Jeremiah 29:11-14

29:11 For I know what I have planned for you,’ says the Lord. ¹  ‘I have plans to prosper you, not to harm you. I have plans to give you ²  a future filled with hope. ³  29:12 When you call out to me and come to me in prayer, ⁴  I will hear your prayers. ⁵  29:13 When you seek me in prayer and worship, you will find me available to you. If you seek me with all your heart and soul, ⁶  29:14 I will make myself available to you,’ ⁷  says the Lord. ⁸  ‘Then I will reverse your plight ⁹  and will regather you from all the nations and all the places where I have exiled you,’ says the Lord. ¹⁰  ‘I will bring you back to the place from which I exiled you.’

Jeremiah 32:42

32:42 “For I, the Lord, say: ¹¹  ‘I will surely bring on these people all the good fortune that I am hereby promising them. I will be just as sure to do that as I have been in bringing all this great disaster on them. ¹² 

Micah 4:10-13

4:10 Twist and strain, ¹³  Daughter Zion, as if you were in labor!

For you will leave the city

and live in the open field.

You will go to Babylon,

but there you will be rescued.

There the Lord will deliver ¹⁴  you

from the power ¹⁵  of your enemies.

4:11 Many nations have now assembled against you.

They say, “Jerusalem must be desecrated, ¹⁶ 

so we can gloat over Zion!” ¹⁷ 

4:12 But they do not know what the Lord is planning;

they do not understand his strategy.

He has gathered them like stalks of grain to be threshed ¹⁸  at the threshing floor.

4:13 “Get up and thresh, Daughter Zion!

For I will give you iron horns; ¹⁹ 

I will give you bronze hooves,

and you will crush many nations.” ²⁰ 

You will devote to the Lord the spoils you take from them,

and dedicate their wealth to the sovereign Ruler ²¹  of the whole earth. ²² 

Micah 7:18-20

7:18 There is no other God like you! ²³ 

You ²⁴  forgive sin

and pardon ²⁵  the rebellion

of those who remain among your people. ²⁶ 

You do not remain angry forever, ²⁷ 

but delight in showing loyal love.

7:19 You will once again ²⁸  have mercy on us;

you will conquer ²⁹  our evil deeds;

you will hurl our ³⁰  sins into the depths of the sea. ³¹ 

7:20 You will be loyal to Jacob

and extend your loyal love to Abraham, ³² 

which you promised on oath to our ancestors ³³ 

in ancient times. ³⁴ 

[29:11]  ¹ tn Heb “Oracle of the Lord.”

[29:11]  ² tn Heb “I know the plans that I am planning for you, oracle of the Lord, plans of well-being and not for harm to give to you….”

[29:11]  ³ tn Or “the future you hope for”; Heb “a future and a hope.” This is a good example of hendiadys where two formally coordinated nouns (adjectives, verbs) convey a single idea where one of the terms functions as a qualifier of the other. For this figure see E. W. Bullinger, Figures of Speech, 658-72. This example is discussed on p. 661.

[29:12]  ⁴ tn Heb “come and pray to me.” This is an example of verbal hendiadys where two verb formally joined by “and” convey a main concept with the second verb functioning as an adverbial qualifier.

[29:12]  ⁵ tn Or “You will call out to me and come to me in prayer and I will hear your prayers.” The verbs are vav consecutive perfects and can be taken either as unconditional futures or as contingent futures. See GKC 337 §112.kk and 494 §159.g and compare the usage in Gen 44:22 for the use of the vav consecutive perfects in contingent futures. The conditional clause in the middle of 29:13 and the deuteronomic theology reflected in both Deut 30:1-5 and 1 Kgs 8:46-48 suggest that the verbs are continent futures here. For the same demand for wholehearted seeking in these contexts which presuppose exile see especially Deut 30:2, 1 Kgs 8:48.

[29:13]  ⁶ tn Or “If you wholeheartedly seek me”; Heb “You will seek me and find [me] because you will seek me with all your heart.” The translation attempts to reflect the theological nuances of “seeking” and “finding” and the psychological significance of “heart” which refers more to intellectual and volitional concerns in the OT than to emotional ones.

[29:14]  ⁷ tn Heb “I will let myself be found by you.” For this nuance of the verb see BDB 594 s.v. מָצָא Niph.1.f and compare the usage in Isa 65:1; 2 Chr 15:2. The Greek version already noted that nuance when it translated the phrase “I will manifest myself to you.”

[29:14]  ⁸ tn Heb “Oracle of the Lord.”

