Jeremiah 3:15

3:15 I will give you leaders ¹  who will be faithful to me. ²  They will lead you with knowledge and insight.

Jeremiah 6:18

6:18 So the Lord said, ³ 

“Hear, you nations!

Be witnesses and take note of what will happen to these people. ⁴ 

Jeremiah 6:27

6:27 The Lord said to me, ⁵ 

“I have made you like a metal assayer

to test my people like ore. ⁶ 

You are to observe them

and evaluate how they behave.” ⁷ 

Jeremiah 7:1

Faulty Religion and Unethical Behavior Will Lead to Judgment

7:1 The Lord said to Jeremiah: ⁸ 

Jeremiah 11:1

The People Have Violated Their Covenant with God

11:1 The Lord said to Jeremiah: ⁹ 

Jeremiah 13:2

13:2 So I bought the shorts as the Lord had told me to do ¹⁰  and put them on. ¹¹ 

Jeremiah 13:5

13:5 So I went and buried them at Perath ¹²  as the Lord had ordered me to do.

Jeremiah 18:1-2

An Object Lesson from the Making of Pottery

18:1 The Lord said to Jeremiah: ¹³  18:2 “Go down at once ¹⁴  to the potter’s house. I will speak to you further there.” ¹⁵ 

Jeremiah 21:4

21:4 that the Lord, the God of Israel, says, ¹⁶  ‘The forces at your disposal ¹⁷  are now outside the walls fighting against King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon and the Babylonians ¹⁸  who have you under siege. I will gather those forces back inside the city. ¹⁹ 

Jeremiah 29:5

29:5 ‘Build houses and settle down. Plant gardens and eat what they produce.

Jeremiah 29:12-13

29:12 When you call out to me and come to me in prayer, ²⁰  I will hear your prayers. ²¹  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, ²² 

Jeremiah 30:1

Introduction to the Book of Consolation

30:1 The Lord spoke to Jeremiah. ²³ 

Jeremiah 34:12

34:12 That was when the Lord spoke to Jeremiah, ²⁴ 

Jeremiah 41:10

41:10 Then Ishmael took captive all the people who were still left alive in Mizpah. This included the royal princesses ²⁵  and all the rest of the people in Mizpah that Nebuzaradan, the captain of the royal guard, had put under the authority of Gedaliah son of Ahikam. Ishmael son of Nethaniah took all these people captive and set out to cross over to the Ammonites.

[3:15]  ¹ tn Heb “shepherds.”

[3:15]  ² tn Heb “after/according to my [own] heart.”

[6:18]  ³ tn These words are not in the text but are implicit from the flow of the context. They are supplied in the translation for clarity.

[6:18]  ⁴ tn Heb “Know, congregation [or witness], what in [or against] them.” The meaning of this line is somewhat uncertain. The meaning of the noun of address in the second line (“witness,” rendered as an imperative in the translation, “Be witnesses”) is greatly debated. It is often taken as “congregation” but the lexicons and commentaries generally question the validity of reading that word since it is nowhere else applied to the nations. BDB 417 s.v. עֵדָה 3 says that the text is dubious. HALOT 747 s.v. I עֵדָה, 4 emends the text to דֵּעָה (de’ah). Several modern English versions (e.g., NIV, NCV, God’s Word) take it as the feminine singular noun “witness” (cf. BDB 729 s.v. II עֵדָה) and understand it as a collective. This solution is also proposed by J. A. Thompson (Jeremiah [NICOT], 259, n. 3) and appears to make the best sense in the context. The end of the line is very elliptical but is generally taken as either, “what I will do with/to them,” or “what is coming against them” (= “what will happen to them”) on the basis of the following context.

[6:27]  ⁵ tn These words are not in the text but are supplied in the translation for clarity. Note “I have appointed you.” Compare Jer 1:18.

[6:27]  ⁶ tn Heb “I have made you an assayer of my people, a tester [?].” The meaning of the words translated “assayer” (בָּחוֹן, bakhon) and “tester” (מִבְצָר, mivtsar) is uncertain. The word בָּחוֹן (bakhon) can mean “tower” (cf. BDB 103 s.v. בָּחוֹן; cf. Isa 23:13 for the only other use) or “assayer” (cf. BDB 103 s.v. בָּחוֹן). The latter would be the more expected nuance because of the other uses of nouns and verbs from this root. The word מִבְצָר (mivtsar) normally means “fortress” (cf. BDB 131 s.v. מִבְצָר), but most modern commentaries and lexicons deem that nuance inappropriate here. HALOT follows a proposal that the word is to be repointed to מְבַצֵּר (mÿvatser) and derived from a root בָּצַר (batsar) meaning “to test” (cf. HALOT 143 s.v. IV בָּצַר). That proposal makes the most sense in the context, but the root appears nowhere else in the OT.

