Jeremiah 4:28

4:28 Because of this the land will mourn

and the sky above will grow black. ¹ 

For I have made my purpose known ² 

and I will not relent or turn back from carrying it out.” ³ 

Jeremiah 5:21

5:21 Tell them: ‘Hear this,

you foolish people who have no understanding,

who have eyes but do not discern,

who have ears but do not perceive: ⁴ 

Jeremiah 7:27

7:27 Then the Lord said to me, ⁵  “When you tell them all this, they will not listen to you. When you call out to them, they will not respond to you.

Jeremiah 9:13

9:13 The Lord answered, “This has happened because these people have rejected my laws which I gave them. They have not obeyed me or followed those laws. ⁶ 

Jeremiah 13:14

13:14 And I will smash them like wine bottles against one another, children and parents alike. ⁷  I will not show any pity, mercy, or compassion. Nothing will keep me from destroying them,’ ⁸  says the Lord.”

Jeremiah 16:7

16:7 No one will take any food to those who mourn for the dead to comfort them. No one will give them any wine to drink to console them for the loss of their father or mother.

Jeremiah 17:6

17:6 They will be like a shrub ⁹  in the desert.

They will not experience good things even when they happen.

It will be as though they were growing in the desert,

in a salt land where no one can live.

Jeremiah 17:11

17:11 The person who gathers wealth by unjust means

is like the partridge that broods over eggs but does not hatch them. ¹⁰ 

Before his life is half over he will lose his ill-gotten gains. ¹¹ 

At the end of his life it will be clear he was a fool.” ¹² 

Jeremiah 17:23

17:23 Your ancestors, ¹³  however, did not listen to me or pay any attention to me. They stubbornly refused ¹⁴  to pay attention or to respond to any discipline.’

Jeremiah 20:9

20:9 Sometimes I think, “I will make no mention of his message.

I will not speak as his messenger ¹⁵  any more.”

But then ¹⁶  his message becomes like a fire

locked up inside of me, burning in my heart and soul. ¹⁷ 

I grow weary of trying to hold it in;

I cannot contain it.

Jeremiah 24:6

24:6 I will look after their welfare ¹⁸  and will restore them to this land. There I will build them up and will not tear them down. I will plant them firmly in the land ¹⁹  and will not uproot them. ²⁰ 

Jeremiah 25:4

25:4 Over and over again ²¹  the Lord has sent ²²  his servants the prophets to you. But you have not listened or paid attention. ²³ 

Jeremiah 25:6

25:6 Do not pay allegiance to ²⁴  other gods and worship and serve them. Do not make me angry by the things that you do. ²⁵  Then I will not cause you any harm.’

Jeremiah 36:24

36:24 Neither he nor any of his attendants showed any alarm when they heard all that had been read. Nor did they tear their clothes to show any grief or sorrow. ²⁶ 

Jeremiah 44:10

44:10 To this day your people ²⁷  have shown no contrition! They have not revered me nor followed the laws and statutes I commanded ²⁸  you and your ancestors.’

Jeremiah 50:39

50:39 Therefore desert creatures and jackals will live there.

Ostriches ²⁹  will dwell in it too. ³⁰ 

But no people will ever live there again.

No one will dwell there for all time to come. ³¹ 

[4:28]  ¹ sn The earth and the heavens are personified here and depicted in the act of mourning and wearing black clothes because of the destruction of the land of Israel.

[4:28]  ² tn Heb “has spoken and purposed.” This is an example of hendiadys where two verbs are joined by “and” but one is meant to serve as a modifier of the other.

[4:28]  ³ tn Heb “will not turn back from it.”

[5:21]  ⁴ tn Heb “they have eyes but they do not see, they have ears but they do not hear.”

[7:27]  ⁷ tn The words, “Then the Lord said to me” are not in the text but are implicit in the shift from the second and third person plural pronouns in vv. 21-26 and the second singular in this verse. The words are supplied in the translation for clarity.

[9:13]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “and they have not walked in it (with “it” referring to “my law”).

[13:14]  ¹³ tn Or “children along with their parents”; Heb “fathers and children together.”

[13:14]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “I will not show…so as not to destroy them.”

[17:6]  ¹⁶ tn This word occurs only here and in Jer 48:6. It has been identified as a kind of juniper, which is a short shrub with minute leaves that look like scales. For a picture and more discussion see Fauna and Flora of the Bible, 131.

[17:11]  ¹⁹ tn The meaning of this line is somewhat uncertain. The word translated “broods over” occurs only here and Isa 34:15. It is often defined on the basis of an Aramaic cognate which means “to gather” with an extended meaning of “to gather together under her to hatch.” Many commentators go back to a Rabbinic explanation that the partridge steals the eggs of other birds and hatches them out only to see the birds depart when they recognize that she is not the mother. Modern studies question the validity of this zoologically. Moreover, W. L. Holladay contests the validity on the basis of the wording “and she does hatch them” (Heb “bring them to birth”). See W. L. Holladay, Jeremiah (Hermeneia), 1:498, and see also P. C. Craigie, P. H. Kelley, J. F. Drinkard, Jeremiah 1-25 (WBC), 229. The point of the comparison is that the rich gather their wealth but they do not get to see the fruits of it.