[29:14]  ⁹ tn Heb “restore your fortune.” Alternately, “I will bring you back from exile.” This idiom occurs twenty-six times in the OT and in several cases it is clearly not referring to return from exile but restoration of fortunes (e.g., Job 42:10; Hos 6:11–7:1; Jer 33:11). It is often followed as here by “regather” or “bring back” (e.g., Jer 30:3; Ezek 29:14) so it is often misunderstood as “bringing back the exiles.” The versions (LXX, Vulg., Tg., Pesh.) often translate the idiom as “to go away into captivity,” deriving the noun from שְׁבִי (shÿvi, “captivity”). However, the use of this expression in Old Aramaic documents of Sefire parallels the biblical idiom: “the gods restored the fortunes of the house of my father again” (J. A. Fitzmyer, The Aramaic Inscriptions of Sefire [BibOr], 100-101, 119-20). The idiom means “to turn someone's fortune, bring about change” or “to reestablish as it was” (HALOT 1386 s.v. 3.c). In Ezek 16:53 it is paralleled by the expression “to restore the situation which prevailed earlier.” This amounts to restitutio in integrum, which is applicable to the circumstances surrounding the return of the exiles.

[29:14]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “Oracle of the Lord.”

[32:42]  ¹¹ tn Heb “For thus says the Lord.” See the translator’s notes on 32:27, 36.

[32:42]  ¹² tn Heb “As I have brought all this great disaster on these people so I will bring upon them all the good fortune which I am promising them.” The translation has broken down the longer Hebrew sentence to better conform to English style.

[4:10]  ¹³ tn Or perhaps “scream”; NRSV, TEV, NLT “groan.”

[4:10]  ¹⁴ tn Or “redeem” (KJV, NASB, NIV, NRSV, NLT).

[4:10]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “hand.” The Hebrew idiom is a metonymy for power or control.

[4:11]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “let her be desecrated.” the referent (Jerusalem) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[4:11]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “and let our eye look upon Zion.”

[4:12]  ¹⁸ tn The words “to be threshed” are not in the Hebrew text, but have been supplied in the translation to make it clear that the Lord is planning to enable “Daughter Zion” to “thresh” her enemies.

[4:13]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “I will make your horn iron.”

[4:13]  ²⁰ sn Jerusalem (Daughter Zion at the beginning of the verse; cf. 4:8) is here compared to a powerful ox which crushes the grain on the threshing floor with its hooves.

[4:13]  ²¹ tn Or “the Lord” (so many English versions); Heb “the master.”

[4:13]  ²² tn Heb “and their wealth to the master of all the earth.” The verb “devote” does double duty in the parallelism and is supplied in the second line for clarification.

[7:18]  ²³ tn Heb “Who is a God like you?” The rhetorical question expects the answer, “No one!”

[7:18]  ²⁴ tn Heb “one who.” The prayer moves from direct address (second person) in v. 18a to a descriptive (third person) style in vv. 18b-19a and then back to direct address (second person) in vv. 19b-20. Due to considerations of English style and the unfamiliarity of the modern reader with alternation of persons in Hebrew poetry, the entire section has been rendered as direct address (second person) in the translation.

[7:18]  ²⁵ tn Heb “pass over.”

[7:18]  ²⁶ tn Heb “of the remnant of his inheritance.”

[7:18]  ²⁷ tn Heb “he does not keep hold of his anger forever.”

[7:19]  ²⁸ tn The verb יָשׁוּב (yashuv, “he will return”) is here used adverbially in relation to the following verb, indicating that the Lord will again show mercy.

[7:19]  ²⁹ tn Some prefer to read יִכְבֹּס (yikhbos, “he will cleanse”; see HALOT 459 s.v. כבס pi). If the MT is taken as it stands, sin is personified as an enemy that the Lord subdues.

[7:19]  ³⁰ tn Heb “their sins,” but the final mem (ם) may be enclitic rather than a pronominal suffix. In this case the suffix from the preceding line (“our”) may be understood as doing double duty.

[7:19]  ³¹ sn In this metaphor the Lord disposes of Israel’s sins by throwing them into the waters of the sea (here symbolic of chaos).

[7:20]  ³² tn More literally, “You will extend loyalty to Jacob, and loyal love to Abraham.

[7:20]  ³³ tn Heb “our fathers.” The Hebrew term refers here to more distant ancestors, not immediate parents.

[7:20]  ³⁴ tn Heb “which you swore [or, “pledged”] to our fathers from days of old.”