Jeremiah 14:13

14:13 Then I said, “Oh, Lord God, ¹  look! ²  The prophets are telling them that you said, ³  ‘You will not experience war or suffer famine. ⁴  I will give you lasting peace and prosperity in this land.’” ⁵ 

Jeremiah 14:15

14:15 I did not send those prophets, though they claim to be prophesying in my name. They may be saying, ‘No war or famine will happen in this land.’ But I, the Lord, say this about ⁶  them: ‘War and starvation will kill those prophets.’ ⁷ 

Jeremiah 18:18

Jeremiah Petitions the Lord to Punish Those Who Attack Him

18:18 Then some people ⁸  said, “Come on! Let us consider how to deal with Jeremiah! ⁹  There will still be priests to instruct us, wise men to give us advice, and prophets to declare God’s word. ¹⁰  Come on! Let’s bring charges against him and get rid of him! ¹¹  Then we will not need to pay attention to anything he says.”

Jeremiah 20:8-11

20:8 For whenever I prophesy, ¹²  I must cry out, ¹³ 

“Violence and destruction are coming!” ¹⁴ 

This message from the Lord ¹⁵  has made me

an object of continual insults and derision.

20:9 Sometimes I think, “I will make no mention of his message.

I will not speak as his messenger ¹⁶  any more.”

But then ¹⁷  his message becomes like a fire

locked up inside of me, burning in my heart and soul. ¹⁸ 

I grow weary of trying to hold it in;

I cannot contain it.

20:10 I ¹⁹  hear many whispering words of intrigue against me.

Those who would cause me terror are everywhere! ²⁰ 

They are saying, “Come on, let’s publicly denounce him!” ²¹ 

All my so-called friends ²²  are just watching for

something that would lead to my downfall. ²³ 

They say, “Perhaps he can be enticed into slipping up,

so we can prevail over ²⁴  him and get our revenge on him.

20:11 But the Lord is with me to help me like an awe-inspiring warrior. ²⁵ 

Therefore those who persecute me will fail and will not prevail over me.

They will be thoroughly disgraced because they did not succeed.

Their disgrace will never be forgotten.

Jeremiah 28:3

28:3 Before two years are over, I will bring back to this place everything that King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon took from it and carried away to Babylon.

Job 6:26

6:26 Do you intend to criticize mere words,

and treat ²⁶  the words of a despairing man as wind?

Job 8:2

8:2 “How long will you speak these things, ²⁷ 

seeing ²⁸  that the words of your mouth

are like a great ²⁹  wind? ³⁰ 

Hosea 9:7

9:7 The time of judgment ³¹  is about to arrive! ³² 

The time of retribution ³³  is imminent! ³⁴ 

Let Israel know! ³⁵ 

Israel Rejects Hosea’s Prophetic Exhortations

The prophet is considered a fool ³⁶  –

the inspired man ³⁷  is viewed as a madman ³⁸  –

because of the multitude of your sins

and your intense ³⁹  animosity.

[14:13]  ¹ tn Heb “Lord Yahweh.” The translation follows the ancient Jewish tradition of substituting the Hebrew word for God for the proper name Yahweh.

[14:13]  ² tn Heb “Behold.” See the translator’s note on usage of this particle in 1:6.

[14:13]  ³ tn The words “that you said” are not in the text but are implicit from the first person in the affirmation that follows. They are supplied in the translation for clarity.

[14:13]  ⁴ tn Heb “You will not see sword and you will not have starvation [or hunger].”

[14:13]  ⁵ tn Heb “I will give you unfailing peace in this place.” The translation opts for “peace and prosperity” here for the word שָׁלוֹם (shalom) because in the context it refers both to peace from war and security from famine and plague. The word translated “lasting” (אֱמֶת, ’emet) is a difficult to render here because it has broad uses: “truth, reliability, stability, steadfastness,” etc. “Guaranteed” or “lasting” seem to fit the context the best.

[14:15]  ⁶ tn Heb “Thus says the Lord about.” The first person construction has been used in the translation for better English style.

[14:15]  ⁷ tn Heb “Thus says the Lord concerning the prophets who are prophesying in my name and I did not send them [= whom I did not send] and they are saying [= who are saying], ‘Sword and famine…’, by sword and famine those prophets will be killed.” This sentence has been restructured to conform to contemporary English style.

[18:18]  ⁸ tn Heb “They.” The referent is unidentified; “some people” has been used in the translation.

[18:18]  ⁹ tn Heb “Let us make plans against Jeremiah.” See 18:18 where this has sinister overtones as it does here.

[18:18]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “Instruction will not perish from priest, counsel from the wise, word from the prophet.”

