Jeremiah 5:19

5:19 “So then, Jeremiah, ¹  when your people ²  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 ³  you must serve foreigners ⁴  in a land that does not belong to you.’

Jeremiah 25:30

25:30 “Then, Jeremiah, ⁵  make the following prophecy ⁶  against them:

‘Like a lion about to attack, ⁷  the Lord will roar from the heights of heaven;

from his holy dwelling on high he will roar loudly.

He will roar mightily against his land. ⁸ 

He will shout in triumph like those stomping juice from the grapes ⁹ 

against all those who live on the earth.

Jeremiah 38:6

38:6 So the officials ¹⁰  took Jeremiah and put him in the cistern ¹¹  of Malkijah, one of the royal princes, ¹²  that was in the courtyard of the guardhouse. There was no water in the cistern, only mud. So when they lowered Jeremiah into the cistern with ropes he sank in the mud. ¹³ 

Jeremiah 44:26

44:26 But ¹⁴  listen to what the Lord has to say, all you people of Judah who are living in the land of Egypt. The Lord says, ‘I hereby swear by my own great name that none of the people of Judah who are living anywhere in Egypt will ever again invoke my name in their oaths! Never again will any of them use it in an oath saying, “As surely as the Lord God lives….” ¹⁵ 

Jeremiah 52:4

52:4 King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon came against Jerusalem with his whole army and set up camp outside it. ¹⁶  They built siege ramps all around it. He arrived on the tenth day of the tenth month in the ninth year that Zedekiah ruled over Judah. ¹⁷ 

Jeremiah 52:7

52:7 They broke through the city walls, and all the soldiers tried to escape. They left the city during the night. They went through the gate between the two walls that is near the king’s garden. ¹⁸  (The Babylonians had the city surrounded.) Then they headed for the Jordan Valley. ¹⁹ 

Jeremiah 52:31

Jehoiachin in Exile

52:31 In the thirty-seventh year of the exile of King Jehoiachin of Judah, on the twenty-fifth ²⁰  day of the twelfth month, ²¹  Evil-Merodach, in the first year of his reign, pardoned ²²  King Jehoiachin of Judah and released him from prison.

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.

⁵ tn The word “Jeremiah” is not in the text. It is supplied in the translation to make clear who is being addressed.

⁶ tn Heb “Prophesy against them all these words.”

⁷ tn The words “like a lion about to attack” are not in the text but are implicit in the metaphor. The explicit comparison of the Lord to a lion is made at the end of the passage in v. 38. The words are supplied in the translation here for clarity.

⁸ sn The word used here (Heb “his habitation”) refers to the land of Canaan which the Lord chose to make his earthly dwelling (Exod 15:13) and which was the dwelling place of his chosen people (Jer 10:25; Isa 32:18). Judgment would begin at the “house of God” (v. 29; 1 Pet 4:17) but would extend to the rest of the earth (v. 29).

⁹ sn The metaphor shifts from God as a lion to God as a mighty warrior (Jer 20:11; Isa 42:13; Zeph 3:17) shouting in triumph over his foes. Within the metaphor is a simile where the warrior is compared to a person stomping on grapes to remove the juice from them in the making of wine. The figure will be invoked later in a battle scene where the sounds of joy in the grape harvest are replaced by the sounds of joy of the enemy soldiers (Jer 48:33). The picture is drawn in more gory detail in Isa 63:1-6.

⁹ tn Heb “they.”

¹⁰ sn A cistern was a pear-shaped pit with a narrow opening. Cisterns were cut or dug in the limestone rock and lined with plaster to prevent seepage. They were used to collect and store rain water or water carried up from a spring.

¹¹ tn Heb “the son of the king.” See the translator’s note on Jer 36:26 for the rendering here.

¹² tn Heb “And they let Jeremiah down with ropes and in the cistern there was no water, only mud, and Jeremiah sank in the mud.” The clauses have been reordered and restructured to create a more natural and smoother order in English.

¹³ tn Heb “Therefore.” This particle quite often introduces the announcement of judgment after an indictment or accusation of a crime. That is its function here after the statement of cause in vv. 24-25. However, it would not sound right after the immediately preceding ironical or sarcastic commands to go ahead and fulfill their vows. “But” is a better transition unless one wants to paraphrase “Therefore, since you are so determined to do that….”

¹⁴ tn Heb “Behold I swear by…that my name will no more be pronounced in the mouth of any man of Judah in all the land of Egypt saying, ‘As the Lord Yahweh lives.’” The sentence has been broken up and restructured to better conform with contemporary English style and the significance of pronouncing the name has been interpreted for the sake of readers who might not be familiar with this biblical idiom.

¹⁷ tn Or “against.”

¹⁸ sn This would have been January 15, 588 b.c. The reckoning is based on the calendar that begins the year in the spring (Nisan = March/April).

²¹ sn The king’s garden is mentioned again in Neh 3:15 in conjunction with the pool of Siloam and the stairs that go down from the city of David. This would have been in the southern part of the city near the Tyropean Valley which agrees with the reference to the “two walls” which were probably the walls on the eastern and western hills.

²² sn Heb “toward the Arabah.” The Arabah was the rift valley north and south of the Dead Sea. Here the intention was undoubtedly to escape across the Jordan to Moab or Ammon. It appears from 40:14; 41:15 that the Ammonites were known to harbor fugitives from the Babylonians.

²⁵ sn The parallel account in 2 Kgs 25:28 has “twenty-seventh.”

²⁶ sn The twenty-fifth day would be March 20, 561 b.c. in modern reckoning.

²⁷ tn Heb “lifted up the head of.”