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 11:6

11:6 The Lord said to me, “Announce all the following words in the towns of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem: ‘Listen to the terms of my covenant with you ³  and carry them out!

Jeremiah 16:10

The Lord Promises Exile (But Also Restoration)

16:10 “When you tell these people about all this, ⁴  they will undoubtedly ask you, ‘Why has the Lord threatened us with such great disaster? What wrong have we done? What sin have we done to offend the Lord our God?’

Jeremiah 25:30

25:30 “Then, Jeremiah, ⁵  make the following prophecy ⁶  against them:

‘Like a lion about to attack, ⁷  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. ⁸ 

He will shout in triumph like those stomping juice from the grapes ⁹ 

against all those who live on the earth.

Jeremiah 26:2

26:2 The Lord said, “Go stand in the courtyard of the Lord’s temple. ¹⁰  Speak out to all the people who are coming from the towns of Judah to worship in the Lord’s temple. Tell them everything I command you to tell them. Do not leave out a single word!

Jeremiah 26:12

26:12 Then Jeremiah made his defense before all the officials and all the people. ¹¹  “The Lord sent me to prophesy everything you have heard me say against this temple and against this city.

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!” ¹² 

Jeremiah 27:12

27:12 I told King Zedekiah of Judah the same thing. I said, ¹³  “Submit ¹⁴  to the yoke of servitude to ¹⁵  the king of Babylon. Be subject to him and his people. Then you will continue to live.

Jeremiah 36:2

36:2 “Get a scroll. ¹⁶  Write on it everything I have told you to say ¹⁷  about Israel, Judah, and all the other nations since I began to speak to you in the reign of Josiah until now. ¹⁸ 

Jeremiah 36:28

36:28 “Get another ¹⁹  scroll and write on it everything ²⁰  that was written on the original scroll ²¹  that King Jehoiakim of Judah burned.

Jeremiah 38:1

Jeremiah Is Charged with Treason and Put in a Cistern to Die

38:1 Now Shephatiah son of Mattan, Gedaliah son of Pashhur, Jehucal ²²  son of Shelemiah, and Pashhur ²³  son of Malkijah had heard ²⁴  the things that Jeremiah had been telling the people. They had heard him say,

Jeremiah 38:27

38:27 All the officials did indeed come and question Jeremiah. ²⁵  He told them exactly what the king had instructed him to say. ²⁶  They stopped questioning him any further because no one had actually heard their conversation. ²⁷ 

Jeremiah 43:1

43:1 Jeremiah finished telling all the people all these things the Lord their God had sent him to tell them. ²⁸ 

Jeremiah 45:1

Baruch is Rebuked but also Comforted

45:1 The prophet Jeremiah spoke to Baruch son of Neriah while he was writing down in a scroll the words that Jeremiah spoke to him. ²⁹  This happened in the fourth year that Jehoiakim son of Josiah was ruling over Judah. ³⁰ 

Jeremiah 51:60

51:60 Jeremiah recorded ³¹  on one scroll all the judgments ³²  that would come upon Babylon – all these prophecies ³³  written about Babylon.

[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.”

[11:6]  ³ tn Heb “the terms of this covenant.” However, this was a separate message and the ambiguity of “this” could still cause some confusion.

[16:10]  ⁵ tn Heb “all these words/things.”

[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.

[26:2]  ⁹ sn It is generally agreed that the incident recorded in this chapter relates to the temple message that Jeremiah gave in 7:1-15. The message there is summarized here in vv. 3-6. The primary interest here is in the response to that message.

[26:12]  ¹¹ tn Heb “Jeremiah said to all the leaders and all the people….” See the note on the word “said” in the preceding verse.

[26:15]  ¹³ tn Heb “For in truth the Lord has sent me to you to speak in your ears all these words/things.”

[27:12]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “I spoke to Zedekiah…according to all these words, saying.”

[27:12]  ¹⁶ sn The verbs in this verse are all plural. They are addressed to Zedekiah and his royal advisers (compare 22:2).

[27:12]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “put their necks in the yoke of.” See the study note on v. 2 for the figure.

[36:2]  ¹⁷ sn Heb “a roll [or scroll] of a document.” Scrolls consisted of pieces of leather or parchment sewn together and rolled up on wooden rollers. The writing was written from right to left and from top to bottom in columns and the scroll unrolled from the left roller and rolled onto the right one as the scroll was read. The scroll varied in length depending on the contents. This scroll was probably not all that long since it was read three times in a single day (vv. 10-11, 15-16, 21-23).

