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 7:32

7:32 So, watch out!” ⁴  says the Lord. “The time will soon come when people will no longer call those places Topheth or the Valley of Ben Hinnom. But they will call that valley ⁵  the Valley of Slaughter and they will bury so many people in Topheth they will run out of room. ⁶ 

Jeremiah 15:19

15:19 Because of this, the Lord said, ⁷ 

“You must repent of such words and thoughts!

If you do, I will restore you to the privilege of serving me. ⁸ 

If you say what is worthwhile instead of what is worthless,

I will again allow you to be my spokesman. ⁹ 

They must become as you have been.

You must not become like them. ¹⁰ 

Jeremiah 17:4

17:4 You will lose your hold on the land ¹¹ 

which I gave to you as a permanent possession.

I will make you serve your enemies in a land that you know nothing about.

For you have made my anger burn like a fire that will never be put out.” ¹² 

Jeremiah 23:32

23:32 I, the Lord, affirm ¹³  that I am opposed to those prophets who dream up lies and report them. They are misleading my people with their reckless lies. ¹⁴  I did not send them. I did not commission them. They are not helping these people at all. ¹⁵  I, the Lord, affirm it!” ¹⁶ 

Jeremiah 25:30

25:30 “Then, Jeremiah, ¹⁷  make the following prophecy ¹⁸  against them:

‘Like a lion about to attack, ¹⁹  the Lord will roar from the heights of heaven;

from his holy dwelling on high he will roar loudly.

He will roar mightily against his land. ²⁰ 

He will shout in triumph like those stomping juice from the grapes ²¹ 

against all those who live on the earth.

Jeremiah 30:10

30:10 So I, the Lord, tell you not to be afraid,

you descendants of Jacob, my servants. ²² 

Do not be terrified, people of Israel.

For I will rescue you and your descendants

from a faraway land where you are captives. ²³ 

The descendants of Jacob will return to their land and enjoy peace.

They will be secure and no one will terrify them. ²⁴ 

Jeremiah 34:3

34:3 You yourself will not escape his clutches, but will certainly be captured and handed over to him. You must confront the king of Babylon face to face and answer to him personally. ²⁵  Then you must go to Babylon.

Jeremiah 35:17

35:17 So I, the Lord, the God who rules over all, the God of Israel, say: ²⁶  “I will soon bring on Judah and all the citizens of Jerusalem all the disaster that I threatened to bring on them. I will do this because I spoke to them but they did not listen. I called out to them but they did not answer.”’”

Jeremiah 38:17

38:17 Then Jeremiah said to Zedekiah, “The Lord, the God who rules over all, the God of Israel, ²⁷  says, ‘You must surrender to the officers of the king of Babylon. If you do, your life will be spared ²⁸  and this city will not be burned down. Indeed, you and your whole family will be spared.

Jeremiah 43:12

43:12 He will set fire ²⁹  to the temples of the gods of Egypt. He will burn their gods or carry them off as captives. ³⁰  He will pick Egypt clean like a shepherd picks the lice from his clothing. ³¹  He will leave there unharmed. ³² 

Jeremiah 49:2

49:2 Because you did that,

I, the Lord, affirm that ³³  a time is coming

when I will make Rabbah, the capital city of Ammon,

hear the sound of the battle cry.

It will become a mound covered with ruins. ³⁴ 

Its villages will be burned to the ground. ³⁵ 

Then Israel will take back its land

from those who took their land from them.

I, the Lord, affirm it! ³⁶ 

Jeremiah 49:20

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

what I intend to do to ³⁷  the people who live in Teman. ³⁸ 

Their little ones will be dragged off.

I will completely destroy their land because of what they have done. ³⁹ 

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. ⁴⁰ 

Their little ones will be dragged off.

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

[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.”

[7:32]  ⁴ tn Heb “Therefore, behold!”

[7:32]  ⁵ tn Heb “it will no longer be said ‘Topheth’ or ‘the Valley of Ben Hinnom’ but ‘the valley of slaughter.’

[7:32]  ⁶ tn Heb “And they will bury in Topheth so there is not room.”

[15:19]  ⁷ tn Heb “So the Lord said thus.”

[15:19]  ⁸ tn Heb “If you return [ = repent], I will restore [more literally, ‘cause you to return’] that you may stand before me.” For the idiom of “standing before” in the sense of serving see BDB 764 s.v. עָמַד Qal.1.e and compare the usage in 1 Kgs 10:8; 12:8; 17:1; Deut 10:8.

[15:19]  ⁹ tn Heb “you shall be as my mouth.”

[15:19]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “They must turn/return to you and you must not turn/return to them.”

[17:4]  ¹⁰ tc Or “Through your own fault you will lose the land…” As W. McKane (Jeremiah [ICC], 1:386) notes the ancient versions do not appear to be reading וּבְךָ (uvÿkha) as in the MT but possibly לְבַדְּךָ (lÿvaddÿkha; see BHS fn). The translation follows the suggestion in BHS fn that יָדְךָ (yadÿkha, literally “your hand”) be read for MT וּבְךָ. This has the advantage of fitting the idiom of this verb with “hand” in Deut 15:2 (see also v. 3 there). The Hebrew text thus reads “You will release your hand from your heritage.”

[17:4]  ¹¹ tc A few Hebrew mss and two Greek mss read “a fire is kindled in my anger” (reading קָדְחָה, qodkha) as in 15:14 in place of “you have kindled a fire in my anger” (reading קָדַחְתֶּם, qadakhtem) in the majority of Hebrew mss and versions. The variant may be explained on the basis of harmonization with the parallel passage.

[23:32]  ¹³ tn Heb “Oracle of the Lord.”

[23:32]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “with their lies and their recklessness.” This is an example of hendiadys where two nouns (in this case a concrete and an abstract one) are joined by “and” but one is intended to be the adjectival modifier of the other.

