Jeremiah 12:13

12:13 My people will sow wheat, but will harvest weeds. ¹ 

They will work until they are exhausted, but will get nothing from it.

They will be disappointed in their harvests ² 

because the Lord will take them away in his fierce anger. ³ 

Jeremiah 41:8

41:8 But there were ten men among them who said ⁴  to Ishmael, “Do not kill us. For we will give you the stores of wheat, barley, olive oil, and honey we have hidden in a field. ⁵  So he spared their lives and did not kill ⁶  them along with the rest. ⁷ 

[12:13]  ¹ sn Invading armies lived off the land, using up all the produce and destroying everything they could not consume.

[12:13]  ² tn The pronouns here are actually second plural: Heb “Be ashamed/disconcerted because of your harvests.” Because the verb form (וּבֹשׁוּ, uvoshu) can either be Qal perfect third plural or Qal imperative masculine plural many emend the pronoun on the noun to third plural (see, e.g., BHS). However, this is the easier reading and is not supported by either the Latin or the Greek which have second plural. This is probably another case of the shift from description to direct address that has been met with several times already in Jeremiah (the figure of speech called apostrophe; for other examples see, e.g., 9:4; 11:13). As in other cases the translation has been leveled to third plural to avoid confusion for the contemporary English reader. For the meaning of the verb here see BDB 101 s.v. בּוֹשׁ Qal.2 and compare the usage in Jer 48:13.

[12:13]  ³ tn Heb “be disappointed in their harvests from the fierce anger of the Lord.” The translation makes explicit what is implicit in the elliptical poetry of the Hebrew original.

[41:8]  ⁴ tn Heb “But there were ten men found among them and they said.” However, for the use of “were found” = “be, happened to be” see BDB 594 s.v. מָצָא 2.c and compare the usage in 41:3.

[41:8]  ⁵ tn This sentence is a good example of the elliptical nature of some of the causal connections in the Hebrew Bible. All the Hebrew says literally is “For we have hidden stores of wheat, barley, olive oil, and honey in a field.” However, it is obvious that they are using this as their bargaining chip to prevent Ishmael and his men from killing them. For the use of “for” (כִּי, ki) for such elliptical thoughts see BDB 473-74 s.v. כִּי 3.c.

[41:8]  ⁶ tn Or “So he refrained from killing them”; Heb “he refrained and did not kill them.”

[41:8]  ⁷ tn Heb “in the midst of their brothers/fellow countrymen.”