Jeremiah 14:2

14:2 “The people of Judah are in mourning.

The people in her cities are pining away.

They lie on the ground expressing their sorrow. ¹ 

Cries of distress come up to me ²  from Jerusalem. ³ 

Jeremiah 15:7

15:7 The Lord continued, ⁴ 

“In every town in the land I will purge them

like straw blown away by the wind. ⁵ 

I will destroy my people.

I will kill off their children.

I will do so because they did not change their behavior. ⁶ 

Jeremiah 31:38

Jerusalem Will Be Enlarged

31:38 “Indeed a time is coming,” ⁷  says the Lord, ⁸  “when the city of Jerusalem ⁹  will be rebuilt as my special city. ¹⁰  It will be built from the Tower of Hananel westward to the Corner Gate. ¹¹ 

[14:2]  ¹ tn Heb “Judah mourns, its gates pine away, they are in mourning on the ground.” There are several figures of speech involved here. The basic figure is that of personification where Judah and it cities are said to be in mourning. However, in the third line the figure is a little hard to sustain because “they” are in mourning on the ground. That presses the imagination of most moderns a little too far. Hence the personification has been interpreted “people of” throughout. The term “gates” here is used as part for whole for the “cities” themselves as in several other passages in the OT (cf. BDB 1045 s.v. שַׁעַר 2.b, c and see, e.g., Isa 14:31).

[14:2]  ² tn The words “to me” are not in the text. They are implicit from the fact that the Lord is speaking. They are supplied in the translation for clarity.

[14:2]  ³ map For location see Map5 B1; Map6 F3; Map7 E2; Map8 F2; Map10 B3; JP1 F4; JP2 F4; JP3 F4; JP4 F4.

[15:7]  ⁴ tn The words “The Lord continued” are not in the text. They have been supplied in the translation to show the shift back to talking about the people instead of addressing them. The obvious speaker is the Lord; the likely listener is Jeremiah as in vv. 1-4.

[15:7]  ⁵ tn Heb “I have winnowed them with a winnowing fork in the gates of the land.” The word “gates” is here being used figuratively for the cities, the part for the whole. See 14:2 and the notes there.

[15:7]  ⁶ tn Or “did not repent of their wicked ways”; Heb “They did not turn back from their ways.” There is no casual particle here (either כִּי [ki], which is more formally casual, or וְ [vÿ], which sometimes introduces casual circumstantial clauses). The causal idea is furnished by the connection of ideas. If the verbs throughout this section are treated as pasts and this section seen as a lament, then the clause could be sequential: “but they still did not turn…”

[31:38]  ⁷ tc The words “is coming” (בָּאִים, ba’im) are not in the written text (Kethib) but are supplied in the margin (Qere), in several Hebrew mss and in the versions. It is part of the idiom that also occurs in vv. 27, 31.

[31:38]  ⁸ tn Heb “Oracle of the Lord.”

[31:38]  ⁹ map For location see Map5 B1; Map6 F3; Map7 E2; Map8 F2; Map10 B3; JP1 F4; JP2 F4; JP3 F4; JP4 F4.

[31:38]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “the city will be built to [or for] the Lord.” The words “of Jerusalem” are not in the text but are implicit from the context. They have been supplied in the translation for clarity. However, the word occurs in a first person speech so the translation has accommodated the switch in person as it has in a number of other places (compare also NIV, TEV, ICV).

[31:38]  ¹¹ tn The word “westward” is not in the text but is supplied in the translation to give some orientation.