Jeremiah 9:11

9:11 The Lord said, ¹ 

“I will make Jerusalem ²  a heap of ruins.

Jackals will make their home there. ³ 

I will destroy the towns of Judah

so that no one will be able to live in them.”

Jeremiah 19:8

19:8 I will make this city an object of horror, a thing to be hissed at. All who pass by it will be filled with horror and will hiss out their scorn ⁴  because of all the disasters that have happened to it. ⁵ 

Jeremiah 25:9

25:9 So I, the Lord, affirm that ⁶  I will send for all the peoples of the north ⁷  and my servant, ⁸  King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon. I will bring them against this land and its inhabitants and all the nations that surround it. I will utterly destroy ⁹  this land, its inhabitants, and all the nations that surround it ¹⁰  and make them everlasting ruins. ¹¹  I will make them objects of horror and hissing scorn. ¹² 

Jeremiah 49:13

49:13 For I solemnly swear,” ¹³  says the Lord, “that Bozrah ¹⁴  will become a pile of ruins. It will become an object of horror and ridicule, an example to be used in curses. ¹⁵  All the towns around it will lie in ruins forever.”

Jeremiah 50:13

50:13 After I vent my wrath on it Babylon will be uninhabited. ¹⁶ 

It will be totally desolate.

All who pass by will be filled with horror and will hiss out their scorn

because of all the disasters that have happened to it. ¹⁷ 

Leviticus 26:33-34

26:33 I will scatter you among the nations and unsheathe the sword ¹⁸  after you, so your land will become desolate and your cities will become a waste.

26:34 “‘Then the land will make up for ¹⁹  its Sabbaths all the days it lies desolate while you are in the land of your enemies; then the land will rest and make up its Sabbaths.

Leviticus 26:43

26:43 The land will be abandoned by them ²⁰  in order that it may make up for ²¹  its Sabbaths while it is made desolate ²²  without them, ²³  and they will make up for their iniquity because ²⁴  they have rejected my regulations and have abhorred ²⁵  my statutes.

Deuteronomy 29:23

29:23 The whole land will be covered with brimstone, salt, and burning debris; it will not be planted nor will it sprout or produce grass. It will resemble the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboiim, which the Lord destroyed in his intense anger. ²⁶ 

Isaiah 6:11

6:11 I replied, “How long, sovereign master?” He said,

“Until cities are in ruins and unpopulated,

and houses are uninhabited,

and the land is ruined and devastated,

Ezekiel 6:14

6:14 I will stretch out my hand against them ²⁷  and make the land a desolate waste from the wilderness to Riblah, ²⁸  in all the places where they live. Then they will know that I am the Lord!”

Ezekiel 12:19

12:19 Then say to the people of the land, ‘This is what the sovereign Lord says about the inhabitants of Jerusalem and of the land of Israel: They will eat their bread with anxiety and drink their water in fright, for their land will be stripped bare of all it contains because of the violence of all who live in it.

Ezekiel 33:28-29

33:28 I will turn the land into a desolate ruin; her confident pride will come to an end. The mountains of Israel will be so desolate no one will pass through them. 33:29 Then they will know that I am the Lord when I turn the land into a desolate ruin because of all the abominable deeds they have committed.’ ²⁹ 

¹ tn The words “the Lord said” are not in the text, but it is obvious from the content that he is the speaker. These words are supplied in the translation for clarity.

² map For location see Map5-B1; Map6-F3; Map7-E2; Map8-F2; Map10-B3; JP1-F4; JP2-F4; JP3-F4; JP4-F4.

³ tn Heb “a heap of ruins, a haunt for jackals.”

⁴ sn See 18:16 and the study note there.

⁵ tn Heb “all its smitings.” This word has been used several times for the metaphorical “wounds” that Israel has suffered as a result of the blows from its enemies. See, e.g., 14:17. It is used in the Hebrew Bible of scourging, both literally and metaphorically (cf. Deut 25:3; Isa 10:26), and of slaughter and defeat (1 Sam 4:10; Josh 10:20). Here it refers to the results of the crushing blows at the hands of her enemies which has made her the object of scorn.

⁶ tn Heb “Oracle of the Lord.”

⁷ sn The many allusions to trouble coming from the north are now clarified: it is the armies of Babylon which included within it contingents from many nations. See 1:14, 15; 4:6; 6:1, 22; 10:22; 13:20 for earlier allusions.

