Jeremiah 42:2-3

42:2 They said to him, “Please grant our request ¹  and pray to the Lord your God for all those of us who are still left alive here. ²  For, as you yourself can see, there are only a few of us left out of the many there were before. ³  42:3 Pray that the Lord your God will tell us where we should go and what we should do.”

Jeremiah 42:20

42:20 You are making a fatal mistake. ⁴  For you sent me to the Lord your God and asked me, ‘Pray to the Lord our God for us. Tell us what the Lord our God says and we will do it.’ ⁵ 

¹ tn Heb “please let our petition fall before you.” For the idiom here see 37:20 and the translator’s note there.

² tn Heb “on behalf of us, [that is] on behalf of all this remnant.”

³ tn Heb “For we are left a few from the many as your eyes are seeing us.” The words “used to be” are not in the text but are implicit. These words are supplied in the translation for clarity and smoothness of English style.

⁴ tn Heb “you are erring at the cost of your own lives” (BDB 1073 s.v. תָּעָה Hiph.3 and HALOT 1626 s.v. תָּעָה Hif 4, and cf. BDB 90 s.v. בְּ 3 and see parallels in 1 Kgs 2:23; 2 Sam 23:17 for the nuance of “at the cost of your lives”). This fits the context better than “you are deceiving yourselves” (KBL 1035 s.v. תָּעָה Hif 4). The reading here follows the Qere הִתְעֵיתֶם (hit’etem) rather than the Kethib which has a metathesis of י (yod) and ת (tav), i.e., הִתְעֵתֶים. The Greek text presupposes הֲרֵעֹתֶם (hare’otem, “you have done evil”), but that reading is generally rejected as secondary.

⁵ tn Heb “According to all which the Lord our God says so tell us and we will do.” The restructuring of the sentence is intended to better reflect contemporary English style.