Jeremiah 2:5

2:5 This is what the Lord says:

“What fault could your ancestors ¹  have possibly found in me

that they strayed so far from me? ² 

They paid allegiance to ³  worthless idols, and so became worthless to me. ⁴ 

Jeremiah 2:23

2:23 “How can you say, ‘I have not made myself unclean.

I have not paid allegiance to ⁵  the gods called Baal.’

Just look at the way you have behaved in the Valley of Hinnom! ⁶ 

Think about the things you have done there!

You are like a flighty, young female camel

that rushes here and there, crisscrossing its path. ⁷ 

Jeremiah 3:7

3:7 Yet even after she had done all that, I thought that she might come back to me. ⁸  But she did not. Her sister, unfaithful Judah, saw what she did. ⁹ 

Jeremiah 7:9

7:9 You steal. ¹⁰  You murder. You commit adultery. You lie when you swear on oath. You sacrifice to the god Baal. You pay allegiance to ¹¹  other gods whom you have not previously known.

Jeremiah 13:27

13:27 People of Jerusalem, ¹²  I have seen your adulterous worship,

your shameless prostitution to, and your lustful pursuit of, other gods. ¹³ 

I have seen your disgusting acts of worship ¹⁴ 

on the hills throughout the countryside.

You are doomed to destruction! ¹⁵ 

How long will you continue to be unclean?’”

Jeremiah 16:12

16:12 And you have acted even more wickedly than your ancestors! Each one of you has followed the stubborn inclinations of your own wicked heart and not obeyed me. ¹⁶ 

Jeremiah 25:6

25:6 Do not pay allegiance to ¹⁷  other gods and worship and serve them. Do not make me angry by the things that you do. ¹⁸  Then I will not cause you any harm.’

Jeremiah 28:12

28:12 But shortly after the prophet Hananiah had broken the yoke off the prophet Jeremiah’s neck, the Lord spoke to Jeremiah.

Jeremiah 31:19

31:19 For after we turned away from you we repented.

After we came to our senses ¹⁹  we beat our breasts in sorrow. ²⁰ 

We are ashamed and humiliated

because of the disgraceful things we did previously.’ ²¹ 

Jeremiah 32:16

Jeremiah’s Prayer of Praise and Bewilderment

32:16 “After I had given the copies of the deed of purchase to Baruch son of Neriah, I prayed to the Lord,

Jeremiah 34:11

34:11 But later ²²  they had changed their minds. They had taken back their male and female slaves that they had freed and forced them to be slaves again. ²³ 

Jeremiah 36:27

Baruch and Jeremiah Write Another Scroll

36:27 The Lord spoke to Jeremiah after Jehoiakim had burned the scroll containing what Jeremiah had spoken and Baruch had written down. ²⁴ 

Jeremiah 52:8

52:8 But the Babylonian army chased after the king. They caught up with Zedekiah in the plains of Jericho, ²⁵  and his entire army deserted him.

[2:5]  ¹ tn Heb “fathers.”

[2:5]  ² tn Or “I did not wrong your ancestors in any way. Yet they went far astray from me.” Both translations are an attempt to render the rhetorical question which demands a negative answer.

[2:5]  ³ tn Heb “They went/followed after.” This idiom is found most often in Deuteronomy or covenant contexts. It refers to loyalty to God and to his covenant or his commandments (e.g., 1 Kgs 14:8; 2 Chr 34:31) with the metaphor of a path or way underlying it (e.g., Deut 11:28; 28:14). To “follow other gods” was to abandon this way and this loyalty (i.e., to “abandon” or “forget” God, Judg 2:12; Hos 2:13) and to follow the customs or religious traditions of the pagan nations (e.g., 2 Kgs 17:15). The classic text on “following” God or another god is 1 Kgs 18:18, 21 where Elijah taunts the people with “halting between two opinions” whether the Lord was the true God or Baal was. The idiom is often found followed by “to serve and to worship” or “they served and worshiped” such and such a god or entity (see, e.g., Jer 8:2; 11:10; 13:10; 16:11; 25:6; 35:15).

[2:5]  ⁴ tn The words “to me” are not in the Hebrew text but are implicit from the context: Heb “they followed after the worthless thing/things and became worthless.” There is an obvious wordplay on the verb “became worthless” and the noun “worthless thing,” which is probably to be understood collectively and to refer to idols as it does in Jer 8:19; 10:8; 14:22; Jonah 2:8.

