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 19:7

19:7 In this place I will thwart ³  the plans of the people of Judah and Jerusalem. I will deliver them over to the power of their enemies who are seeking to kill them. They will die by the sword ⁴  at the hands of their enemies. ⁵  I will make their dead bodies food for the birds and wild beasts to eat.

Jeremiah 20:4

20:4 For the Lord says, ‘I will make both you and your friends terrified of what will happen to you. ⁶  You will see all of them die by the swords of their enemies. ⁷  I will hand all the people of Judah over to the king of Babylon. He will carry some of them away into exile in Babylon and he will kill others of them with the sword.

Jeremiah 25:27

25:27 Then the Lord said to me, ⁸  “Tell them that the Lord God of Israel who rules over all ⁹  says, ¹⁰  ‘Drink this cup ¹¹  until you get drunk and vomit. Drink until you fall down and can’t get up. ¹²  For I will send wars sweeping through you.’ ¹³ 

Jeremiah 36:7

36:7 Perhaps then they will ask the Lord for mercy and will all stop doing the evil things they have been doing. ¹⁴  For the Lord has threatened to bring great anger and wrath against these people.” ¹⁵ 

Jeremiah 37:13

37:13 But he only got as far as the Benjamin Gate. ¹⁶  There an officer in charge of the guards named Irijah, ¹⁷  who was the son of Shelemiah and the grandson of Hananiah, stopped him. He seized Jeremiah and said, ¹⁸  “You are deserting to the Babylonians!” ¹⁹ 

Jeremiah 38:19

38:19 Then King Zedekiah said to Jeremiah, “I am afraid of the Judeans who have deserted to the Babylonians. ²⁰  The Babylonians might hand me over to them and they will torture me.” ²¹ 

Jeremiah 42:2

42:2 They said to him, “Please grant our request ²²  and pray to the Lord your God for all those of us who are still left alive here. ²³  For, as you yourself can see, there are only a few of us left out of the many there were before. ²⁴ 

Jeremiah 48:32

48:32 I will weep for the grapevines of Sibmah

just like the town of Jazer weeps over them. ²⁵ 

Their branches once spread as far as the Dead Sea. ²⁶ 

They reached as far as the town of Jazer. ²⁷ 

The destroyer will ravage

her fig, date, ²⁸  and grape crops.

Jeremiah 48:44

48:44 Anyone who flees at the sound of terror

will fall into a pit.

Anyone who climbs out of the pit

will be caught in a trap. ²⁹ 

For the time is coming

when I will punish the people of Moab. ³⁰ 

I, the Lord, affirm it! ³¹ 

Jeremiah 50:15

50:15 Shout the battle cry from all around the city.

She will throw up her hands in surrender. ³² 

Her towers ³³  will fall.

Her walls will be torn down.

Because I, the Lord, am wreaking revenge, ³⁴ 

take out your vengeance on her!

Do to her as she has done!

[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.”

[19:7]  ³ sn There is perhaps a two-fold wordplay in the use of this word. One involves the sound play with the word for “jar,” which has been explained as a water decanter. The word here is בַקֹּתִי (vaqqoti). The word for jar in v. 1 is בַקְבֻּק (vaqbuq). There may also be a play on the literal use of this word to refer to the laying waste or destruction of a land (see Isa 24:3; Nah 2:3). Many modern commentaries think that at this point Jeremiah emptied out the contents of the jar, symbolizing the “emptying” out of their plans.

[19:7]  ⁴ sn This refers to the fact that they will die in battle. The sword would be only one of the weapons that strikes them down. It is one of the trio of “sword,” “starvation,” and “disease” which were the concomitants of war referred to so often in the book of Jeremiah. Starvation is referred to in v. 9.

[19:7]  ⁵ tn Heb “I will cause them to fall by the sword before their enemies and in the hand of those who seek their soul [= life].” In this context the two are meant as obvious qualifications of one entity, not two. Some rearrangement of the qualifiers had to be made in the English translation to convey this.

[20:4]  ⁵ tn Heb “I will make you an object of terror to both you and your friends.”

[20:4]  ⁶ tn Heb “And they will fall by the sword of their enemies and [with] your eyes seeing [it].”

[25:27]  ⁷ tn The words “Then the Lord said to me” are not in the text. They are supplied in the translation for clarity, to connect this part of the narrative with vv. 15, 17 after the long intervening list of nations who were to drink the cup of God’s wrath in judgment.

[25:27]  ⁸ tn Heb “Yahweh of armies, the God of Israel.”

[25:27]  ⁹ tn Heb “Tell them, ‘Thus says the Lord….’” The translation is intended to eliminate one level of imbedded quotation marks to help avoid confusion.

[25:27]  ¹⁰ tn The words “this cup” are not in the text but are implicit to the metaphor and the context. They are supplied in the translation for clarity.