[6:27]  ⁷ tn Heb “test their way.”

[7:1]  ⁷ tn Heb “The word which came to Jeremiah from the Lord.”

[11:1]  ⁹ tn Heb “The word which came to Jeremiah from the Lord, saying.” The proposed translation is more in keeping with contemporary English idiom. Cf. 1:2 and 7:1 and footnotes there.

[13:2]  ¹¹ tn Heb “according to the word of the Lord.”

[13:2]  ¹² tn Heb “upon your loins.” The “loins” were the midriff of the body from the waist to the knees. For a further discussion including the figurative uses see R. C. Dentan, “Loins,” IDB 3:149-50.

[13:5]  ¹³ tc The translation reads בִּפְרָתָה (bifratah) with 4QJer^a as noted in W. L. Holladay, Jeremiah (Hermeneia), 1:393 instead of בִּפְרָת (bifrat) in the MT.

[18:1]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “The word which came to Jeremiah from the Lord, saying:” This same formula occurs ten other times in Jeremiah. It has already occurred at 7:1 and 11:1.

[18:2]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “Get up and go down.” The first verb is not literal but is idiomatic for the initiation of an action. See 13:4, 6 for other occurrences of this idiom.

[18:2]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “And I will cause you to hear my word there.”

[21:4]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “Tell Zedekiah, ‘Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel.’” Using the indirect quote eliminates one level of embedded quotation and makes it easier for the reader to follow.

[21:4]  ²⁰ tn Heb “the weapons which are in your hand.” Weapons stands here by substitution for the soldiers who wield them.

[21:4]  ²¹ sn The Babylonians (Heb “the Chaldeans”). The Chaldeans were a group of people in the country south of Babylon from which Nebuchadnezzar came. The Chaldean dynasty his father established became the name by which the Babylonians are regularly referred to in the book of Jeremiah. Jeremiah’s contemporary Ezekiel uses both terms.

[21:4]  ²² tn The structure of the Hebrew sentence of this verse is long and complex and has led to a great deal of confusion and misunderstanding. There are two primary points of confusion: 1) the relation of the phrase “outside the walls,” and 2) the antecedent of “them” in the last clause of the verse that reads in Hebrew: “I will gather them back into the midst of the city.” Most take the phrase “outside the walls” with “the Babylonians….” Some take it with “turn back/bring back” to mean “from outside….” However, the preposition “from” is part of the idiom for “outside….” The phrase goes with “fighting” as J. Bright (Jeremiah [AB], 215) notes and as NJPS suggests. The antecedent of “them” has sometimes been taken mistakenly to refer to the Babylonians. It refers rather to “the forces at your disposal” which is literally “the weapons which are in your hands.” This latter phrase is a figure involving substitution (called metonymy) as Bright also correctly notes. The whole sentence reads in Hebrew: “I will bring back the weapons of war which are in your hand with which you are fighting Nebuchadrezzar the King of Babylon and the Chaldeans who are besieging you outside your wall and I will gather them into the midst of the city.” The sentence has been restructured to better reflect the proper relationships and to make the sentence conform more to contemporary English style.

[29:12]  ²¹ 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]  ²² 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]  ²³ 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.

[30:1]  ²⁵ tn Compare the headings at 7:1; 11:1; 18:1; 21:1 and the translator’s note at those places.

[34:12]  ²⁷ tn Heb “And the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah from the Lord, saying.” This is the resumption of the introduction in v. 8 after the lengthy description of the situation that had precipitated the Lord’s message to Jeremiah. “That was when” is intended to take the reader back to v. 8.

[41:10]  ²⁹ tn Heb “the daughters of the king.” Most commentators do not feel that this refers to the actual daughters of Zedekiah since they would have been too politically important to have escaped exile with their father. As noted in the translator’s note on 36:26 this need not refer to the actual daughters of the king but may refer to other royal daughters, i.e., the daughters of other royal princes.