[2:23]  ⁵ tn Heb “I have not gone/followed after.” See the translator’s note on 2:5 for the meaning and usage of this idiom.

[2:23]  ⁶ tn Heb “Look at your way in the valley.” The valley is an obvious reference to the Valley of Hinnom where Baal and Molech were worshiped and child sacrifice was practiced.

[2:23]  ⁷ sn The metaphor is intended to depict Israel’s lack of clear direction and purpose without the Lord’s control.

[3:7]  ⁹ tn Or “I said to her, ‘Come back to me!’” The verb אָמַר (’amar) usually means “to say,” but here it means “to think,” of an assumption that turns out to be wrong (so HALOT 66.4 s.v. אמר); cf. Gen 44:28; Jer 3:19; Pss 82:6; 139:11; Job 29:18; Ruth 4:4; Lam 3:18.

[3:7]  ¹⁰ tn The words “what she did” are not in the text but are implicit from the context and are supplied in the translation for clarification.

[7:9]  ¹³ tn Heb “Will you steal…then say, ‘We are safe’?” Verses 9-10 are one long sentence in the Hebrew text.

[7:9]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “You go/follow after.” See the translator’s note at 2:5 for an explanation of the idiom involved here.

[13:27]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “Jerusalem.” This word has been pulled up from the end of the verse to help make the transition. The words “people of” have been supplied in the translation here to ease the difficulty mentioned earlier of sustaining the personification throughout.

[13:27]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “[I have seen] your adulteries, your neighings, and your shameless prostitution.” The meanings of the metaphorical references have been incorporated in the translation for the sake of clarity for readers of all backgrounds.

[13:27]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “your disgusting acts.” This word is almost always used of idolatry or of the idols themselves. See BDB 1055 s.v. שִׁקֻּוּץ and Deut 29:17 and Jer 4:1; 7:30.

[13:27]  ²⁰ tn Heb “Woe to you!”

[16:12]  ²¹ sn For the argumentation here compare Jer 7:23-26.

[25:6]  ²⁵ tn Heb “follow after.” See the translator’s note on 2:5 for this idiom.

[25:6]  ²⁶ tn Heb “make me angry with the work of your hands.” The term “work of your own hands” is often interpreted as a reference to idolatry as is clearly the case in Isa 2:8; 37:19. However, the parallelism in 25:14 and the context in 32:30 show that it is more general and refers to what they have done. That is likely the meaning here as well.

[31:19]  ²⁹ tn For this meaning of the verb see HAL 374 s.v. יָדַע Nif 5 or W. L. Holladay, Concise Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon, 129. REB translates “Now that I am submissive” relating the verb to a second root meaning “be submissive.” (See HALOT 375 s.v. II יָדַע and J. Barr, Comparative Philology and the Text of the Old Testament, 19-21, for evidence for this verb. Other passages cited with this nuance are Judg 8:16; Prov 10:9; Job 20:20.)

[31:19]  ³⁰ tn Heb “I struck my thigh.” This was a gesture of grief and anguish (cf. Ezek 21:12 [21:17 HT]). The modern equivalent is “to beat the breast.”

[31:19]  ³¹ tn Heb “because I bear the reproach of my youth.” For the plural referents see the note at the beginning of v. 18.

[34:11]  ³³ sn Most commentators are agreed that the incident referred to here occurred during the period of relief from the siege provided by the Babylonians going off to fight against the Egyptians who were apparently coming to Zedekiah’s aid (compare vv. 21-22 with 37:5, 7). The freeing of the slaves had occurred earlier, under the crisis of the siege while the people were more responsive to the Lord due to the threat of destruction (cf. v. 15).

[34:11]  ³⁴ tn Heb “they had brought them into subjection for male and female slaves.” However, the qualification of “male and female” is already clear from the preceding and is unnecessary to the English sentence.

[36:27]  ³⁷ tn Heb “Then the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah after the king had burned the scroll and the words [= containing the words] which Baruch wrote down from the mouth of Jeremiah, saying.”

[52:8]  ⁴¹ map For location see Map5 B2; Map6 E1; Map7 E1; Map8 E3; Map10 A2; Map11 A1.