Jeremiah 25:28-29

25:28 If they refuse to take the cup from your hand and drink it, tell them that the Lord who rules over all says ¹  ‘You most certainly must drink it! ²  25:29 For take note, I am already beginning to bring disaster on the city that I call my own. ³  So how can you possibly avoid being punished? ⁴  You will not go unpunished! For I am proclaiming war against all who live on the earth. I, the Lord who rules over all, ⁵  affirm it!’ ⁶ 

Jeremiah 38:17-19

38:17 Then Jeremiah said to Zedekiah, “The Lord, the God who rules over all, the God of Israel, ⁷  says, ‘You must surrender to the officers of the king of Babylon. If you do, your life will be spared ⁸  and this city will not be burned down. Indeed, you and your whole family will be spared. 38:18 But if you do not surrender to the officers of the king of Babylon, this city will be handed over to the Babylonians ⁹  and they will burn it down. You yourself will not escape from them.’” ¹⁰  38:19 Then King Zedekiah said to Jeremiah, “I am afraid of the Judeans who have deserted to the Babylonians. ¹¹  The Babylonians might hand me over to them and they will torture me.” ¹² 

Jeremiah 40:9

40:9 Gedaliah, the son of Ahikam and grandson of Shaphan, took an oath so as to give them and their troops some assurance of safety. ¹³  “Do not be afraid to submit to the Babylonians. ¹⁴  Settle down in the land and submit to the king of Babylon. Then things will go well for you.

Jeremiah 42:10-18

42:10 ‘If you will just stay ¹⁵  in this land, I will build you up. I will not tear you down. I will firmly plant you. ¹⁶  I will not uproot you. For I am filled with sorrow because of the disaster that I have brought on you. 42:11 Do not be afraid of the king of Babylon whom you now fear. ¹⁷  Do not be afraid of him because I will be with you to save you and to rescue you from his power. I, the Lord, affirm it! ¹⁸  42:12 I will have compassion on you so that he in turn will have mercy on you and allow you to return to your land.’

42:13 “You must not disobey the Lord your God by saying, ‘We will not stay in this land.’ 42:14 You must not say, ‘No, we will not stay. Instead we will go and live in the land of Egypt where we will not face war, ¹⁹  or hear the enemy’s trumpet calls, ²⁰  or starve for lack of food.’ ²¹  42:15 If you people who remain in Judah do that, then listen to what the Lord says. The Lord God of Israel who rules over all ²²  says, ‘If you are so determined ²³  to go to Egypt that you go and settle there, 42:16 the wars you fear will catch up with you there in the land of Egypt. The starvation you are worried about will follow you there to ²⁴  Egypt. You will die there. ²⁵  42:17 All the people who are determined to go and settle in Egypt will die from war, starvation, or disease. No one will survive or escape the disaster I will bring on them.’ 42:18 For ²⁶  the Lord God of Israel who rules over all ²⁷  says, ‘If you go to Egypt, I will pour out my wrath on you just as I poured out my anger and wrath on the citizens of Jerusalem. ²⁸  You will become an object of horror and ridicule, an example of those who have been cursed and that people use in pronouncing a curse. ²⁹  You will never see this place again.’ ³⁰ 

Jeremiah 52:3-6

52:3 What follows is a record of what happened to Jerusalem and Judah because of the Lord’s anger when he drove them out of his sight. ³¹  Zedekiah rebelled against the king of Babylon. 52:4 King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon came against Jerusalem with his whole army and set up camp outside it. ³²  They built siege ramps all around it. He arrived on the tenth day of the tenth month in the ninth year that Zedekiah ruled over Judah. ³³  52:5 The city remained under siege until Zedekiah’s eleventh year. 52:6 By the ninth day of the fourth month ³⁴  the famine in the city was so severe the residents ³⁵  had no food.

Ezekiel 17:19-21

17:19 “‘Therefore this is what the sovereign Lord says: As surely as I live, I will certainly repay him ³⁶  for despising my oath and breaking my covenant! 17:20 I will throw my net over him and he will be caught in my snare; I will bring him to Babylon and judge him there because of the unfaithfulness he committed against me. 17:21 All the choice men ³⁷  among his troops will die ³⁸  by the sword and the survivors will be scattered to every wind. Then you will know that I, the Lord, have spoken!

[25:28]  ¹ tn Heb “Tell them, ‘Thus says the Lord…’” The translation is intended to eliminate one level of imbedded quote marks to help avoid confusion.

[25:28]  ² tn The translation attempts to reflect the emphatic construction of the infinitive absolute preceding the finite verb which is here an obligatory imperfect. (See Joüon 2:371-72 §113.m and 2:423 §123.h, and compare usage in Gen 15:13.)

[25:29]  ³ tn Heb “which is called by my name.” See translator’s note on 7:10 for support.

[25:29]  ⁴ tn This is an example of a question without the formal introductory particle following a conjunctive vav introducing an opposition. (See Joüon 2:609 §161.a.) It is also an example of the use of the infinitive before the finite verb in a rhetorical question involving doubt or denial. (See Joüon 2:422-23 §123.f, and compare usage in Gen 37:8.)

[25:29]  ⁵ tn Heb “Yahweh of armies.”

[25:29]  ⁶ tn Heb “Oracle of Yahweh of armies.”

[38:17]  ⁷ 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]  ⁸ 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.

