Jeremiah 2:33

2:33 “My, how good you have become

at chasing after your lovers! ¹ 

Why, you could even teach prostitutes a thing or two! ² 

Jeremiah 2:36

2:36 Why do you constantly go about

changing your political allegiances? ³ 

You will get no help from Egypt

just as you got no help from Assyria. ⁴ 

Jeremiah 4:12

4:12 No, ⁵  a wind too strong for that will come at my bidding.

Yes, even now I, myself, am calling down judgment on them.’ ⁶ 

Jeremiah 13:23

13:23 But there is little hope for you ever doing good,

you who are so accustomed to doing evil.

Can an Ethiopian ⁷  change the color of his skin?

Can a leopard remove its spots? ⁸ 

Jeremiah 14:5

14:5 Even the doe abandons her newborn fawn ⁹  in the field

because there is no grass.

Jeremiah 48:26

48:26 “Moab has vaunted itself against me.

So make him drunk with the wine of my wrath ¹⁰ 

until he splashes ¹¹  around in his own vomit,

until others treat him as a laughingstock.

[2:33]  ¹ tn Heb “How good you have made your ways to seek love.”

[2:33]  ² tn Heb “so that even the wicked women you teach your ways.”

[2:36]  ³ tn Heb “changing your way.” The translation follows the identification of the Hebrew verb here as a defective writing of a form (תֵּזְלִי [tezÿli] instead of תֵּאזְלִי [te’zÿli]) from a verb meaning “go/go about” (אָזַל [’azal]; cf. BDB 23 s.v. אָזַל). Most modern English versions, commentaries, and lexicons read it from a root meaning “to treat cheaply [or lightly]” (תָּזֵלִּי [tazelli] from the root זָלַל (zalal); cf. HALOT 261 s.v. זָלַל); hence, “Why do you consider it such a small matter to…”

[2:36]  ⁴ tn Heb “You will be ashamed/disappointed by Egypt, just as you were ashamed/ disappointed by Assyria.”

[4:12]  ⁵ tn The word “No” is not in the text but is carried over from the connection with the preceding line “not for…”

[4:12]  ⁶ tn Heb “will speak judgments against them.”

[13:23]  ⁷ tn This is a common proverb in English coming from this biblical passage. For cultures where it is not proverbial perhaps it would be better to translate “Can black people change the color of their skin?” Strictly speaking these are “Cushites” inhabitants of a region along the upper Nile south of Egypt. The Greek text is responsible for the identification with Ethiopia. The term in Greek is actually a epithet = “burnt face.”

[13:23]  ⁸ tn Heb “Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard his spots? [Then] you also will be able to do good who are accustomed to do evil.” The English sentence has been restructured and rephrased in an attempt to produce some of the same rhetorical force the Hebrew original has in this context.

[14:5]  ⁹ tn Heb “she gives birth and abandons.”

[48:26]  ¹¹ tn Heb “Make him drunk because he has magnified himself against the Lord.” The first person has again been adopted for consistency within a speech of the Lord. Almost all of the commentaries relate the figure of drunkenness to the figure of drinking the cup of God’s wrath spelled out in Jer 25 where reference is made at one point to the nations drinking, staggering, vomiting, and falling (25:27 and see G. L. Keown, P. J. Scalise, T. G. Smothers, Jeremiah 26-52 [WBC], 316, for a full list of references to this figure including this passage and 49:12-13; 51:6-10, 39, 57).

[48:26]  ¹² tn The meaning of this word is uncertain. It is usually used of clapping the hands or the thigh in helpless anger or disgust. Hence J. Bright (Jeremiah [AB], 321) paraphrases “shall vomit helplessly.” HALOT 722 s.v. II סָפַק relates this to an Aramaic word and see a homonym meaning “vomit” or “spew out.” The translation is that of BDB 706 s.v. סָפַק Qal.3, “splash (fall with a splash),” from the same root that refers to slapping or clapping the thigh.