Jeremiah 16:14

16:14 Yet ¹  I, the Lord, say: ²  “A new time will certainly come. ³  People now affirm their oaths with ‘I swear as surely as the Lord lives who delivered the people of Israel out of Egypt.’

Jeremiah 23:5

23:5 “I, the Lord, promise ⁴  that a new time will certainly come ⁵ 

when I will raise up for them a righteous branch, ⁶  a descendant of David.

He will rule over them with wisdom and understanding ⁷ 

and will do what is just and right in the land. ⁸ 

Jeremiah 23:7

23:7 “So I, the Lord, say: ⁹  ‘A new time will certainly come. ¹⁰  People now affirm their oaths with “I swear as surely as the Lord lives who delivered the people of Israel out of Egypt.”

Jeremiah 36:2

36:2 “Get a scroll. ¹¹  Write on it everything I have told you to say ¹²  about Israel, Judah, and all the other nations since I began to speak to you in the reign of Josiah until now. ¹³ 

Jeremiah 50:4

50:4 “When that time comes,” says the Lord, ¹⁴ 

“the people of Israel and Judah will return to the land together.

They will come back with tears of repentance

as they seek the Lord their God. ¹⁵ 

[16:14]  ¹ tn The particle translated here “Yet” (לָכֵן, lakhen) is regularly translated “So” or “Therefore” and introduces a consequence. However, in a few cases it introduces a contrasting set of conditions. Compare its use in Judg 11:8; Jer 48:12; 49:2; 51:52; and Hos 2:14 (2:16 HT).

[16:14]  ² tn Heb “Oracle of the Lord.” The Lord has been speaking; the first person has been utilized in translation to avoid a shift which might create confusion.

[16:14]  ³ tn Heb “Behold the days are coming.”

[23:5]  ⁴ tn Heb “Oracle of the Lord.”

[23:5]  ⁵ tn Heb “Behold the days are coming.”

[23:5]  ⁶ tn Heb “a righteous sprig to David” or “a righteous shoot” (NAB).

[23:5]  ⁷ tn Heb “he will reign as king and act wisely.” This is another example of the use of two verbs joined by “and” where one becomes the adverbial modifier of the other (hendiadys). For the nuance of the verb “act wisely” rather than “prosper” see Amos 5:13; Ps 2:10 (cf. BDB 968 s.v. שָׂכַל Hiph.5).

[23:5]  ⁸ sn This has been the constant emphasis in this section. See 22:3 for the demand, 22:15 for its fulfillment, and 22:13 for its abuse. The ideal king would follow in the footsteps of his illustrious ancestor David (2 Sam 8:15) who set this forth as an ideal for his dynasty (2 Sam 23:3) and prayed for it to be true of his son Solomon (Ps 72:1-2).

[23:7]  ⁷ tn Heb “Oracle of the Lord.”

[23:7]  ⁸ tn Heb “Behold the days are coming.”

[36:2]  ¹⁰ sn Heb “a roll [or scroll] of a document.” Scrolls consisted of pieces of leather or parchment sewn together and rolled up on wooden rollers. The writing was written from right to left and from top to bottom in columns and the scroll unrolled from the left roller and rolled onto the right one as the scroll was read. The scroll varied in length depending on the contents. This scroll was probably not all that long since it was read three times in a single day (vv. 10-11, 15-16, 21-23).

[36:2]  ¹¹ sn The intent is hardly that of giving a verbatim report of everything that the Lord had told him to say or of everything that he had actually said. What the scroll undoubtedly contained was a synopsis of Jeremiah’s messages as constructed from his memory.

[36:2]  ¹² sn This refers to the messages that Jeremiah delivered during the last eighteen years of Josiah, the three month reign of Jehoahaz and the first four years of Jehoiakim’s reign (the period between Josiah’s thirteenth year [cf. 1:2] and the fourth year of Jehoiakim [v. 1]). The exact content of this scroll is unknown since many of the messages in the present book are undated. It is also not known what relation this scroll had to the present form of the book of Jeremiah, since this scroll was destroyed and another one written that contained more than this one did (cf. v. 32). Since Jeremiah continued his ministry down to the fall of Jerusalem in 587/6 b.c. (1:2) and beyond (cf. Jer 40-44) much more was added to those two scrolls even later.

[50:4]  ¹³ tn Heb “oracle of the Lord.”

[50:4]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “and the children of Israel will come, they and the children of Judah together. They shall go, weeping as they go, and they will seek the Lord their God.” The concept of “seeking” the Lord often has to do with seeking the Lord in worship (by sacrifice [Hos 5:6; 2 Chr 11:16]; prayer [Zech 8:21, 22; 2 Sam 12:16; Isa 65:1; 2 Chr 15:4]). In Hos 7:10 it is in parallel with returning to the Lord. In Ps 69:6 it is in parallel with hoping in or trusting in the Lord. Perhaps the most helpful parallels here, however, are Hos 3:5 (in comparison with Jer 30:9) and 2 Chr 15:15 where it is in the context of a covenant commitment to be loyal to the Lord which is similar to the context here (see the next verse). The translation is admittedly paraphrastic but “seeking the Lord” does not mean here looking for God as though he were merely a person to be found.