[38:18]  ⁹ tn Heb “Chaldeans.” See the study note on 21:4 for explanation.

[38:18]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “will not escape from their hand.”

[38:19]  ¹¹ tn Heb “Chaldeans.” See the study note on 21:4 for explanation.

[38:19]  ¹² tn Or “and they will badly abuse me.” For the usage of this verb in the situation presupposed see Judg 19:25 and 1 Sam 31:4.

[40:9]  ¹³ tn The words “so as to give them some assurance of safety” are not in the text but are generally understood by all commentators. This would be a case of substitution of cause for effect, the oath, put for the effect, the assurance of safety (NJPS translates directly “reassured them”).

[40:9]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “Chaldeans.” See the study note on 21:4 for explanation.

[42:10]  ¹⁵ tn The word “just” is intended to reflect the infinitive absolute before the finite verb emphasizing here the condition rather than the verb root (see Joüon 2:423 §123.g, and compare the usage in Exod 15:26). The form looks like the infinitive absolute of the verb שׁוּב (shuv), but all the versions interpret it as though it is from יָשַׁב (yashav) which is the root of the verb that follows it. Either this is a textual error of the loss of a י (yod) or this is one of the cases that GKC 69 §19.i list as the possible loss of a weak consonant at the beginning of a word.

[42:10]  ¹⁶ tn Or “I will firmly plant you in the land,” or “I will establish you.” This is part of the metaphor that has been used of God (re)establishing Israel in the land. See 24:6; 31:28; 32:41.

[42:11]  ¹⁷ sn See Jer 41:18 for their reason for fear.

[42:11]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “oracle of the Lord.”

[42:14]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “see [or experience] war.”

[42:14]  ²⁰ tn Heb “hear the sound of the trumpet.” The trumpet was used to gather the troops and to sound the alarm for battle.

[42:14]  ²¹ tn Jer 42:13-14 are a long complex condition (protasis) whose consequence (apodosis) does not begin until v. 15. The Hebrew text of vv. 13-14 reads: 42:13 “But if you say [or continue to say (the form is a participle)], ‘We will not stay in this land’ with the result that you do not obey [or “more literally, do not hearken to the voice of] the Lord your God, 42:14 saying, ‘No, but to the land of Egypt we will go where we…and there we will live,’ 42:15 now therefore hear the word of the Lord…” The sentence has been broken up and restructured to better conform with contemporary English style but an attempt has been made to maintain the contingencies and the qualifiers that are in the longer Hebrew original.

[42:15]  ²² tn Heb “Yahweh of armies, the God of Israel.” See the study note on 2:19 for the translation and significance of this title.

[42:15]  ²³ tn Heb “set your face to.” See Jer 42:17; 44:11; Dan 11:17; 2 Kgs 12:17 (12:18 HT) for parallel usage.

[42:16]  ²⁴ tn Or “will follow you right into Egypt,” or “will dog your steps all the way to Egypt”; Heb “cling after.” This is the only case of this verb with this preposition in the Qal stem. However, it is used with this preposition several times in the Hiphil, all with the meaning of “to pursue closely.” See BDB 180 s.v. דָּבַק Hiph.2 and compare Judg 20:45; 1 Sam 14:22; 1 Chr 10:2.

[42:16]  ²⁵ tn The repetition of the adverb “there” in the translation of vv. 14, 16 is to draw attention to the rhetorical emphasis on the locale of Egypt in the original text of both v. 14 and v. 16. In v. 14 they say, “to the land of Egypt we will go…and there we will live.” In v. 16 God says, “wars…there will catch up with you…the hunger…there will follow after you…and there you will die.” God rhetorically denies their focus on Egypt as a place of safety and of relative prosperity. That can only be found in Judah under the protective presence of the Lord (vv. 10-12).

[42:18]  ²⁶ tn Or “Indeed.”

[42:18]  ²⁷ tn Heb “Yahweh of armies, the God of Israel.” See the study note on 2:19 for the translation and significance of this title.

[42:18]  ²⁸ map For location see Map5 B1; Map6 F3; Map7 E2; Map8 F2; Map10 B3; JP1 F4; JP2 F4; JP3 F4; JP4 F4.

[42:18]  ²⁹ tn See the study note on 24:9 and the usage in 29:22 for the meaning and significance of this last phrase.

[42:18]  ³⁰ tn Or “land.” The reference is, of course, to the land of Judah.

[52:3]  ³¹ tn Heb “Surely (or “for”) because of the anger of the Lord this happened in Jerusalem and Judah until he drove them out from upon his face.” For the phrase “drive out of his sight,” see 7:15.

[52:4]  ³² tn Or “against.”

[52:4]  ³³ sn This would have been January 15, 588 b.c. The reckoning is based on the calendar that begins the year in the spring (Nisan = March/April).

[52:6]  ³⁴ sn According to modern reckoning that would have been July 18, 586 b.c. The siege thus lasted almost a full eighteen months.

[52:6]  ³⁵ tn Heb “the people of the land.”

[17:19]  ³⁶ tn Heb “place it on his head.”

[17:21]  ³⁷ tc Some manuscripts and versions read “choice men,” while most manuscripts read “fugitives”; the difference arises from the reversal, or metathesis, of two letters, מִבְרָחָיו (mivrakhyv) for מִבְחָריו (mivkharyv).

[17:21]  ³⁸ tn Heb “fall.”