Jeremiah 3:22-25

3:22 Come back to me, you wayward people.

I want to cure your waywardness. ¹ 

Say, ²  ‘Here we are. We come to you

because you are the Lord our God.

3:23 We know our noisy worship of false gods

on the hills and mountains did not help us. ³ 

We know that the Lord our God

is the only one who can deliver Israel. ⁴ 

3:24 From earliest times our worship of that shameful god, Baal,

has taken away ⁵  all that our ancestors ⁶  worked for.

It has taken away our flocks and our herds,

and even our sons and daughters.

3:25 Let us acknowledge ⁷  our shame.

Let us bear the disgrace that we deserve. ⁸ 

For we have sinned against the Lord our God,

both we and our ancestors.

From earliest times to this very day

we have not obeyed the Lord our God.’

Jeremiah 31:19

31:19 For after we turned away from you we repented.

After we came to our senses ⁹  we beat our breasts in sorrow. ¹⁰ 

We are ashamed and humiliated

because of the disgraceful things we did previously.’ ¹¹ 

Psalms 74:18-21

74:18 Remember how ¹²  the enemy hurls insults, O Lord, ¹³ 

and how a foolish nation blasphemes your name!

74:19 Do not hand the life of your dove ¹⁴  over to a wild animal!

Do not continue to disregard ¹⁵  the lives of your oppressed people!

74:20 Remember your covenant promises, ¹⁶ 

for the dark regions of the earth are full of places where violence rules. ¹⁷ 

74:21 Do not let the afflicted be turned back in shame!

Let the oppressed and poor praise your name! ¹⁸ 

Psalms 79:4

79:4 We have become an object of disdain to our neighbors;

those who live on our borders taunt and insult us. ¹⁹ 

Psalms 79:12

79:12 Pay back our neighbors in full! ²⁰ 

May they be insulted the same way they insulted you, O Lord! ²¹ 

Psalms 123:3-4

123:3 Show us favor, O Lord, show us favor!

For we have had our fill of humiliation, and then some. ²² 

123:4 We have had our fill ²³ 

of the taunts of the self-assured,

of the contempt of the proud.

Psalms 137:1-3

Psalm 137 ²⁴ 

137:1 By the rivers of Babylon

we sit down and weep ²⁵ 

when we remember Zion.

137:2 On the poplars in her midst

we hang our harps,

137:3 for there our captors ask us to compose songs; ²⁶ 

those who mock us demand that we be happy, saying: ²⁷ 

“Sing for us a song about Zion!” ²⁸ 

Lamentations 2:15-17

ס (Samek)

2:15 All who passed by on the road

clapped their hands to mock you. ²⁹ 

They sneered and shook their heads

at Daughter Jerusalem.

“Ha! Is this the city they called ³⁰ 

‘The perfection of beauty, ³¹ 

the source of joy of the whole earth!’?” ³² 

פ (Pe)

2:16 All your enemies

gloated over you. ³³ 

They sneered and gnashed their teeth;

they said, “We have destroyed ³⁴  her!

Ha! We have waited a long time for this day.

We have lived to see it!” ³⁵ 

ע (Ayin)

2:17 The Lord has done what he planned;

he has fulfilled ³⁶  his promise ³⁷ 

that he threatened ³⁸  long ago: ³⁹ 

He has overthrown you without mercy ⁴⁰ 

and has enabled the enemy to gloat over you;

he has exalted your adversaries’ power. ⁴¹ 

Lamentations 5:1

The People of Jerusalem Pray:

5:1 ⁴² O Lord, reflect on ⁴³  what has happened to us;

consider ⁴⁴  and look at ⁴⁵  our disgrace.

Ezekiel 36:30

36:30 I will multiply the fruit of the trees and the produce of the fields, so that you will never again suffer the disgrace of famine among the nations.

[3:22]  ¹ tn Or “I will forgive your apostasies.” Heb “I will [or want to] heal your apostasies.” For the use of the verb “heal” (רָפָא, rafa’) to refer to spiritual healing and forgiveness see Hos 14:4.

[3:22]  ² tn Or “They say.” There is an obvious ellipsis of a verb of saying here since the preceding words are those of the Lord and the following are those of the people. However, there is debate about whether these are the response of the people to the Lord’s invitation, a response which is said to be inadequate according to the continuation in 4:1-4, or whether these are the Lord’s model for Israel’s confession of repentance to which he adds further instructions about the proper heart attitude that should accompany it in 4:1-4. The former implies a dialogue with an unmarked twofold shift in speaker between 3:22b-25 and 4:1-4:4 while the latter assumes the same main speaker throughout with an unmarked instruction only in 3:22b-25. This disrupts the flow of the passage less and appears more likely.

