Jeremiah 2:27

2:27 They say to a wooden idol, ¹  ‘You are my father.’

They say to a stone image, ‘You gave birth to me.’ ² 

Yes, they have turned away from me instead of turning to me. ³ 

Yet when they are in trouble, they say, ‘Come and save us!’

Jeremiah 7:24

7:24 But they did not listen to me or pay any attention to me. They followed the stubborn inclinations of their own wicked hearts. They acted worse and worse instead of better. ⁴ 

Jeremiah 18:17

18:17 I will scatter them before their enemies

like dust blowing in front of a burning east wind.

I will turn my back on them and not look favorably on them ⁵ 

when disaster strikes them.”

Ezekiel 8:16

8:16 Then he brought me to the inner court of the Lord’s house. Right there ⁶  at the entrance to the Lord’s temple, between the porch and the altar, ⁷  were about twenty-five ⁸  men with their backs to the Lord’s temple, ⁹  facing east – they were worshiping the sun ¹⁰  toward the east!

Hosea 11:2

11:2 But the more I summoned ¹¹  them,

the farther they departed from me. ¹² 

They sacrificed to the Baal idols

and burned incense to images.

Zechariah 7:11

7:11 “But they refused to pay attention, turning away stubbornly and stopping their ears so they could not hear.

[2:27]  ¹ tn Heb “wood…stone…”

[2:27]  ² sn The reference to wood and stone is, of course, a pejorative reference to idols made by human hands. See the next verse where reference is made to “the gods you have made.”

[2:27]  ³ tn Heb “they have turned [their] backs to me, not [their] faces.”

[7:24]  ⁴ tn Or “They went backward and not forward”; Heb “They were to the backward and not to the forward.” The two phrases used here appear nowhere else in the Bible and the latter preposition plus adverb elsewhere is used temporally meaning “formerly” or “previously.” The translation follows the proposal of J. Bright, Jeremiah (AB), 57. Another option is “they turned their backs to me, not their faces,” understanding the line as a variant of a line in 2:27.

[18:17]  ⁵ tc Heb “I will show them [my] back and not [my] face.” This reading follows the suggestion of some of the versions and some of the Masoretes. The MT reads “I will look on their back and not on their faces.”

[8:16]  ⁶ tn The word הִנֵּה (hinneh, traditionally “behold”) indicates becoming aware of something.

[8:16]  ⁷ sn The priests prayed to God between the porch and the altar on fast days (Joel 2:17). This is the location where Zechariah was murdered (Matt 23:35).

[8:16]  ⁸ tc The LXX reads “twenty” instead of twenty-five, perhaps because of the association of the number twenty with the Mesopotamian sun god Shamash.

[8:16]  ⁹ sn The temple faced east.

[8:16]  ¹⁰ tn Or “the sun god.”

[11:2]  ¹¹ tc The MT reads קָרְאוּ (qar’u, “they called”; Qal perfect 3rd person common plural from קָרַא, qara’, “to call”), cf. KJV, NASB; however, the LXX and Syriac reflect כְּקָרְאִי (kÿqar’i, “as I called”; preposition כְּ (kaf) + Qal infinitive construct from קָרַא + 1st person common singular suffix). The presence of the resumptive adverb כֵּן (ken, “even so”) in the following clause supports the alternate textual tradition reflected in the LXX and Syriac (cf. NAB, NIV, NCV, NRSV, TEV, NLT).

[11:2]  ¹² tc The MT reads מִפְּנֵיהֶם (mippÿnehem, “from them”; preposition + masculine plural noun + 3rd person masculine plural suffix), so KJV, ASV, NASB; however, the LXX and Syriac reflect an alternate Hebrew textual tradition of מִפָּנַי הֵם (mippanay hem, “they [went away] from me”; preposition + masculine plural noun + 1st person common singular suffix, followed by 3rd person masculine plural independent personal pronoun); cf. NAB, NIV, NRSV. The textual variant was caused simply by faulty word division.