Jeremiah 22:9

22:9 The answer will come back, “It is because they broke their covenant with the Lord their God and worshiped and served other gods.”

Jeremiah 16:11

16:11 Then tell them that the Lord says, ¹  ‘It is because your ancestors ²  rejected me and paid allegiance to ³  other gods. They have served them and worshiped them. But they have rejected me and not obeyed my law. ⁴ 

Jeremiah 52:12

52:12 On the tenth ⁵  day of the fifth month, ⁶  in the nineteenth year of King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, Nebuzaradan, the captain of the royal guard ⁷  who served ⁸  the king of Babylon, arrived in Jerusalem.

Jeremiah 8:2

8:2 They will be spread out and exposed to the sun, the moon and the stars. ⁹  These are things they ¹⁰  adored and served, things to which they paid allegiance, ¹¹  from which they sought guidance, and worshiped. The bones of these people ¹²  will never be regathered and reburied. They will be like manure used to fertilize the ground. ¹³ 

Jeremiah 5:19

5:19 “So then, Jeremiah, ¹⁴  when your people ¹⁵  ask, ‘Why has the Lord our God done all this to us?’ tell them, ‘It is because you rejected me and served foreign gods in your own land. So ¹⁶  you must serve foreigners ¹⁷  in a land that does not belong to you.’

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.” ¹⁸  But your ancestors did not obey me or pay any attention to me.

Jeremiah 25:14

25:14 For many nations and great kings will make slaves of the king of Babylon and his nation ¹⁹  too. I will repay them for all they have done!’” ²⁰ 

Jeremiah 37:2

37:2 Neither he nor the officials who served him nor the people of Judah paid any attention to what the Lord said through the prophet Jeremiah. ²¹ 

¹ 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.”

² tn Heb “fathers” (also in vv. 12, 13, 15, 19).

³ tn Heb “followed after.” See the translator’s note at 2:5 for the explanation of the idiom.

⁴ 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.

¹ tn The parallel account in 2 Kgs 25:8 has “seventh.”

² sn The tenth day of the month would have been August 17, 586 b.c. in modern reckoning.

³ tn For the meaning of this phrase see BDB 371 s.v. טַבָּח 2 and compare the usage in Gen 39:1.

⁴ tn Heb “stood before.”

¹ 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.”

² tn Heb “the sun, moon, and host of heaven which they…”

³ tn Heb “followed after.” See the translator’s note at 2:5 for the idiom.

⁴ tn Heb “they will not” but the referent is far enough removed that it might be ambiguous.

⁵ tn Heb “like dung/manure on the surface of the ground.”

¹ tn The word, “Jeremiah,” is not in the text but the second person address in the second half of the verse is obviously to him. The word is supplied in the translation here for clarity.

² tn The MT reads the second masculine plural; this is probably a case of attraction to the second masculine plural pronoun in the preceding line. An alternative would be to understand a shift from speaking first to the people in the first half of the verse and then speaking to Jeremiah in the second half where the verb is second masculine singular. E.g., “When you [people] say, “Why…?” then you, Jeremiah, tell them…”

³ tn Heb “As you left me and…, so you will….” The translation was chosen so as to break up a rather long and complex sentence.

⁴ sn This is probably a case of deliberate ambiguity (double entendre). The adjective “foreigners” is used for both foreign people (so Jer 30:8; 51:51) and foreign gods (so Jer 2:25; 3:13). See also Jer 16:13 for the idea of having to serve other gods in the lands of exile.

¹ sn Compare Deut 15:12-18 for the complete statement of this law. Here only the first part of it is cited.

¹ tn Heb “make slaves of them.” The verb form here indicates that the action is as good as done (the Hebrew prophetic perfect). For the use of the verb rendered “makes slaves” see parallel usage in Lev 25:39, 46 (cf. BDB 713 s.v. עָבַד 3).

² tn Heb “according to their deeds and according to the work of their hands.” The two phrases are synonymous; it would be hard to represent them both in translation without being redundant. The translation attempts to represent them by the qualifier “all” before the first phrase.

¹ sn These two verses (37:1-2) are introductory to chs. 37–38 and are intended to characterize Zedekiah and his regime as disobedient just like Jehoiakim and his regime had been (Jer 36:27; cf. 2 Kgs 24:19-20). This characterization is important because Zedekiah is portrayed in the incidents that follow in 37–38 as seeking the Lord’s help or seeking a word from the Lord. However though he did send to inquire of Jeremiah three times, he did not pay attention to the warnings that he received in reply and was ultimately responsible for the fall of Jerusalem (Jer 39). As elsewhere in the book of Jeremiah, Jeconiah’s reign is passed over in silence because it was negligible and because Jeremiah did not wish to legitimize the hopes that many in Israel and Babylon had in his returning from exile and resuming rule over Judah (see further the study notes on 22:24, 30 and 33:30).