[36:2]  ¹⁸ sn The intent is hardly that of giving a verbatim report of everything that the Lord had told him to say or of everything that he had actually said. What the scroll undoubtedly contained was a synopsis of Jeremiah’s messages as constructed from his memory.

[36:2]  ¹⁹ sn This refers to the messages that Jeremiah delivered during the last eighteen years of Josiah, the three month reign of Jehoahaz and the first four years of Jehoiakim’s reign (the period between Josiah’s thirteenth year [cf. 1:2] and the fourth year of Jehoiakim [v. 1]). The exact content of this scroll is unknown since many of the messages in the present book are undated. It is also not known what relation this scroll had to the present form of the book of Jeremiah, since this scroll was destroyed and another one written that contained more than this one did (cf. v. 32). Since Jeremiah continued his ministry down to the fall of Jerusalem in 587/6 b.c. (1:2) and beyond (cf. Jer 40-44) much more was added to those two scrolls even later.

[36:28]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “Return, take another.” The verb “return” is used in the sense of repetition “take again” (cf. BDB 998 s.v. שׁוּב Qal.8). The idea is already contained in “Get another” so most modern English versions do not represent it.

[36:28]  ²⁰ tn Heb “all the former words/things.”

[36:28]  ²¹ tn Heb “first [or former] scroll.”

[38:1]  ²¹ tn The name is spelled “Jucal” in the Hebrew text here rather than “Jehucal” as in Jer 37:3. The translation uses the same spelling throughout so that the English reader can identify these as the same individual.

[38:1]  ²² sn Pashhur was a member of the delegation sent to Jeremiah in 21:2. For the relative sequence of these two delegations see the study note on 21:1.

[38:1]  ²³ tn J. Bright (Jeremiah [AB], 226, 30) is probably correct in translating the verbs here as pluperfects and in explaining that these words are prophecies that Jeremiah uttered before his arrest not prophecies that were being delivered to the people through intermediaries sent by Jeremiah who was confined in the courtyard of the guardhouse. For the use of the vav consecutive + imperfect to denote the pluperfect see the discussion and examples in IBHS 552-53 §33.2.3a and see the usage in Exod 4:19. The words that are cited in v. 2 are those recorded in 21:9 on the occasion of the first delegation and those in v. 3 are those recorded in 21:10; 34:2; 37:8; 32:28 all except the last delivered before Jeremiah was confined in the courtyard of the guardhouse.

[38:27]  ²³ tn Heb “All the officials came to Jeremiah and questioned him.”

[38:27]  ²⁴ tn Heb “And he reported to them according to all these words which the king had commanded.”

[38:27]  ²⁵ tn Heb “And they were silent from him because the word/matter [i.e., the conversation between Jeremiah and the king] had not been heard.” According to BDB 578 s.v. מִן 1.a the preposition “from” is significant in this construction, implying a verb of motion. I.e., “they were [fell] silent [and turned away] from him.”

[43:1]  ²⁵ tn This sentence contains an emphasis that is impossible to translate into idiomatic English that would not sound redundant. In Hebrew the sentence reads: “When Jeremiah finished [the temporal subordination is left out here because it would make the sentence too long] telling all the people all the words [or all the things] which the Lord their God had sent him [to say] to them, namely all these words,…” The last phrase has been left out of the translation as already having been included. Though they have been left out of the translation, attention is called to their presence here.

[45:1]  ²⁷ sn It is unclear whether this refers to the first scroll (36:4) or the second (36:32). Perhaps from the reactions of Baruch this refers to the second scroll which was written after he had seen how the leaders had responded to the first (36:19). Baruch was from a well-placed family; his grandfather, Mahseiah (32:12) had been governor of Jerusalem under Josiah (2 Chr 34:8) and his brother was a high-ranking official in Zedekiah’s court (Jer 51:59). He himself appears to have had some personal aspirations that he could see were being or going to be jeopardized (v. 5). The passage is both a rebuke to Baruch and an encouragement that his life will be spared wherever he goes. This latter promise is perhaps the reason that the passage is placed where it is, i.e., after the seemingly universal threat of destruction of all who have gone to Egypt in Jer 44.

[45:1]  ²⁸ tn Heb “[This is] the word/message which Jeremiah the prophet spoke to Baruch son of Neriah when he wrote these words on a scroll from the mouth of Jeremiah in the fourth year of Jehoiakim son of Josiah king of Judah, saying.”

[51:60]  ²⁹ tn Or “wrote.”

[51:60]  ³⁰ tn Or “disaster”; or “calamity.”

[51:60]  ³¹ tn Heb “words” (or “things”).