Jeremiah 3:12

The Lord Calls on Israel and Judah to Repent

3:12 “Go and shout this message to my people in the countries in the north. ¹  Tell them,

‘Come back to me, wayward Israel,’ says the Lord.

‘I will not continue to look on you with displeasure. ² 

For I am merciful,’ says the Lord.

‘I will not be angry with you forever.

Jeremiah 11:10

11:10 They have gone back to the evil ways ³  of their ancestors of old who refused to obey what I told them. They, too, have paid allegiance to ⁴  other gods and worshiped them. Both the nation of Israel and the nation of Judah ⁵  have violated the covenant I made with their ancestors.

Jeremiah 19:15

19:15 “The Lord God of Israel who rules over all ⁶  says, ‘I will soon bring on this city and all the towns surrounding it ⁷  all the disaster I threatened to do to it. I will do so because they have stubbornly refused ⁸  to pay any attention to what I have said!’”

Jeremiah 25:30

25:30 “Then, Jeremiah, ⁹  make the following prophecy ¹⁰  against them:

‘Like a lion about to attack, ¹¹  the Lord will roar from the heights of heaven;

from his holy dwelling on high he will roar loudly.

He will roar mightily against his land. ¹² 

He will shout in triumph like those stomping juice from the grapes ¹³ 

against all those who live on the earth.

Jeremiah 26:15

26:15 But you should take careful note of this: If you put me to death, you will bring on yourselves and this city and those who live in it the guilt of murdering an innocent man. For the Lord has sent me to speak all this where you can hear it. That is the truth!” ¹⁴ 

Jeremiah 36:6

36:6 So you go there the next time all the people of Judah come in from their towns to fast ¹⁵  in the Lord’s temple. Read out loud where all of them can hear you what I told you the Lord said, which you wrote in the scroll. ¹⁶ 

Jeremiah 39:16

39:16 “Go ¹⁷  and tell Ebed-Melech the Ethiopian, ‘The Lord God of Israel who rules over all says, “I will carry out against this city what I promised. It will mean disaster and not good fortune for it. ¹⁸  When that disaster happens, you will be there to see it. ¹⁹ 

[3:12]  ¹ tn Heb “Go and proclaim these words to the north.” The translation assumes that the message is directed toward the exiles of northern Israel who have been scattered in the provinces of Assyria to the north.

[3:12]  ² tn Heb “I will not cause my face to fall on you.”

[11:10]  ³ tn Or “They have repeated the evil actions of….”

[11:10]  ⁴ tn Heb “have walked/followed after.” See the translator’s note at 2:5 for the idiom.

[11:10]  ⁵ tn Heb “house of Israel and house of Judah.”

[19:15]  ⁵ tn Heb “Yahweh of armies, the God of Israel.”

[19:15]  ⁶ tn Heb “all its towns.”

[19:15]  ⁷ tn Heb “They hardened [or made stiff] their neck so as not to.”

[25:30]  ⁷ tn The word “Jeremiah” is not in the text. It is supplied in the translation to make clear who is being addressed.

[25:30]  ⁸ tn Heb “Prophesy against them all these words.”

[25:30]  ⁹ tn The words “like a lion about to attack” are not in the text but are implicit in the metaphor. The explicit comparison of the Lord to a lion is made at the end of the passage in v. 38. The words are supplied in the translation here for clarity.

[25:30]  ¹⁰ sn The word used here (Heb “his habitation”) refers to the land of Canaan which the Lord chose to make his earthly dwelling (Exod 15:13) and which was the dwelling place of his chosen people (Jer 10:25; Isa 32:18). Judgment would begin at the “house of God” (v. 29; 1 Pet 4:17) but would extend to the rest of the earth (v. 29).

[25:30]  ¹¹ sn The metaphor shifts from God as a lion to God as a mighty warrior (Jer 20:11; Isa 42:13; Zeph 3:17) shouting in triumph over his foes. Within the metaphor is a simile where the warrior is compared to a person stomping on grapes to remove the juice from them in the making of wine. The figure will be invoked later in a battle scene where the sounds of joy in the grape harvest are replaced by the sounds of joy of the enemy soldiers (Jer 48:33). The picture is drawn in more gory detail in Isa 63:1-6.

[26:15]  ⁹ tn Heb “For in truth the Lord has sent me to you to speak in your ears all these words/things.”

[36:6]  ¹¹ sn Regular fast days were not a part of Israel’s religious calendar. Rather fast days were called on special occasions, i.e., in times of drought or a locust plague (Joel 1:14; 2:15), or during a military crisis (2 Chr 20:3), or after defeat in battle (1 Sam 31:13; 2 Sam 1:12). A fast day was likely chosen for the reading of the scroll because the people would be more mindful of the crisis they were in and be in more of a repentant mood. The events referred to in the study note on v. 1 would have provided the basis for Jeremiah’s anticipation of a fast day when the scroll could be read.

[36:6]  ¹² tn Heb “So you go and read from the scroll which you have written from my mouth the words of the Lord in the ears of the people in the house of the Lord on a fast day, and in that way [for the explanation of this rendering see below] you will be reading them in the ears of all Judah [= the people of Judah] who come from their towns [i.e., to the temple to fast].” Again the syntax of the original is awkward, separating several of the qualifying phrases from the word or phrase they are intended to modify. In most of the “literal” English versions the emphasis on “what the Lord said” tends to get lost and it looks like two separate groups are to be addressed rather than one. The intent of the phrase is to define who the people are who will hear; the וַ that introduces the clause is explicative (BDB 252 s.v. וַ 1.b) and the גַּם (gam) is used to emphasize the explicative “all Judah who come in from their towns” (cf. BDB 169 s.v. גַּם 2). If some force were to be given to the “literal” rendering of that particle here it would be “actually.” This is the group that is to be addressed according to v. 3. The complex Hebrew sentence has been restructured to include all the relevant information in more comprehensible and shorter English sentences.

[39:16]  ¹³ sn Even though Jeremiah was confined to the courtyard of the guardhouse, he was still free to entertain visitors (32:2, 8). Moreover, Ebed-Melech was an official attached to the royal court and would have had access to the courtyard of the guardhouse (38:7, 13). Jeremiah would not have had to leave the courtyard of the guardhouse to “go and tell” him something.

[39:16]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “Behold, I will bring to pass my words against this city for evil/disaster and not for good/good fortune.” For the form of the verb מֵבִי ([mevi] Kethib, מֵבִיא [mevi’] Qere) see GKC 206-7 §74.k, where the same form is noted for the Kethib in 2 Sam 5:2; 1 Kgs 21:21; Jer 19:15 all of which occur before a word beginning with א. For the nuance “carry out” (or “bring to pass”) see BDB 99 s.v. בּוֹא Hiph.2.b.

[39:16]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “And they [= my words for disaster] will come to pass [= happen] before you on that day [i.e., the day that I bring them to pass/carry them out].”