from David. 18
The Lord says:
‘See to it that people each day 19 are judged fairly. 20
Deliver those who have been robbed from those 21 who oppress them.
Otherwise, my wrath will blaze out against you.
It will burn like a fire that cannot be put out
because of the evil that you have done. 22
21:13 Listen, you 23 who sit enthroned above the valley on a rocky plateau.
I am opposed to you,’ 24 says the Lord. 25
‘You boast, “No one can swoop down on us.
No one can penetrate into our places of refuge.” 26
21:14 But I will punish you as your deeds deserve,’
says the Lord. 27
‘I will set fire to your palace;
it will burn up everything around it.’” 28
1 tn Heb “Tell Zedekiah, ‘Thus says the
2 tn Heb “the weapons which are in your hand.” Weapons stands here by substitution for the soldiers who wield them.
3 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.
4 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.
5 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.
6 map For location see Map5-B1; Map6-F3; Map7-E2; Map8-F2; Map10-B3; JP1-F4; JP2-F4; JP3-F4; JP4-F4.
7 tn Heb “And afterward.”
8 tn Heb “oracle of the
9 tn Heb “And/But unto this people you shall say…” “But” is suggested here by the unusual word order which offsets what they are to say to Zedekiah (v. 3).
10 tn Heb “these people.”
11 tn Heb “Behold I am setting before you the way of life and the way of death.”
12 tn Heb “his life will be to him for spoil.”
13 tn Heb “oracle of the
14 tn Heb “I have set my face against this city for evil [i.e., disaster] and not for good [i.e., well-being].” For the use of the idiom “set one’s face against/toward” see, e.g., usage in 1 Kgs 2:15; 2 Kgs 2:17; Jer 42:15, 17 and note the interesting interplay of usage in Jer 44:11-12.
15 tn Heb “he will burn it with fire.”
16 tn The words “The
17 tn Heb “house” or “household.” It is clear from 22:1-6 that this involved the King, the royal family, and the court officials.
18 tn Heb “house of David.” This is essentially equivalent to the royal court in v. 11.
19 tn Heb “to the morning” = “morning by morning” or “each morning.” See Isa 33:2 and Amos 4:4 for parallel usage.
20 sn The kings of Israel and Judah were responsible for justice. See Pss 122:5. The king himself was the final court of appeals judging from the incident of David with the wise woman of Tekoa (2 Sam 14), Solomon and the two prostitutes (1 Kgs 3:16-28), and Absalom’s attempts to win the hearts of the people of Israel by interfering with due process (2 Sam 15:2-4). How the system was designed to operate may be seen from 2 Chr 19:4-11.
21 tn Heb “from the hand [or power] of.”
22 tn Heb “Lest my wrath go out like fire and burn with no one to put it out because of the evil of your deeds.”
23 tn Or “Listen, Jerusalem, you…”; Heb text of v. 21a-b reads, “Behold I am against you [fem. sg.], O inhabitant [fem. sg.] of the valley [and of] the rock of the plain, oracle of the
24 tn Heb “I am against you.”
25 tn Heb “oracle of the
26 tn Heb “Who can swoop…Who can penetrate…?” The questions are rhetorical and expect a negative answer. They are rendered as negative affirmations for clarity.
27 tn Heb “oracle of the
28 tn Heb “I will set fire in its forest and it will devour its surroundings.” The pronouns are actually third feminine singular going back to the participle “you who sit enthroned above the valley.” However, this is another example of those rapid shifts in pronouns typical of the biblical Hebrew style which are uncommon in English. They have regularly been leveled to the same person throughout in the translation to avoid possible confusion for the English reader.