8:22 There is still medicinal ointment 1 available in Gilead!
There is still a physician there! 2
Why then have my dear people 3
not been restored to health? 4
30:12 Moreover, 5 the Lord says to the people of Zion, 6
“Your injuries are incurable;
your wounds are severe. 7
30:13 There is no one to plead your cause.
There are no remedies for your wounds. 8
There is no healing for you.
30:14 All your allies have abandoned you. 9
They no longer have any concern for you.
For I have attacked you like an enemy would.
I have chastened you cruelly.
For your wickedness is so great
and your sin is so much. 10
30:15 Why do you complain about your injuries,
that your pain is incurable?
I have done all this to you
because your wickedness is so great
and your sin is so much.
46:11 Go up to Gilead and get medicinal ointment, 11
you dear poor people of Egypt. 12
But it will prove useless no matter how much medicine you use; 13
there will be no healing for you.
3:19 Your destruction is like an incurable wound; 14
your demise is like a fatal injury! 15
All who hear what has happened to you 16 will clap their hands for joy, 17
for no one ever escaped your endless cruelty! 18
1 tn Heb “balm.” The more familiar “ointment” has been used in the translation, supplemented with the adjective “medicinal.”
2 tn Heb “Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there?” In this context the questions are rhetorical and expect a positive answer, which is made explicit in the translation.
3 tn Heb “daughter of my people.” For the translation given here see 4:11 and the note on the phrase “dear people” there.
4 tn Or more clearly, “restored to spiritual health”; Heb “Why then has healing not come to my dear people?”
5 tn The particle כִּי (ki) here is parallel to the one in v. 5 that introduces the first oracle. See the discussion in the translator’s note there.
6 tn The pronouns in vv. 10-17 are second feminine singular referring to a personified entity. That entity is identified in v. 17 as Zion, which here stands for the people of Zion.
7 sn The wounds to the body politic are those of the incursions from the enemy from the north referred to in Jer 4:6; 6:1 over which Jeremiah and even God himself have lamented (Jer 8:21; 10:19; 14:17). The enemy from the north has been identified as Babylon and has been identified as the agent of God’s punishment of his disobedient people (Jer 1:15; 4:6; 25:9).
8 tc The translation of these first two lines follows the redivision of the lines suggested in NIV and NRSV rather than that of the Masoretes who read, “There is no one who pleads your cause with reference to [your] wound.”
9 tn Heb “forgotten you.”
10 tn Heb “attacked you like…with the chastening of a cruel one because of the greatness of your iniquity [and because] your sins are many.” The sentence has been broken down to conform to contemporary English style and better poetic scansion.
11 tn Heb “balm.” See 8:22 and the notes on this phrase there.
12 sn Heb “Virgin Daughter of Egypt.” See the study note on Jer 14:17 for the significance of the use of this figure. The use of the figure here perhaps refers to the fact that Egypt’s geographical isolation allowed her safety and protection that a virgin living at home would enjoy under her father’s protection (so F. B. Huey, Jeremiah, Lamentations [NAC], 379). By her involvement in the politics of Palestine she had forfeited that safety and protection and was now suffering for it.
13 tn Heb “In vain you multiply [= make use of many] medicines.”
14 tc The MT reads the hapax legomenon כֵּהָה (kehah, “relief, alleviation”). On the other hand, the LXX reads ἴασις (iasi", “healing”) which seems to reflect a reading of גֵּהָה (gehah, “cure, healing”). In the light of the LXX, the BHS editors suggest emending the MT to גֵּהָה (gehah) – which occurs only once elsewhere (Prov 17:22) – on the basis of orthographic and phonological confusion between Hebrew כ (kaf) and ג (gimel). This emendation would produce the common ancient Near Eastern treaty-curse: “there is no cure for your wound” (e.g., Hos 5:13); see HALOT 461 s.v. כֵּהָה; K. J. Cathcart, “Treaty-Curses and the Book of Nahum,” CBQ 35 (1973): 186; D. Hillers, Treaty-Curses and the Old Testament Prophets, 64-66.
15 tn Heb “your injury is fatal.”
16 tn Heb “the report of you.”
17 tn Heb “will clap their hands over you.”
18 tn Heb “For who ever escaped…?”