[25:27]  ¹¹ tn Heb “Drink, and get drunk, and vomit and fall down and don’t get up.” The imperatives following drink are not parallel actions but consequent actions. For the use of the imperative plus the conjunctive “and” to indicate consequent action, even intention see GKC 324-25 §110.f and compare usage in 1 Kgs 22:12; Prov 3:3b-4a.

[25:27]  ¹² tn Heb “because of the sword that I will send among you.” See the notes on 2:16 for explanation.

[36:7]  ⁹ tn Heb “will turn each one from his wicked way.”

[36:7]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “For great is the anger and the wrath which the Lord has spoken against this people.” The translation uses the more active form which is more in keeping with contemporary English style.

[37:13]  ¹¹ sn The Benjamin Gate would have been a gate in the northern wall leading out toward the territory of Benjamin. It is mentioned only here and in Jer 38:7 and Zech 14:10.

[37:13]  ¹² sn Nothing further is known about Irijah. It is generally agreed that the Hananiah mentioned here is not the same as the false prophet of the same name whom Jeremiah confronted approximately six years earlier (28:1, 5, 10, 15).

[37:13]  ¹³ tn Heb “And he was in the gate of Benjamin and there was an officer of the guard whose name [more literally, and his name] was Irijah…and he seized the prophet Jeremiah, saying.” The sentence has been broken down and simplified to better conform with contemporary English style.

[37:13]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “the Chaldeans.” See the study note on 21:4 for explanation.

[38:19]  ¹³ tn Heb “Chaldeans.” See the study note on 21:4 for explanation.

[38:19]  ¹⁴ 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.

[42:2]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “please let our petition fall before you.” For the idiom here see 37:20 and the translator’s note there.

[42:2]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “on behalf of us, [that is] on behalf of all this remnant.”

[42:2]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “For we are left a few from the many as your eyes are seeing us.” The words “used to be” are not in the text but are implicit. These words are supplied in the translation for clarity and smoothness of English style.

[48:32]  ¹⁷ tc Or “I will weep for the grapevines of Sibmah more than I will weep over the town of Jazer.” The translation here assumes that there has been a graphic confusion of מ (mem) with כְּ (kaf) or בְּ (bet). The parallel passage in Isa 16:9 has the preposition בְּ and the Greek version presupposes a comparative idea “as with.” Many of the modern English versions render the passage with the comparative מִן (min) as in the alternate translation, but it is unclear what the force of the comparison would be here. The verse is actually in the second person, an apostrophe or direct address to the grapevine(s) of Sibmah. However, the translation has retained the third person throughout because such sudden shifts in person are uncommon in contemporary English literature and retaining the third person is smoother. The Hebrew text reads: “From/With the weeping of Jazer I will weep for you, vine of Sibmah. Your tendrils crossed over the sea. They reached unto the sea of Jazer. Upon your summer fruit and your vintage [grape harvest] the destroyer has fallen.”

[48:32]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “crossed over to the Sea.”

[48:32]  ¹⁹ tn Or “reached the sea of Jazer.” The Sea is generally taken to be a reference to the Dead Sea. The translation presupposes that the word “sea” is to be omitted before “Jazer.” The word is missing from two Hebrew mss, from the parallel passage in Isa 16:8, and from the Greek version. It may have arisen from a mistaken copying of the same word in the preceding line.

[48:32]  ²⁰ tn Heb “her summer fruit.” See the translator’s note on 40:10 for the rendering here. According to BDB 657 s.v. נָפַל Qal.4.a, the verb means to “fall upon” or “attack” but in the context it is probably metonymical for attack and destroy.

[48:44]  ¹⁹ sn Jer 48:43-44a are in the main the same as Isa 24:17-18 which shows that the judgment was somewhat proverbial. For a very similar kind of argumentation see Amos 5:19; judgment is unavoidable.

[48:44]  ²⁰ tn Heb “For I will bring upon her, even upon Moab, the year of her punishment.”

[48:44]  ²¹ tn Heb “Oracle of the Lord.”

[50:15]  ²¹ tn Heb “She has given her hand.” For the idiom here involving submission/surrender see BDB 680 s.v. נָתַן Qal.1.z and compare the usage in 1 Chr 29:24; 2 Chr 30:8. For a different interpretation, however, see the rather complete discussion in G. L. Keown, P. J. Scalise, and T. G. Smothers (Jeremiah 26-52 [WBC], 366) who see this as a reference to making a covenant. The verb in this line and the next two lines are all Hebrew perfects and most translators and commentaries see them as past. God’s Word, however, treats them as prophetic perfects and translates them as future. This is more likely in the light of the imperatives both before and after.

[50:15]  ²² tn The meaning of this word is uncertain. The definition here follows that of HALOT 91 s.v. אָשְׁיָה, which defines it on the basis of an Akkadian word and treats it as a loanword.

[50:15]  ²³ tn Heb “Because it is the Lord’s vengeance.” The first person has again been used because the Lord is the speaker and the nominal expression has been turned into a verbal one more in keeping with contemporary English style.