Jeremiah 18:18

Jeremiah Petitions the Lord to Punish Those Who Attack Him

18:18 Then some people ¹  said, “Come on! Let us consider how to deal with Jeremiah! ²  There will still be priests to instruct us, wise men to give us advice, and prophets to declare God’s word. ³  Come on! Let’s bring charges against him and get rid of him! ⁴  Then we will not need to pay attention to anything he says.”

Jeremiah 18:23

18:23 But you, Lord, know

all their plots to kill me.

Do not pardon their crimes!

Do not ignore their sins as though you had erased them! ⁵ 

Let them be brought down in defeat before you!

Deal with them while you are still angry! ⁶ 

Jeremiah 19:7

19:7 In this place I will thwart ⁷  the plans of the people of Judah and Jerusalem. I will deliver them over to the power of their enemies who are seeking to kill them. They will die by the sword ⁸  at the hands of their enemies. ⁹  I will make their dead bodies food for the birds and wild beasts to eat.

Jeremiah 49:20

49:20 So listen to what I, the Lord, have planned against Edom,

what I intend to do to ¹⁰  the people who live in Teman. ¹¹ 

Their little ones will be dragged off.

I will completely destroy their land because of what they have done. ¹² 

Jeremiah 49:30

49:30 The Lord says, ¹³  “Flee quickly, you who live in Hazor. ¹⁴ 

Take up refuge in remote places. ¹⁵ 

For King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon has laid out plans to attack you.

He has formed his strategy on how to defeat you.” ¹⁶ 

Jeremiah 50:45

50:45 So listen to what I, the Lord, have planned against Babylon,

what I intend to do to the people who inhabit the land of Babylonia. ¹⁷ 

Their little ones will be dragged off.

I will completely destroy their land because of what they have done.

[18:18]  ¹ tn Heb “They.” The referent is unidentified; “some people” has been used in the translation.

[18:18]  ² tn Heb “Let us make plans against Jeremiah.” See 18:18 where this has sinister overtones as it does here.

[18:18]  ³ tn Heb “Instruction will not perish from priest, counsel from the wise, word from the prophet.”

[18:18]  ⁴ tn Heb “Let us smite him with our tongues.” It is clear from the context that this involved plots to kill him.

[18:23]  ⁵ sn Heb “Do not blot out their sins from before you.” For this anthropomorphic figure which looks at God’s actions as though connected with record books, i.e., a book of wrongdoings to be punished, and a book of life for those who are to live, see e.g., Exod 32:32, 33, Ps 51:1 (51:3 HT); 69:28 (69:29 HT).

[18:23]  ⁶ tn Heb “in the time of your anger.”

[19:7]  ⁹ sn There is perhaps a two-fold wordplay in the use of this word. One involves the sound play with the word for “jar,” which has been explained as a water decanter. The word here is בַקֹּתִי (vaqqoti). The word for jar in v. 1 is בַקְבֻּק (vaqbuq). There may also be a play on the literal use of this word to refer to the laying waste or destruction of a land (see Isa 24:3; Nah 2:3). Many modern commentaries think that at this point Jeremiah emptied out the contents of the jar, symbolizing the “emptying” out of their plans.

[19:7]  ¹⁰ sn This refers to the fact that they will die in battle. The sword would be only one of the weapons that strikes them down. It is one of the trio of “sword,” “starvation,” and “disease” which were the concomitants of war referred to so often in the book of Jeremiah. Starvation is referred to in v. 9.

[19:7]  ¹¹ tn Heb “I will cause them to fall by the sword before their enemies and in the hand of those who seek their soul [= life].” In this context the two are meant as obvious qualifications of one entity, not two. Some rearrangement of the qualifiers had to be made in the English translation to convey this.

[49:20]  ¹³ tn Heb “Therefore listen to the plan of the Lord which he has planned against Edom, and the purposes which he has purposed against…” The first person has again been adopted in the translation to avoid the shift from the first person address in v. 19 to the third person in v. 20, a shift that is common in Hebrew poetry, particularly Hebrew prophecy, but which is not common in contemporary English literature.

[49:20]  ¹⁴ sn Teman here appears to be a poetic equivalent for Edom, a common figure of speech in Hebrew poetry where the part is put for the whole. “The people of Teman” is thus equivalent to all the people of Edom.

[49:20]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “They will surely drag them off, namely the young ones of the flock. He will devastate their habitation [or their sheepfold] on account of them.” The figure of the lion among the flock of sheep appears to be carried on here where the people are referred to as a flock and their homeland is referred to as a sheepfold. It is hard, however, to carry the figure over here into the translation, so the figures have been interpreted instead. Both of these last two sentences are introduced by a formula that indicates a strong affirmative oath (i.e., they are introduced by אִם לֹא [’im lo’; cf. BDB 50 s.v. אִם 1.b(2)]). The subject of the verb “they will drag them off” is the indefinite third plural which may be taken as a passive in English (cf. GKC 460 §144.g). The subject of the last line is the Lord which has been rendered in the first person for stylistic reasons (see the translator’s note on the beginning of the verse).

[49:30]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “Oracle of the Lord.”

[49:30]  ¹⁸ map For location see Map1 D2; Map2 D3; Map3 A2; Map4 C1.

[49:30]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “Make deep to dwell.” See Jer 49:8 and the translator’s note there. The use of this same phrase here argues against the alternative there of going down from a height and going back home.

[49:30]  ²⁰ tn Heb “has counseled a counsel against you, has planned a plan against you.”

[50:45]  ²¹ tn The words “of Babylonia” are not in the text but are implicit from the context. They have been supplied in the translation to clarify the referent.