[17:11]  ²⁰ tn The Hebrew text merely says “it.” But the antecedent might be ambiguous in English so the reference to wealth gained by unjust means is here reiterated for clarity.

[17:11]  ²¹ tn Heb “he will be [= prove to be] a fool.”

[17:23]  ²² tn Heb “They.” The antecedent is spelled out to avoid any possible confusion.

[17:23]  ²³ tn Heb “They hardened [or made stiff] their neck so as not to.”

[20:9]  ²⁵ tn Heb “speak in his name.” This idiom occurs in passages where someone functions as the messenger under the authority of another. See Exod 5:23; Deut 18:19, 29:20; Jer 14:14. The antecedent in the first line is quite commonly misidentified as being “him,” i.e., the Lord. Comparison, however, with the rest of the context, especially the consequential clause “then it becomes” (וְהָיָה, vÿhayah), and Jer 23:36 shows that it is “the word of the Lord.”

[20:9]  ²⁶ tn The English sentence has again been restructured for the sake of English style. The Hebrew construction involves two vav consecutive perfects in a condition and consequence relation, “If I say to myself…then it [his word] becomes.” See GKC 337 §112.kk for the construction.

[20:9]  ²⁷ sn Heb “It is in my heart like a burning fire, shut up in my bones.” In addition to standing as part for the whole, the “bones” for the person (e.g., Ps 35:10), the bones were associated with fear (e.g., Job 4:14) and with pain (e.g., Job 33:19, Ps 102:3 [102:4 HT]) and joy or sorrow (e.g., Ps 51:8 [51:10 HT]). As has been mentioned several times, the heart was connected with intellectual and volitional concerns.

[24:6]  ²⁸ tn Heb “I will set my eyes upon them for good.” For the nuance of “good” see Jer 21:10; Amos 9:4 (in these cases the opposite of harm; see BDB 375 s.v. טוֹבָה 1).

[24:6]  ²⁹ tn The words “There” and “firmly in the land” are not in the text but are implicit from the connection and the metaphor. They are supplied in the translation for clarity.

[24:6]  ³⁰ sn For these terms see Jer 1:10.

[25:4]  ³¹ tn For the idiom involved here see the notes at 7:13 and 11:7.

[25:4]  ³² tn The vav consecutive with the perfect in a past narrative is a little unusual. Here it is probably indicating repeated action in past time in keeping with the idiom that precedes and follows it. See GKC 332 §112.f for other possible examples.

[25:4]  ³³ tn Heb “inclined your ear to hear.” This is idiomatic for “paying attention.” It is often parallel with “listen” as here or with “pay attention” (see, e.g., Prov 4:20; 51:1).

[25:6]  ³⁴ tn Heb “follow after.” See the translator’s note on 2:5 for this idiom.

[25:6]  ³⁵ tn Heb “make me angry with the work of your hands.” The term “work of your own hands” is often interpreted as a reference to idolatry as is clearly the case in Isa 2:8; 37:19. However, the parallelism in 25:14 and the context in 32:30 show that it is more general and refers to what they have done. That is likely the meaning here as well.

[36:24]  ³⁷ tn Heb “Neither the king nor any of his servants who heard all these words were afraid or tore their clothes.” The sentence has been broken up into two shorter sentences to better conform to English style and some of the terms explained (e.g., tore their clothes) for the sake of clarity.

[44:10]  ⁴⁰ tn Heb “they” but as H. Freedman (Jeremiah [SoBB], 284) notes the third person is used here to include the people just referred to as well as the current addressees. Hence “your people” or “the people of Judah.” It is possible that the third person again reflects the rhetorical distancing that was referred to earlier in 35:16 (see the translator’s note there for explanation) in which case one might translate “you have shown,” and “you have not revered.”

[44:10]  ⁴¹ tn Heb “to set before.” According to BDB 817 s.v. פָּנֶה II.4.b(g) this refers to “propounding to someone for acceptance or choice.” This is clearly the usage in Deut 30:15, 19; Jer 21:8 and is likely the case here. However, to translate literally would not be good English idiom and “proposed to” might not be correctly understood, so the basic translation of נָתַן (natan) has been used here.

[50:39]  ⁴³ tn The identification of this bird has been called into question by G. R. Driver, “Birds in the Old Testament,” PEQ 87 (1955): 137-38. He refers to this bird as an owl. That identification, however, is not reflected in any of the lexicons including the most recent, which still gives “ostrich” (HALOT 402 s.v. יַעֲנָה) as does W. S. McCullough, “Ostrich,” IDB 3:611. REB, NIV, NCV, and God’s Word all identify this bird as “owl/desert owl.”

[50:39]  ⁴⁴ tn Heb “Therefore desert creatures will live with jackals and ostriches will live in it.”

[50:39]  ⁴⁵ tn Heb “It will never again be inhabited nor dwelt in unto generation and generation.” For the meaning of this last phrase compare the usage in Ps 100:5 and Isaiah 13:20. Since the first half of the verse has spoken of animals living there, it is necessary to add “people” and turn the passive verbs into active ones.