⁸ sn Nebuchadnezzar is called the Lord’s servant also in Jer 27:6; 43:10. He was the Lord’s servant in that he was the agent used by the Lord to punish his disobedient people. Assyria was earlier referred to as the Lord’s “rod” (Isa 10:5-6) and Cyrus is called his “shepherd” and his “anointed” (Isa 44:28; 45:1). P. C. Craigie, P. H. Kelley, and J. F. Drinkard (Jeremiah 1-25 [WBC], 364) make the interesting observation that the terms here are very similar to the terms in v. 4. The people of Judah ignored the servants, the prophets, he sent to turn them away from evil. So he will send other servants whom they cannot ignore.

⁹ tn The word used here was used in the early years of Israel’s conquest for the action of killing all the men, women, and children in the cities of Canaan, destroying all their livestock, and burning their cities down. This policy was intended to prevent Israel from being corrupted by paganism (Deut 7:2; 20:17-18; Josh 6:18, 21). It was to be extended to any city that led Israel away from worshiping God (Deut 13:15) and any Israelite who brought an idol into his house (Deut 7:26). Here the policy is being directed against Judah as well as against her neighbors because of her persistent failure to heed God’s warnings through the prophets. For further usage of this term in application to foreign nations in the book of Jeremiah see 50:21, 26; 51:3.

¹⁰ tn Heb “will utterly destroy them.” The referent (this land, its inhabitants, and the nations surrounding it) has been specified in the translation for clarity, since the previous “them” referred to Nebuchadnezzar and his armies.

¹¹ sn The Hebrew word translated “everlasting” is the word often translated “eternal.” However, it sometimes has a more limited time reference. For example it refers to the lifetime of a person who became a “lasting slave” to another person (see Exod 21:6; Deut 15:17). It is also used to refer to the long life wished for a king (1 Kgs 1:31; Neh 2:3). The time frame here is to be qualified at least with reference to Judah and Jerusalem as seventy years (see 29:10-14 and compare v. 12).

¹² tn Heb “I will make them an object of horror and a hissing and everlasting ruins.” The sentence has been broken up to separate the last object from the first two which are of slightly different connotation, i.e., they denote the reaction to the latter.

¹³ tn Heb “I swear by myself.” See 22:5 and the study note there.

¹⁴ sn Bozrah appears to have been the chief city in Edom, its capital city (see its parallelism with Edom in Isa 34:6; 63:1; Jer 49:22). The reference to “its towns” (translated here “all the towns around it”) could then be a reference to all the towns in Edom. It was located about twenty-five miles southeast of the southern end of the Dead Sea apparently in the district of Teman (see the parallelism in Amos 1:12).

¹⁵ tn See the study note on 24:9 for the rendering of this term.

¹⁶ tn Heb “From [or Because of] the wrath of the Lord it will be uninhabited.” The causal connection is spelled out more clearly and actively and the first person has been used because the speaker is the Lord. The referent “it” has been spelled out clearly from the later occurrence in the verse, “all who pass by Babylon.”

¹⁷ sn Compare Jer 49:17 and the study note there and see also the study notes on 18:16 and 19:8.

¹⁸ tn Heb “and I will empty sword” (see HALOT 1228 s.v. ריק 3).

¹⁹ tn There are two Hebrew roots רָצָה (ratsah), one meaning “to be pleased with; to take pleasure” (HALOT 1280-81 s.v. רצה; cf. “enjoy” in NASB, NIV, NRSV, and J. E. Hartley, Leviticus [WBC], 452), and the other meaning “to restore” (HALOT 1281-82 s.v. II רצה; cf. NAB “retrieve” and B. A. Levine, Leviticus [JPSTC], 189).

²⁰ tn Heb “from them.” The preposition “from” refers here to the agent of the action (J. E. Hartley, Leviticus [WBC], 455).

²¹ tn The jussive form of the verb with the simple vav (ו) here calls for a translation that expresses purpose.

²² tn The verb is the Hophal infinitive construct with the third feminine singular suffix (GKC 182 §67.y; cf. v. 34).

²³ tn Heb “from them.”

²⁴ tn Heb “because and in because,” a double expression, which is used only here and in Ezek 13:10 (without the vav) for emphasis (GKC 492 §158.b).

²⁵ tn Heb “and their soul has abhorred.”

²⁶ tn Heb “the anger and the wrath.” This construction is a hendiadys intended to intensify the emotion.

²⁷ sn I will stretch out my hand against them is a common expression in the book of Ezekiel (14:9, 13; 16:27; 25:7; 35:3).

²⁸ tc The Vulgate reads the name as “Riblah,” a city north of Damascus. The MT reads Diblah, a city otherwise unknown. The letters resh (ר) and dalet (ד) may have been confused in the Hebrew text. The town of Riblah was in the land of Hamath (2 Kgs 23:33) which represented the northern border of Israel (Ezek 47:14).

²⁹ sn The judgments of vv. 27-29 echo the judgments of Lev 26:22, 25.