[18:18]  ¹¹ tn Heb “Let us smite him with our tongues.” It is clear from the context that this involved plots to kill him.

[20:8]  ¹² tn Heb “speak,” but the speaking is in the context of speaking as a prophet.

[20:8]  ¹³ tn Heb “I cry out, I proclaim.”

[20:8]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “Violence and destruction.”

[20:8]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “the word of the Lord.” For the use of כִּי…כִּי (ki…ki) here in the sense of “for…and” see KBL 432 s.v. כּי 10.

[20:9]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “speak in his name.” This idiom occurs in passages where someone functions as the messenger under the authority of another. See Exod 5:23; Deut 18:19, 29:20; Jer 14:14. The antecedent in the first line is quite commonly misidentified as being “him,” i.e., the Lord. Comparison, however, with the rest of the context, especially the consequential clause “then it becomes” (וְהָיָה, vÿhayah), and Jer 23:36 shows that it is “the word of the Lord.”

[20:9]  ¹⁷ tn The English sentence has again been restructured for the sake of English style. The Hebrew construction involves two vav consecutive perfects in a condition and consequence relation, “If I say to myself…then it [his word] becomes.” See GKC 337 §112.kk for the construction.

[20:9]  ¹⁸ sn Heb “It is in my heart like a burning fire, shut up in my bones.” In addition to standing as part for the whole, the “bones” for the person (e.g., Ps 35:10), the bones were associated with fear (e.g., Job 4:14) and with pain (e.g., Job 33:19, Ps 102:3 [102:4 HT]) and joy or sorrow (e.g., Ps 51:8 [51:10 HT]). As has been mentioned several times, the heart was connected with intellectual and volitional concerns.

[20:10]  ¹⁹ tn It would be difficult to render accurately the Hebrew particle כִּי (ki) that introduces this verse without lengthening the English line unduly. It probably means something like “This is true even though I…,” i.e., the particle is concessive (cf. BDB s.v. כִּי 2.c). No other nuance seems appropriate. The particle is left out of the translation, but its presence is acknowledged here.

[20:10]  ²⁰ tn The phrase translated “Those who would cause me terror are everywhere” has already occurred in 6:25 in the context of the terror caused by the enemy from the north and in 20:3 in reference to the curse pronounced on Pashhur who would experience it first hand. Some have seen the phrase here not as Jeremiah’s ejaculation of terror but of his assailant’s taunts of his message or even their taunting nickname for him. But comparison of this passage with the first two lines of Ps 31:13 (31:14 HT) which are word for word the same as these two will show that it refers to the terror inspired by the plots of his enemies to do away with him. It is also clear from the context of that passage and the following context here that the “whispering of many” (the literal translation of “many whispering words of intrigue against me) refers to intrigues to take vengeance on him and do away with him.

[20:10]  ²¹ tn Heb “Denounce and let us denounce him.” The verb which is translated “denounce” (נָגַד, nagad) does not take an accusative object of person as it does here very often. When it does it usually means to inform someone. The only relevant passage appears to be Job 17:5 where it means something like “denounce.” What is probably involved here are the attempts to portray Jeremiah as a traitor (Jer 26:10) and a false prophet (see his conflict with Hananiah in Jer 28).

[20:10]  ²² tn Heb “the men of my peace [who are concerned about my welfare].” For this phrase compare Ps 41:9 (41:10 HT); Jer 38:22. It is generally agreed that irony is being invoked here, hence “so-called” is supplied in the translation to bring out the irony.

[20:10]  ²³ tn Heb “watching my stumbling [for me to stumble].” Metaphorically they were watching for some slip-up that would lead to his downfall. Compare the use in Pss 35:15 and 38:17 (38:18 HT).

[20:10]  ²⁴ tn All the text says literally is “Perhaps he can be enticed so that we can prevail over him.” However the word “enticed” needs some qualification. As W. McKane (Jeremiah [ICC], 1:479) notes it should probably be read in the context of the “stumbling” (= “something that would lead to my downfall”). Hence “slipping up” has been supplied as an object. It is vague enough to avoid specifics as the original text does but suggests some reference to “something that would lead to my downfall.”

[20:11]  ²⁵ sn This line has some interesting ties with Jer 15:20-21 where Jeremiah is assured by God that he is indeed with him as he promised him when he called him (1:8, 19) and will deliver him from the clutches of wicked and violent people. The word translated here “awe-inspiring” is the same as the word “violent people” there. Jeremiah is confident that his “awe-inspiring” warrior will overcome “violent people.” The statement of confidence here is, by the way, a common element in the psalms of petition in the Psalter. The common elements of that type of psalm are all here: invocation (v. 7), lament (vv. 7-10), confession of trust/confidence in being heard (v. 11), petition (v. 12), thanksgiving or praise (v. 13). For some examples of this type of psalm see Pss 3, 7, 26.

