2 Kings 21:11-13

21:11 “King Manasseh of Judah has committed horrible sins. ¹  He has sinned more than the Amorites before him and has encouraged Judah to sin by worshiping his disgusting idols. ²  21:12 So this is what the Lord God of Israel says, ‘I am about to bring disaster on Jerusalem and Judah. The news will reverberate in the ears of those who hear about it. ³  21:13 I will destroy Jerusalem the same way I did Samaria ⁴  and the dynasty of Ahab. ⁵  I will wipe Jerusalem clean, just as one wipes a plate on both sides. ⁶ 

2 Kings 22:16-17

22:16 “This is what the Lord says: ‘I am about to bring disaster on this place and its residents, the details of which are recorded in the scroll which the king of Judah has read. ⁷  22:17 This will happen because they have abandoned me and offered sacrifices ⁸  to other gods, angering me with all the idols they have made. ⁹  My anger will ignite against this place and will not be extinguished!’”

2 Kings 24:2

24:2 The Lord sent against him Babylonian, Syrian, Moabite, and Ammonite raiding bands; he sent them to destroy Judah, as he had warned he would do through his servants the prophets. ¹⁰ 

2 Kings 24:4

24:4 Because he killed innocent people and stained Jerusalem with their blood, the Lord was unwilling to forgive them. ¹¹ 

2 Kings 24:2

24:2 The Lord sent against him Babylonian, Syrian, Moabite, and Ammonite raiding bands; he sent them to destroy Judah, as he had warned he would do through his servants the prophets. ¹² 

2 Kings 1:16

1:16 Elijah ¹³  said to the king, ¹⁴  “This is what the Lord says, ‘You sent messengers to seek an oracle from Baal Zebub, the god of Ekron. You must think there is no God in Israel from whom you can seek an oracle! ¹⁵  Therefore you will not leave the bed you lie on, for you will certainly die.’” ¹⁶ 

Jeremiah 3:7-10

3:7 Yet even after she had done all that, I thought that she might come back to me. ¹⁷  But she did not. Her sister, unfaithful Judah, saw what she did. ¹⁸  3:8 She also saw ¹⁹  that I gave wayward Israel her divorce papers and sent her away because of her adulterous worship of other gods. ²⁰  Even after her unfaithful sister Judah had seen this, ²¹  she still was not afraid, and she too went and gave herself like a prostitute to other gods. ²²  3:9 Because she took her prostitution so lightly, she defiled the land ²³  through her adulterous worship of gods made of wood and stone. ²⁴  3:10 In spite of all this, ²⁵  Israel’s sister, unfaithful Judah, has not turned back to me with any sincerity; she has only pretended to do so,” ²⁶  says the Lord.

Jeremiah 15:1-4

15:1 Then the Lord said to me, “Even if Moses and Samuel stood before me pleading for ²⁷  these people, I would not feel pity for them! ²⁸  Get them away from me! Tell them to go away! ²⁹  15:2 If they ask you, ‘Where should we go?’ tell them the Lord says this:

“Those who are destined to die of disease will go to death by disease.

Those who are destined to die in war will go to death in war.

Those who are destined to die of starvation will go to death by starvation.

Those who are destined to go into exile will go into exile.” ³⁰ 

15:3 “I will punish them in four different ways: I will have war kill them. I will have dogs drag off their dead bodies. I will have birds and wild beasts devour and destroy their corpses. ³¹  15:4 I will make all the people in all the kingdoms of the world horrified at what has happened to them because of what Hezekiah’s son Manasseh, king of Judah, did in Jerusalem.” ³² 

[21:11]  ¹ tn Heb “these horrible sins.”

[21:11]  ² sn See the note at 1 Kgs 15:12.

[21:12]  ³ tn Heb “so that everyone who hears it, his two ears will quiver.”

[21:13]  ⁴ map For location see Map2 B1; Map4 D3; Map5 E2; Map6 A4; Map7 C1.

[21:13]  ⁵ tn Heb “I will stretch out over Jerusalem the measuring line of Samaria, and the plumb line of the house of Ahab.” The measuring line and plumb line are normally used in building a structure, not tearing it down. But here they are used ironically as metaphors of judgment, emphasizing that he will give careful attention to the task of judgment.

[21:13]  ⁶ tn Heb “just as one wipes a plate, wiping and turning [it] on its face.” The word picture emphasizes how thoroughly the Lord will judge the city.

[22:16]  ⁷ tn Heb “all the words of the scroll which the king of Judah has read.”

[22:17]  ⁸ tn Or “burned incense.”

[22:17]  ⁹ tn Heb “angering me with all the work of their hands.” The translation assumes that this refers to idols they have manufactured (note the preceding reference to “other gods,” as well as 19:18). However, it is possible that this is a general reference to their sinful practices, in which case one might translate, “angering me by all the things they do.”

[24:2]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “he sent them against Judah to destroy it, according to the word of the Lord which he spoke by the hand of his servants the prophets.”

