2 Chronicles 15:2

15:2 He met ¹  Asa and told him, “Listen to me, Asa and all Judah and Benjamin! The Lord is with you when you are loyal to him. ²  If you seek him, he will respond to you, ³  but if you reject him, he will reject you.

Deuteronomy 29:25-26

29:25 Then people will say, “Because they abandoned the covenant of the Lord, the God of their ancestors, which he made with them when he brought them out of the land of Egypt. 29:26 They went and served other gods and worshiped them, gods they did not know and that he did not permit them to worship. ⁴ 

Deuteronomy 29:1

Narrative Interlude

29:1 (28:69) ⁵  These are the words of the covenant that the Lord commanded Moses to make with the people of Israel in the land of Moab, in addition to the covenant he had made with them at Horeb. ⁶ 

Deuteronomy 28:9

28:9 The Lord will designate you as his holy people just as he promised you, if you keep his commandments ⁷  and obey him. ⁸ 

Jeremiah 2:19

2:19 Your own wickedness will bring about your punishment.

Your unfaithful acts will bring down discipline on you. ⁹ 

Know, then, and realize how utterly harmful ¹⁰ 

it was for you to reject me, the Lord your God, ¹¹ 

to show no respect for me,” ¹² 

says the Lord God who rules over all. ¹³ 

Jeremiah 4:18

4:18 “The way you have lived and the things you have done ¹⁴ 

will bring this on you.

This is the punishment you deserve, and it will be painful indeed. ¹⁵ 

The pain will be so bad it will pierce your heart.” ¹⁶ 

Jeremiah 5:19

5:19 “So then, Jeremiah, ¹⁷  when your people ¹⁸  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 ¹⁹  you must serve foreigners ²⁰  in a land that does not belong to you.’

Jeremiah 5:25

5:25 Your misdeeds have stopped these things from coming. ²¹ 

Your sins have deprived you of my bounty.’ ²² 

[15:2]  ¹ tn Heb “went out before.”

[15:2]  ² tn Heb “when you are with him.”

[15:2]  ³ tn Heb “he will allow himself to be found by you.”

[29:26]  ⁴ tn Heb “did not assign to them”; NASB, NRSV “had not allotted to them.”

[29:1]  ⁵ sn Beginning with 29:1, the verse numbers through 29:29 in the English Bible differ from the verse numbers in the Hebrew text (BHS), with 29:1 ET = 28:69 HT, 29:2 ET = 29:1 HT, 29:3 ET = 29:2 HT, etc., through 29:29 ET = 29:28 HT. With 30:1 the verse numbers in the ET and HT are again the same.

[29:1]  ⁶ sn Horeb is another name for Mount Sinai (which some English versions substitute here for clarity, cf. NCV, TEV, CEV, NLT).

[28:9]  ⁷ tn Heb “the commandments of the Lord your God.” See note on “he” in the previous verse.

[28:9]  ⁸ tn Heb “and walk in his ways” (so NAB, NASB, NIV, NRSV, NLT).

[2:19]  ⁹ tn Or “teach you a lesson”; Heb “rebuke/chide you.”

[2:19]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “how evil and bitter.” The reference is to the consequences of their acts. This is a figure of speech (hendiadys) where two nouns or adjectives joined by “and” introduce a main concept modified by the other noun or adjective.

[2:19]  ¹¹ tn Heb “to leave the Lord your God.” The change in person is intended to ease the problem of the rapid transition, which is common in Hebrew style but not in English, from third to first person between this line and the next.

[2:19]  ¹² tn Heb “and no fear of me was on you.”

[2:19]  ¹³ tn Heb “the Lord Yahweh, [the God of] hosts.” For the title Lord God see the study note on 1:6. For the title “who rules over all” see the following study note. The title “the Lord who rules over all” is a way of rendering the title “Yahweh of armies.” It is an abbreviation of a longer title “Yahweh the God of armies” which occurs five times in Jeremiah (see, e.g., 44:7). The abbreviated title occurs seventy-seven times in the book of Jeremiah. On thirty-two occasions it is further qualified by the title “the God of Israel,” showing his special relation to Israel. On six occasions it is preceded by the title “Lord” (see, e.g., 46:10) and twice it is preceded by the title “the King” (see, e.g., 51:17). Both titles emphasize his sovereignty. Twice it is said that he is the maker of all things (10:16; 51:19), and once it is said that he made the earth and the people and animals on it and gives them into the control of whomever he wishes (27:4-5). On two occasions it is emphasized that he also made the heavenly elements and controls the natural elements of wind, rain, thunder, and hail (31:35; 51:14-16). All this is consistent with usage elsewhere where the “armies” over which he has charge are identified as (1) the angels which surround his throne (Isa 6:3, 5; 1 Kgs 22:19) and which he sends to protect his servants (2 Kgs 6:17), (2) the natural forces of thunder, rain, and hail (Isa 29:6; Josh 10:11; Judg 5:4, 5) through which he sends the enemy into panic and “gums” up their chariot wheels, (3) the armies of Israel (1 Sam 17:45) which he leads into battle (Num 10:34-35; Josh 5:14, 15) and for whom he fights as a mighty warrior (Exod 15:3; Isa 42:13; Ps 24:8), and even (4) the armies of the nations which he musters against his disobedient people (Isa 13:14). This title is most commonly found in the messenger formula “Thus says…” introducing both oracles of judgment (on Israel [e.g., 9:7, 15] and on the nations [e.g. 46:19; 50:18]; and see in general 25:29-32). It emphasizes his sovereignty as the king and creator, the lord of creation and of history, and the just judge who sees and knows all (11:20; 20:12) and judges each person and nation according to their actions (Jer 32:18-19). In the first instance (in the most dominant usage) this will involve the punishment of his own people through the agency of the Babylonians (cf., e.g., 25:8-9). But it will also include the punishment of all nations, including Babylon itself (cf. Jer 25:17-26, 32-38), and will ultimately result in the restoration of his people and a new relation with them (30:8; 31:35-37).

[4:18]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “Your way and your deeds.”

[4:18]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “How bitter!”

[4:18]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “Indeed, it reaches to your heart.” The subject must be the pain alluded to in the last half of the preceding line; the verb is masculine, agreeing with the adjective translated “painful.” The only other possible antecedent “punishment” is feminine.

[5:19]  ¹⁷ 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.

[5:19]  ¹⁸ 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…”

[5:19]  ¹⁹ 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.

[5:19]  ²⁰ 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.

[5:25]  ²¹ tn Heb “have turned these things away.”

[5:25]  ²² tn Heb “have withheld the good from you.”