[23:32]  ¹⁵ sn In the light of what has been said this is a rhetorical understatement; they are not only “not helping,” they are leading them to their doom (cf. vv. 19-22). This figure of speech is known as litotes.

[23:32]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “Oracle of the Lord.”

[25:30]  ¹⁶ tn The word “Jeremiah” is not in the text. It is supplied in the translation to make clear who is being addressed.

[25:30]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “Prophesy against them all these words.”

[25:30]  ¹⁸ tn The words “like a lion about to attack” are not in the text but are implicit in the metaphor. The explicit comparison of the Lord to a lion is made at the end of the passage in v. 38. The words are supplied in the translation here for clarity.

[25:30]  ¹⁹ sn The word used here (Heb “his habitation”) refers to the land of Canaan which the Lord chose to make his earthly dwelling (Exod 15:13) and which was the dwelling place of his chosen people (Jer 10:25; Isa 32:18). Judgment would begin at the “house of God” (v. 29; 1 Pet 4:17) but would extend to the rest of the earth (v. 29).

[25:30]  ²⁰ sn The metaphor shifts from God as a lion to God as a mighty warrior (Jer 20:11; Isa 42:13; Zeph 3:17) shouting in triumph over his foes. Within the metaphor is a simile where the warrior is compared to a person stomping on grapes to remove the juice from them in the making of wine. The figure will be invoked later in a battle scene where the sounds of joy in the grape harvest are replaced by the sounds of joy of the enemy soldiers (Jer 48:33). The picture is drawn in more gory detail in Isa 63:1-6.

[30:10]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “So do not be afraid, my servant Jacob, oracle of the Lord.” Here and elsewhere in the verse the terms Jacob and Israel are poetic for the people of Israel descended from the patriarch Jacob. The terms have been supplied throughout with plural referents for greater clarity.

[30:10]  ²⁰ tn Heb “For I will rescue you from far away, your descendants from the land of their captivity.”

[30:10]  ²¹ sn Compare the ideals of the Mosaic covenant in Lev 26:6, the Davidic covenant in 2 Sam 7:10-11, and the new covenant in Ezek 34:25-31.

[34:3]  ²² tn Heb “Your eyes will see the eyes of the king of Babylon and his mouth will speak with your mouth.” For this same idiom in reverse order see 32:4 and consult the translator’s note there for the obligatory nuance given to the verbs.

[35:17]  ²⁵ tn Heb “Therefore, thus says the Lord, the God of armies, the God of Israel.” For the title see 7:13 and the study note on 2:19. The first person address is again used in the translation because this whole section is a speech from the Lord (see vv. 12-13).

[38:17]  ²⁸ tn Heb “Yahweh, the God of armies, the God of Israel.” Compare 7:3 and 35:17 and see the study note on 2:19.

[38:17]  ²⁹ tn Heb “Your life/soul will live.” The quote is a long condition-consequence sentence with compound consequential clauses. It reads, “If you will only go out to the officers of the king of Babylon, your soul [= you yourself; BDB 660 s.v. נֶפֶשׁ 4.a] will live and this city will not be burned with fire and you and your household will live.” The sentence has been broken down and restructured to better conform with contemporary English style. The infinitive absolute in the condition emphasizes the one condition, i.e., going out or surrendering (cf. Joüon 2:423 §123.g, and compare usage in Exod 15:26). For the idiom “go out to” = “surrender to” see the full idiom in 21:9 “go out and fall over to” which is condensed in 38:2 to “go out to.” The expression here is the same as in 38:2.

[43:12]  ³¹ tc The translation follows the Greek, Syriac, and Latin versions. The Hebrew text reads: “I will set fire to.” While it would be possible to explain the first person subject here in the same way as in the two verbs in v. 12b, the corruption of the Hebrew text is easy to explain here as a metathesis of two letters, י (yod) and ת (tav). The Hebrew reads הִצַּתִּי (hitsatti) and the versions presuppose הִצִּית (hitsit).

[43:12]  ³² tn Heb “burn them or carry them off as captives.” Some of the commentaries and English versions make a distinction between the objects of the verbs, i.e., burn the temples and carry off the gods. However, the burning down of the temples is referred to later in v. 13.

[43:12]  ³³ tn Or “he will take over Egypt as easily as a shepherd wraps his cloak around him.” The translation follows the interpretation of HALOT 769 s.v. II ָעטָה Qal, the Greek translation, and a number of the modern commentaries (e.g., J. A. Thompson, Jeremiah [NICOT], 671). The only other passage where that translation is suggested for this verb is Isa 22:17 according to HAL. The alternate translation follows the more normal meaning of עָטָה (’atah; cf. BDB 741 s.v. I עָטָה Qal which explains “so completely will it be in his power”). The fact that the subject is “a shepherd” lends more credence to the former view though there may be a deliberate double meaning playing on the homonyms (cf. W. L. Holladay, Jeremiah [Hermeneia], 2:302).

[43:12]  ³⁴ tn Heb “in peace/wholeness/well-being/safety [shalom].”

[49:2]  ³⁴ tn Heb “oracle of the Lord.”

[49:2]  ³⁵ tn Heb “a desolate tel.” For the explanation of what a “tel” is see the study note on 30:18.

[49:2]  ³⁶ tn Heb “Its daughters will be burned with fire.” For the use of the word “daughters” to refer to the villages surrounding a larger city see BDB 123 s.v. I בַּת 4 and compare the usage in Judg 1:27.

[49:2]  ³⁷ tn Heb “says the Lord.” The first person is used to maintain the first person address throughout.

[49:20]  ³⁷ 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]  ³⁸ 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]  ³⁹ 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).

[50:45]  ⁴⁰ 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.