Jeremiah 2:30

2:30 “It did no good for me to punish your people.

They did not respond to such correction.

You slaughtered your prophets

like a voracious lion.” ¹ 

Jeremiah 5:3

5:3 Lord, I know you look for faithfulness. ² 

But even when you punish these people, they feel no remorse. ³ 

Even when you nearly destroy them, they refuse to be corrected.

They have become as hardheaded as a rock. ⁴ 

They refuse to change their ways. ⁵ 

Jeremiah 6:29-30

6:29 The fiery bellows of judgment burn fiercely.

But there is too much dross to be removed. ⁶ 

The process of refining them has proved useless. ⁷ 

The wicked have not been purged.

6:30 They are regarded as ‘rejected silver’ ⁸ 

because the Lord rejects them.”

Isaiah 1:4-5

1:4 ⁹ The sinful nation is as good as dead, ¹⁰ 

the people weighed down by evil deeds.

They are offspring who do wrong,

children ¹¹  who do wicked things.

They have abandoned the Lord,

and rejected the Holy One of Israel. ¹² 

They are alienated from him. ¹³ 

1:5 ¹⁴ Why do you insist on being battered?

Why do you continue to rebel? ¹⁵ 

Your head has a massive wound, ¹⁶ 

your whole body is weak. ¹⁷ 

Zephaniah 3:2

3:2 She is disobedient; ¹⁸ 

she refuses correction. ¹⁹ 

She does not trust the Lord;

she does not seek the advice of ²⁰  her God.

[2:30]  ¹ tn Heb “Your sword devoured your prophets like a destroying lion.” However, the reference to the sword in this and many similar idioms is merely idiomatic for death by violent means.

[5:3]  ² tn Heb “O Lord, are your eyes not to faithfulness?” The question is rhetorical and expects a positive answer.

[5:3]  ³ tn Commentaries and lexicons debate the meaning of the verb here. The MT is pointed as though from a verb meaning “to writhe in anguish or contrition” (חוּל [khul]; see, e.g., BDB 297 s.v. חוּל 2.c), but some commentaries and lexicons repoint the text as though from a verb meaning “to be sick,” thus “to feel pain” (חָלָה [khalah]; see, e.g., HALOT 304 s.v. חָלָה 3). The former appears more appropriate to the context.

[5:3]  ⁴ tn Heb “They made their faces as hard as a rock.”

[5:3]  ⁵ tn Or “to repent”; Heb “to turn back.”

[6:29]  ⁶ tn Heb “The bellows blow fiercely; the lead is consumed by the fire.” The translation tries to clarify a metaphor involving ancient metallurgy. In the ancient refining process lead was added as a flux to remove impurities from silver ore in the process of oxidizing the lead. Jeremiah says that the lead has been used up and the impurities have not been removed. The translation is based on the recognition of an otherwise unused verb root meaning “blow” (נָחַר [nakhar]; cf. BDB 1123 s.v. I חָרַר and HALOT 651 s.v. נָחַר) and the Masoretes’ suggestion that the consonants מאשׁתם be read מֵאֵשׁ תַּם (me’esh tam) rather than as מֵאֶשָּׁתָם (me’eshatam, “from their fire”) from an otherwise unattested noun אֶשָּׁה (’eshah).

[6:29]  ⁷ tn Heb “The refiner refines them in vain.”

[6:30]  ⁸ tn This translation is intended to reflect the wordplay in the Hebrew text where the same root word is repeated in the two lines.

[1:4]  ⁹ sn Having summoned the witnesses and announced the Lord’s accusation against Israel, Isaiah mourns the nation’s impending doom. The third person references to the Lord in the second half of the verse suggest that the quotation from the Lord (cf. vv. 2-3) has concluded.

[1:4]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “Woe [to the] sinful nation.” The Hebrew term הוֹי, (hoy, “woe, ah”) was used in funeral laments (see 1 Kgs 13:30; Jer 22:18; 34:5) and carries the connotation of death. In highly dramatic fashion the prophet acts out Israel’s funeral in advance, emphasizing that their demise is inevitable if they do not repent soon.

[1:4]  ¹¹ tn Or “sons” (NASB). The prophet contrasts four terms of privilege – nation, people, offspring, children – with four terms that depict Israel’s sinful condition in Isaiah’s day – sinful, evil, wrong, wicked (see J. A. Motyer, The Prophecy of Isaiah, 43).

[1:4]  ¹² sn Holy One of Israel is one of Isaiah’s favorite divine titles for God. It pictures the Lord as the sovereign king who rules over his covenant people and exercises moral authority over them.

[1:4]  ¹³ tn Heb “they are estranged backward.” The LXX omits this statement, which presents syntactical problems and seems to be outside the synonymous parallelistic structure of the verse.

[1:5]  ¹⁴ sn In vv. 5-9 Isaiah addresses the battered nation (5-8) and speaks as their representative (9).

[1:5]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “Why are you still beaten? [Why] do you continue rebellion?” The rhetorical questions express the prophet’s disbelief over Israel’s apparent masochism and obsession with sin. The interrogative construction in the first line does double duty in the parallelism. H. Wildberger (Isaiah, 1:18) offers another alternative by translating the two statements with one question: “Why do you still wish to be struck that you persist in revolt?”

[1:5]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “all the head is ill”; NRSV “the whole head is sick”; CEV “Your head is badly bruised.”

[1:5]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “and all the heart is faint.” The “heart” here stands for bodily strength and energy, as suggested by the context and usage elsewhere (see Jer 8:18; Lam 1:22).

[3:2]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “she does not hear a voice” Refusing to listen is equated with disobedience.

[3:2]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “she does not receive correction.” The Hebrew phrase, when negated, refers elsewhere to rejecting verbal advice (Jer 17:23; 32:33; 35:13) and refusing to learn from experience (Jer 2:30; 5:3).

[3:2]  ²⁰ tn Heb “draw near to.” The present translation assumes that the expression “draw near to” refers to seeking God’s will (see 1 Sam 14:36).