[3:23]  ³ tn Heb “Truly in vain from the hills the noise/commotion [and from] the mountains.” The syntax of the Hebrew sentence is very elliptical here.

[3:23]  ⁴ tn Heb “Truly in the Lord our God is deliverance for Israel.”

[3:24]  ⁵ tn Heb “From our youth the shameful thing has eaten up…” The shameful thing is specifically identified as Baal in Jer 11:13. Compare also the shift in certain names such as Ishbaal (“man of Baal”) to Ishbosheth (“man of shame”).

[3:24]  ⁶ tn Heb “fathers” (also in v. 25).

[3:25]  ⁷ tn Heb “Let us lie down in….”

[3:25]  ⁸ tn Heb “Let us be covered with disgrace.”

[31:19]  ⁹ tn For this meaning of the verb see HAL 374 s.v. יָדַע Nif 5 or W. L. Holladay, Concise Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon, 129. REB translates “Now that I am submissive” relating the verb to a second root meaning “be submissive.” (See HALOT 375 s.v. II יָדַע and J. Barr, Comparative Philology and the Text of the Old Testament, 19-21, for evidence for this verb. Other passages cited with this nuance are Judg 8:16; Prov 10:9; Job 20:20.)

[31:19]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “I struck my thigh.” This was a gesture of grief and anguish (cf. Ezek 21:12 [21:17 HT]). The modern equivalent is “to beat the breast.”

[31:19]  ¹¹ tn Heb “because I bear the reproach of my youth.” For the plural referents see the note at the beginning of v. 18.

[74:18]  ¹² tn Heb “remember this.”

[74:18]  ¹³ tn Or “[how] the enemy insults the Lord.”

[74:19]  ¹⁴ sn Your dove. The psalmist compares weak and vulnerable Israel to a helpless dove.

[74:19]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “do not forget forever.”

[74:20]  ¹⁶ tc Heb “look at the covenant.” The LXX reads “your covenant,” which seems to assume a second person pronominal suffix. The suffix may have been accidentally omitted by haplography. Note that the following word (כִּי) begins with kaf (כ).

[74:20]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “for the dark places of the earth are full of dwelling places of violence.” The “dark regions” are probably the lands where the people have been exiled (see C. A. Briggs and E. G. Briggs, Psalms [ICC], 2:157). In some contexts “dark regions” refers to Sheol (Ps 88:6) or to hiding places likened to Sheol (Ps 143:3; Lam 3:6).

[74:21]  ¹⁸ sn Let the oppressed and poor praise your name! The statement is metonymic. The point is this: May the oppressed be delivered from their enemies! Then they will have ample reason to praise God’s name.

[79:4]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “an [object of] taunting and [of] mockery to those around us.” See Ps 44:13.

[79:12]  ²⁰ tn Heb “Return to our neighbors sevenfold into their lap.” The number seven is used rhetorically to express the thorough nature of the action. For other rhetorical/figurative uses of the Hebrew phrase שִׁבְעָתַיִם (shiv’atayim, “seven times”) see Gen 4:15, 24; Ps 12:6; Prov 6:31; Isa 30:26.

[79:12]  ²¹ tn Heb “their reproach with which they reproached you, O Lord.”

[123:3]  ²² tn Heb “for greatly we are filled [with] humiliation.”

[123:4]  ²³ tn Heb “greatly our soul is full to it.”

[137:1]  ²⁴ sn Psalm 137. The Babylonian exiles lament their condition, vow to remain loyal to Jerusalem, and appeal to God for revenge on their enemies.

[137:1]  ²⁵ tn Heb “there we sit down, also we weep.”

[137:3]  ²⁶ tn Heb “ask us [for] the words of a song.”

[137:3]  ²⁷ tn Heb “our [?] joy.” The derivation and meaning of the Hebrew phrase תוֹלָלֵינוּ (tolalenu, “our [?]”) are uncertain. A derivation from תָּלַל (talal, “to mock”) fits contextually, but this root occurs only in the Hiphil stem. For a discussion of various proposals, see L. C. Allen, Psalms 101-150 (WBC), 236.

[137:3]  ²⁸ tn Heb “from a song of Zion.” Most modern translations read, “one of the songs of Zion,” taking the preposition מִן (min, “from”) as partitive and “song” as collective. The present translation assumes the mem (ם) is enclitic, being misunderstood later as the prefixed preposition.