[24:4]  ¹¹ tn Heb “and also the blood of the innocent which he shed, and he filled Jerusalem with innocent blood, and the Lord was not willing to forgive.”

[24:2]  ¹² tn Heb “he sent them against Judah to destroy it, according to the word of the Lord which he spoke by the hand of his servants the prophets.”

[1:16]  ¹³ tn Heb “he”; the referent (Elijah) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[1:16]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “him”; the referent (the king) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[1:16]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “Because you sent messengers to inquire of Baal Zebub, the god of Ekron, is there no God in Israel to inquire of his word?”

[1:16]  ¹⁶ sn For the third time in this chapter we read the Lord’s sarcastic question to king and the accompanying announcement of judgment. The repetition emphasizes one of the chapter’s main themes. Israel’s leaders should seek guidance from their own God, not a pagan deity, for Israel’s sovereign God is the one who controls life and death.

[3:7]  ¹⁷ tn Or “I said to her, ‘Come back to me!’” The verb אָמַר (’amar) usually means “to say,” but here it means “to think,” of an assumption that turns out to be wrong (so HALOT 66.4 s.v. אמר); cf. Gen 44:28; Jer 3:19; Pss 82:6; 139:11; Job 29:18; Ruth 4:4; Lam 3:18.

[3:7]  ¹⁸ tn The words “what she did” are not in the text but are implicit from the context and are supplied in the translation for clarification.

[3:8]  ¹⁹ tc Heb “she [‘her sister, unfaithful Judah’ from the preceding verse] saw” with one Hebrew ms, some Greek mss, and the Syriac version. The MT reads “I saw” which may be a case of attraction to the verb at the beginning of the previous verse.

[3:8]  ²⁰ tn Heb “because she committed adultery.” The translation is intended to spell out the significance of the metaphor.

[3:8]  ²¹ tn The words “Even after her unfaithful sister, Judah, had seen this” are not in the Hebrew text but are implicit in the connection and are supplied for clarification.

[3:8]  ²² tn Heb “she played the prostitute there.” This is a metaphor for Israel’s worship; she gave herself to the worship of other gods like a prostitute gives herself to her lovers. There seems no clear way to completely spell out the metaphor in the translation.

[3:9]  ²³ tc The translation reads the form as a causative (Hiphil, תַּהֲנֵף, tahanef) with some of the versions in place of the simple stative (Qal, תֶּחֱנַף, tekhenaf) in the MT.

[3:9]  ²⁴ tn Heb “because of the lightness of her prostitution, she defiled the land and committed adultery with stone and wood.”

[3:10]  ²⁵ tn Heb “And even in all this.”

[3:10]  ²⁶ tn Heb “ has not turned back to me with all her heart but only in falsehood.”

[15:1]  ²⁷ tn The words “pleading for” have been supplied in the translation to explain the idiom (a metonymy). For parallel usage see BDB 763 s.v. עָמַד Qal.1.a and compare usage in Gen 19:27, Deut 4:10.

[15:1]  ²⁸ tn Heb “my soul would not be toward them.” For the usage of “soul” presupposed here see BDB 660 s.v. נֶפֶשׁ 6 in the light of the complaints and petitions in Jeremiah’s prayer in 14:19, 21.

[15:1]  ²⁹ tn Heb “Send them away from my presence and let them go away.”

[15:2]  ³⁰ tn It is difficult to render the rhetorical force of this passage in meaningful English. The text answers the question “Where should we go?” with four brief staccato-like expressions with a play on the preposition “to”: Heb “Who to the death, to the death and who to the sword, to the sword and who to the starvation, to the starvation and who to the captivity, to the captivity.” The word “death” here is commonly understood to be a poetic substitute for “plague” because of the standard trio of sword, famine, and plague (see, e.g., 14:12 and the notes there). This is likely here and in 18:21. For further support see W. L. Holladay, Jeremiah (Hermeneia), 1:440. The nuance “starvation” rather than “famine” has been chosen in the translation because the referents here are all things that accompany war.

[15:3]  ³¹ tn The translation attempts to render in understandable English some rather unusual uses of terms here. The verb translated “punish” is often used that way (cf. BDB 823 s.v. פָּקַד Qal.A.3 and compare usage in Jer 11:22, 13:21). However, here it is accompanied by a direct object and a preposition meaning “over” which is usually used in the sense of appointing someone over someone (cf. BDB 823 s.v. פָּקַד Qal.B.1 and compare usage in Jer 51:27). Moreover the word translated “different ways” normally refers to “families,” “clans,” or “guilds” (cf. BDB 1046-47 s.v. מִשְׁפָּחָה for usage). Hence the four things mentioned are referred to figuratively as officers or agents into whose power the Lord consigns them. The Hebrew text reads: “I will appoint over them four guilds, the sword to kill, the dogs to drag away, the birds of the skies and the beasts of the earth to devour and to destroy.”

[15:4]  ³² tn The length of this sentence runs contrary to the normal policy followed in the translation of breaking up long sentences. However, there does not seem any way to break it up here without losing the connections.