[6:26]  ²⁶ tn This, in the context, is probably the meaning, although the Hebrew simply has the line after the first half of the verse read: “and as/to wind the words of a despairing man.” The line could be translated “and the words of a despairing man, [which are] as wind.” But this translation follows the same approach as RSV, NIV, and NAB, which take the idiom of the verb (“think, imagine”) with the preposition on “wind” to mean “reckon as wind” – “and treat the words of a despairing man as wind.”

[8:2]  ²⁷ sn “These things” refers to all of Job’s speech, the general drift of which seems to Bildad to question the justice of God.

[8:2]  ²⁸ tn The second colon of the verse simply says “and a strong wind the words of your mouth.” The simplest way to treat this is to make it an independent nominal sentence: “the words of your mouth are a strong wind.” Some have made it parallel to the first by apposition, understanding “how long” to do double duty. The line beginning with the ו (vav) can also be subordinated as a circumstantial clause, as here.

[8:2]  ²⁹ tn The word כַּבִּיר (kabbir, “great”) implies both abundance and greatness. Here the word modifies “wind”; the point of the analogy is that Job’s words are full of sound but without solid content.

[8:2]  ³⁰ tn See, however, G. R. Driver’s translation, “the breath of one who is mighty are the words of your mouth” (“Hebrew Studies,” JRAS 1948: 170).

[9:7]  ³¹ tn Heb “the days of the visitation”; NAB, NASB, NIV, NRSV “the days of punishment.”

[9:7]  ³² tn Heb “has come” (בָּאוּ, ba’u). The two perfect tense (suffix-conjugation) verbs בָּאוּ (Qal perfect 3rd person common plural from בּוֹא, bo’, “to come”) repeated in this verse are both examples of the so-called “prophetic perfect”: the perfect, which connotes completed or factual action, is used in reference to future events to emphasize the certainty of the announced event taking place.

[9:7]  ³³ tn Heb “the days of the retribution”; NIV “of reckoning”; NRSV “of recompense.”

[9:7]  ³⁴ tn Heb “has come”; NIV “are at hand”; NLT “is almost here.”

[9:7]  ³⁵ tc The Aleppo Codex and Leningrad Codex (the MT ms employed for BHS) both place the atnach (colon-divider) after יֵדְעוּ יִשְׂרָאֵל (yedÿ’u yisra’el, “Let Israel know!”), indicating that this line belongs with 9:7a (cf. NAB, NASB, NIV). However, the LXX reads κακωθήσεται (kakwqhsetai) which reflects an underlying Vorlage of יָרֵעוּ (yare’u, Qal imperfect 3rd person common plural from יָרַע, yara’, “to cry”), as opposed to the MT יֵדְעוּ (yedÿ’u, Qal jussive 3rd common plural from יָדַע, yada’, “to know”). The Old Greek connects יֵדְעוּ יִשְׂרָאֵל (“Israel cries out”) with the following lines (cf. NRSV), which appear to be quotations of Israel mocking Hosea. Aquila (ἔγνω, egnw) and Symmachus (γνώσεται, gnwsetai) both reflect the proto-MT tradition. For a discussion of this textual and syntactical problem, see H. W. Wolff, Hosea (Hermeneia), 150.

[9:7]  ³⁶ tn Or “is distraught”; cf. CEV, NLT “are crazy.”

[9:7]  ³⁷ tn Heb “the man of the Spirit”; NAB, NRSV “spirit.”

[9:7]  ³⁸ tn Or “is driven to despair.” The term מְשֻׁגָּע (mÿshugga’, Pual participle masculine singular from שָׁגַע, shaga’, “to be mad”) may be understood in two senses: (1) It could be a predicate adjective which is a figure of speech: “to be maddened,” to be driven to despair (Deut 28:34); or (2) it could be a substantive: “a madman,” referring to prophets who attempted to enter into a prophetic state through whipping themselves into a frenzy (1 Sam 21:16; 2 Kgs 9:11; Jer 29:26; see BDB 993 s.v. שָׁגַע). The prophetic context of 9:7 favors the latter option (which is followed by most English versions). Apparently, the general populace viewed these mantics with suspicion and questioned the legitimacy of their claim to be true prophets (e.g., 2 Kgs 9:11; Jer 29:26).

[9:7]  ³⁹ tn Heb “great.”