Jeremiah 27:14

27:14 Do not listen to the prophets who are telling you that you do not need to serve ¹  the king of Babylon. For they are prophesying lies to you.

Jeremiah 5:19

5:19 “So then, Jeremiah, ²  when your people ³  ask, ‘Why has the Lord our God done all this to us?’ tell them, ‘It is because you rejected me and served foreign gods in your own land. So ⁴  you must serve foreigners ⁵  in a land that does not belong to you.’

Jeremiah 27:9

27:9 So do not listen to your prophets or to those who claim to predict the future by divination, ⁶  by dreams, by consulting the dead, ⁷  or by practicing magic. They keep telling you, ‘You do not need to be ⁸  subject to the king of Babylon.’

[27:14]  ¹ tn The verb in this context is best taken as a negative obligatory imperfect. See IBHS 508 §31.4g for discussion and examples. See Exod 4:15 as an example of positive obligation.

[5:19]  ² tn The word, “Jeremiah,” is not in the text but the second person address in the second half of the verse is obviously to him. The word is supplied in the translation here for clarity.

[5:19]  ³ tn The MT reads the second masculine plural; this is probably a case of attraction to the second masculine plural pronoun in the preceding line. An alternative would be to understand a shift from speaking first to the people in the first half of the verse and then speaking to Jeremiah in the second half where the verb is second masculine singular. E.g., “When you [people] say, “Why…?” then you, Jeremiah, tell them…”

[5:19]  ⁴ tn Heb “As you left me and…, so you will….” The translation was chosen so as to break up a rather long and complex sentence.

[5:19]  ⁵ sn This is probably a case of deliberate ambiguity (double entendre). The adjective “foreigners” is used for both foreign people (so Jer 30:8; 51:51) and foreign gods (so Jer 2:25; 3:13). See also Jer 16:13 for the idea of having to serve other gods in the lands of exile.

[27:9]  ³ sn Various means of divination are alluded to in the OT. For example, Ezek 21:26-27 alludes to throwing down arrows to see which way they fall and consulting the shape of the liver of slaughtered animals. Gen 44:5 alludes to reading the future through pouring liquid in a cup. The means alluded to in this verse were all classified as pagan and prohibited as illegitimate in Deut 18:10-14. The Lord had promised that he would speak to them through prophets like Moses (Deut 18:15, 18). But even prophets could lie. Hence, the Lord told them that the test of a true prophet was whether what he said came true or not (Deut 18:20-22). An example of false prophesying and the vindication of the true as opposed to the false will be given in the chapter that follows this.

[27:9]  ⁴ sn An example of this is seen in 1 Sam 28.

[27:9]  ⁵ tn The verb in this context is best taken as a negative obligatory imperfect. See IBHS 508-9 §31.4g for discussion and examples. See Exod 4:15 as an example of positive obligation.