Jeremiah 12:14

12:14 “I, the Lord, also have something to say concerning ¹  the wicked nations who surround my land ²  and have attacked and plundered ³  the land that I gave to my people as a permanent possession. ⁴  I say: ‘I will uproot the people of those nations from their lands and I will free the people of Judah who have been taken there. ⁵ 

Jeremiah 16:19

16:19 Then I said, ⁶ 

“Lord, you give me strength and protect me.

You are the one I can run to for safety when I am in trouble. ⁷ 

Nations from all over the earth

will come to you and say,

‘Our ancestors had nothing but false gods –

worthless idols that could not help them at all. ⁸ 

[12:14]  ¹ tn Heb “Thus says the Lord concerning….” This structure has been adopted to prevent a long dangling introduction to what the Lord has to say that does not begin until the middle of the verse in Hebrew. The first person address was adopted because the speaker is still the Lord as in vv. 7-13.

[12:14]  ² tn Heb “my wicked neighbors.”

[12:14]  ³ tn Heb “touched.” For the nuance of this verb here see BDB 619 s.v. נָגַע Qal.3 and compare the usage in 1 Chr 16:22 where it is parallel to “do harm to” and Zech 2:8 where it is parallel to “plundered.”

[12:14]  ⁴ tn Heb “the inheritance which I caused my people Israel to inherit.” Compare 3:18.

[12:14]  ⁵ tn Heb “I will uproot the house of Judah from their midst.”

[16:19]  ⁶ tn The words “Then I said” are not in the text. They are supplied in the translation to show the shift from God, who has been speaking to Jeremiah, to Jeremiah, who here addresses God.

[16:19]  ⁷ tn Heb “O Lord, my strength and my fortress, my refuge in the day of trouble. The literal which piles up attributes is of course more forceful than the predications. However, piling up poetic metaphors like this adds to the length of the English sentence and risks lack of understanding on the part of some readers. Some rhetorical force has been sacrificed for the sake of clarity.

[16:19]  ⁸ tn Once again the translation has sacrificed some of the rhetorical force for the sake of clarity and English style: Heb “Only falsehood did our ancestors possess, vanity and [things in which?] there was no one profiting in them.”