Jeremiah 8:3

8:3 However, I will leave some of these wicked people alive and banish them to other places. But wherever these people who survive may go, they will wish they had died rather than lived,” ¹  says the Lord who rules over all. ² 

Jeremiah 42:2

42:2 They said to him, “Please grant our request ³  and pray to the Lord your God for all those of us who are still left alive here. ⁴  For, as you yourself can see, there are only a few of us left out of the many there were before. ⁵ 

¹ tn Heb “Death will be chosen rather than life by the remnant who are left from this wicked family in all the places where I have banished them.” The sentence is broken up and restructured to avoid possible confusion because of the complexity of the English to some modern readers. There appears to be an extra “those who are left” that was inadvertently copied from the preceding line. It is missing from one Hebrew ms and from the Greek and Syriac versions and is probably not a part of the original text.

² tn Heb “Yahweh of armies.”

³ tn Heb “please let our petition fall before you.” For the idiom here see 37:20 and the translator’s note there.

⁴ tn Heb “on behalf of us, [that is] on behalf of all this remnant.”

⁵ 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.