[2:15]  ²⁹ tn Heb “clap their hands at you.” Clapping hands at someone was an expression of malicious glee, derision and mockery (Num 24:10; Job 27:23; Lam 2:15).

[2:15]  ³⁰ tn Heb “of which they said.”

[2:15]  ³¹ tn Heb “perfection of beauty.” The noun יֹפִי (yofi, “beauty”) functions as a genitive of respect in relation to the preceding construct noun: Jerusalem was perfect in respect to its physical beauty.

[2:15]  ³² tn Heb “the joy of all the earth.” This is similar to statements found in Pss 48:2 and 50:2.

[2:16]  ³³ tn Heb “they have opened wide their mouth against you.”

[2:16]  ³⁴ tn Heb “We have swallowed!”

[2:16]  ³⁵ tn Heb “We have attained, we have seen!” The verbs מָצָאנוּ רָאִינוּ (matsa’nu ra’inu) form a verbal hendiadys in which the first retains its full verbal sense and the second functions as an object complement. It forms a Hebrew idiom that means something like, “We have lived to see it!” The three asyndetic 1st person common plural statements in 2:16 (“We waited, we destroyed, we saw!”) are spoken in an impassioned, staccato style reflecting the delight of the conquerors.

[2:17]  ³⁶ tn The verb בָּצַע (batsa’) has a broad range of meanings: (1) “to cut off, break off,” (2) “to injure” a person, (3) “to gain by violence,” (4) “to finish, complete” and (5) “to accomplish, fulfill” a promise.

[2:17]  ³⁷ tn Heb “His word.” When used in collocation with the verb בָּצַע (batsa’, “to fulfill,” see previous tn), the accusative noun אִמְרָה (’imrah) means “promise.”

[2:17]  ³⁸ tn Heb “commanded” or “decreed.” If a reference to prophetic oracles is understood, then “decreed” is preferable. If understood as a reference to the warnings in the covenant, then “threatened” is a preferable rendering.

[2:17]  ³⁹ tn Heb “from days of old.”

[2:17]  ⁴⁰ tn Heb “He has overthrown and has not shown mercy.” The two verbs חָרַס וְלֹא חָמָל (kharas vÿlo’ khamal) form a verbal hendiadys in which the first retains its verbal sense and the second functions adverbially: “He has overthrown you without mercy.” וְלֹא חָמָל (vÿlo’ khamal) alludes to 2:2.

[2:17]  ⁴¹ tn Heb “He has exalted the horn of your adversaries.” The term “horn” (קֶרֶן, qeren) normally refers to the horn of a bull, one of the most powerful animals in ancient Israel. This term is often used figuratively as a symbol of strength, usually in reference to the military might of an army (Deut 33:17; 1 Sam 2:1, 10; 2 Sam 22:3; Pss 18:3; 75:11; 89:18, 25; 92:11; 112:9; 1 Chr 25:5; Jer 48:25; Lam 2:3; Ezek 29:21), just as warriors are sometimes figuratively described as “bulls.” To lift up the horn often means to boast and to lift up someone else’s horn is to give victory or cause to boast.

[5:1]  ⁴² sn The speaking voice is now that of a choir singing the community’s lament in the first person plural. The poem is not an alphabetic acrostic like the preceding chapters but has 22 verses, the same as the number of letters in the Hebrew alphabet.

[5:1]  ⁴³ tn The basic meaning of זָכַר (zakhar) is “to remember, call to mind” (HALOT 270 s.v. I זכר). Although often used of recollection of past events, זָכַר (zakhar, “to remember”) can also describe consideration of present situations: “to consider, think about” something present (BDB 270 s.v. 5), hence “reflect on,” the most appropriate nuance here. Verses 1-6 describe the present plight of Jerusalem. The parallel requests הַבֵּיט וּרְאֵה (habbet urÿ’eh, “Look and see!”) have a present-time orientation as well. See also 2:1; 3:19-20.

[5:1]  ⁴⁴ tn Heb “Look!” Although often used in reference to visual perception, נָבַט (navat, “to look”) can also refer to cognitive consideration and mental attention shown to a situation: “to regard” (e.g., 1 Sam 16:7; 2 Kgs 3:14), “to pay attention to, consider” (e.g., Isa 22:8; Isa 51:1, 2).

[5:1]  ⁴⁵ tn Although normally used in reference to visual sight, רָאָה (ra’ah) is often used in reference to cognitive processes and mental observation. See the note on “Consider” at 2:20.