Jeremiah 37:21

37:21 Then King Zedekiah ordered that Jeremiah be committed to the courtyard of the guardhouse. He also ordered that a loaf of bread ¹  be given to him every day from the baker’s street until all the bread in the city was gone. So Jeremiah was kept ²  in the courtyard of the guardhouse.

Jeremiah 52:6

52:6 By the ninth day of the fourth month ³  the famine in the city was so severe the residents ⁴  had no food.

[37:21]  ¹ tn Heb “And/Then King Zedekiah ordered and they committed Jeremiah to [or deposited…in] the courtyard of the guardhouse and they gave to him a loaf of bread.” The translation has been structured the way it has to avoid the ambiguous “they” which is the impersonal subject which is sometimes rendered passive in English (cf. GKC 460 §144.d). This text also has another example of the vav (ו) + infinitive absolute continuing a finite verbal form (וְנָתֹן [vÿnaton] = “and they gave”; cf. GKC 345 §113.y and see Jer 32:44; 36:23).

[37:21]  ² tn Heb “Stayed/Remained/ Lived.”

[52:6]  ³ sn According to modern reckoning that would have been July 18, 586 b.c. The siege thus lasted almost a full eighteen months.

[52:6]  ⁴ tn Heb “the people of the land.”