Jeremiah 4:30

4:30 And you, Zion, city doomed to destruction, ¹ 

you accomplish nothing ²  by wearing a beautiful dress, ³ 

decking yourself out in jewels of gold,

and putting on eye shadow! ⁴ 

You are making yourself beautiful for nothing.

Your lovers spurn you.

They want to kill you. ⁵ 

Jeremiah 14:17

Lament over Present Destruction and Threat of More to Come

14:17 “Tell these people this, Jeremiah: ⁶ 

‘My eyes overflow with tears

day and night without ceasing. ⁷ 

For my people, my dear children, ⁸  have suffered a crushing blow.

They have suffered a serious wound. ⁹ 

Jeremiah 16:9

16:9 For I, the Lord God of Israel who rules over all, tell you what will happen. ¹⁰  I will put an end to the sounds of joy and gladness, to the glad celebration of brides and grooms in this land. You and the rest of the people will live to see this happen.’” ¹¹ 

Jeremiah 20:4

20:4 For the Lord says, ‘I will make both you and your friends terrified of what will happen to you. ¹²  You will see all of them die by the swords of their enemies. ¹³  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 27:5

27:5 “I made the earth and the people and animals on it by my mighty power and great strength, ¹⁴  and I give it to whomever I see fit. ¹⁵ 

Jeremiah 28:1

Jeremiah Confronted by a False Prophet

28:1 The following events occurred in that same year, early in the reign of King Zedekiah of Judah. To be more precise, it was the fifth month of the fourth year of his reign. ¹⁶  The prophet Hananiah son of Azzur, who was from Gibeon, spoke to Jeremiah ¹⁷  in the Lord’s temple in the presence of the priests and all the people. ¹⁸ 

Jeremiah 28:11

28:11 Then he spoke up in the presence of all the people. “The Lord says, ‘In the same way I will break the yoke of servitude of all the nations to King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon ¹⁹  before two years are over.’” After he heard this, the prophet Jeremiah departed and went on his way. ²⁰ 

Jeremiah 29:21

29:21 “The Lord God of Israel who rules over all ²¹  also has something to say about Ahab son of Kolaiah and Zedekiah son of Maaseiah, who are prophesying lies to you and claiming my authority to do so. ²²  ‘I will hand them over to King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon and he will execute them before your very eyes.

Jeremiah 32:30

32:30 This will happen because the people of Israel and Judah have repeatedly done what displeases me ²³  from their earliest history until now ²⁴  and because they ²⁵  have repeatedly made me angry by the things they have done. ²⁶  I, the Lord, affirm it! ²⁷ 

Jeremiah 34:15

34:15 Recently, however, you yourselves ²⁸  showed a change of heart and did what is pleasing to me. You granted your fellow countrymen their freedom and you made a covenant to that effect in my presence in the house that I have claimed for my own. ²⁹ 

Jeremiah 42:2

42:2 They said to him, “Please grant our request ³⁰  and pray to the Lord your God for all those of us who are still left alive here. ³¹  For, as you yourself can see, there are only a few of us left out of the many there were before. ³² 

[4:30]  ¹ tn Heb “And you that are doomed to destruction.” The referent is supplied from the following context and the fact that Zion/Jerusalem represents the leadership which was continually making overtures to foreign nations for help.

[4:30]  ² tn Heb “What are you accomplishing…?” The rhetorical question assumes a negative answer, made clear by the translation in the indicative.

[4:30]  ³ tn Heb “clothing yourself in scarlet.”

[4:30]  ⁴ tn Heb “enlarging your eyes with antimony.” Antimony was a black powder used by women as eyeliner to make their eyes look larger.

[4:30]  ⁵ tn Heb “they seek your life.”

[14:17]  ⁶ tn The word “Jeremiah” is not in the text but the address is to a second person singular and is a continuation of 14:14 where the quote starts. The word is supplied in the translation for clarity.

[14:17]  ⁷ tn Many of the English versions and commentaries render this an indirect or third person imperative, “Let my eyes overflow…” because of the particle אַל (’al) which introduces the phrase translated “without ceasing” (אַל־תִּדְמֶינָה, ’al-tidmenah). However, this is undoubtedly an example where the particle introduces an affirmation that something cannot be done (cf. GKC 322 §109.e). Clear examples of this are found in Pss 41:2 (41:3 HT); 50:3; Job 40:32 (41:8). God here is describing again a lamentable situation and giving his response to it. See 14:1-6 above.

[14:17]  ⁸ tn Heb “virgin daughter, my people.” The last noun here is appositional to the first two (genitive of apposition). Hence it is not ‘literally’ “virgin daughter of my people.”

[14:17]  ⁹ tn This is a poetic personification. To translate with the plural “serious wounds” might mislead some into thinking of literal wounds.

[16:9]  ¹¹ tn Heb “For thus says Yahweh of armies the God of Israel.” The introductory formula which appears three times in vv. 1-9 (vv. 1, 3, 5) has been recast for smoother English style.

[16:9]  ¹² tn Heb “before your eyes and in your days.” The pronouns are plural including others than Jeremiah.

[20:4]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “I will make you an object of terror to both you and your friends.”

[20:4]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “And they will fall by the sword of their enemies and [with] your eyes seeing [it].”

[27:5]  ²¹ tn Heb “by my great power and my outstretched arm.” Again “arm” is symbolical for “strength.” Compare the similar expression in 21:5.

[27:5]  ²² sn See Dan 4:17 for a similar statement.

[28:1]  ²⁶ tc The original text is unusually full here and deemed by many scholars to be corrupt: Heb “And it happened in that year in the beginning of the reign of Zedekiah king of Judah, in the fourth year, in the fifth month Hananiah…said to…” Many scholars see a contradiction between “in the fourth year” and “in the beginning of the reign.” These scholars point to the fact that the Greek version does not have “in that year” and “in the beginning of the reign of”; it merely reads “in the fourth year of Zedekiah king of Judah, in the fifth month.” These scholars generally also regard the heading at 27:1 to be unoriginal and interpret the heading in the MT here as a faulty harmonization of the original (that in the Greek version) with the erroneous one in the Hebrew of 27:1. However, it is just as possible that the Greek version in both places is an attempt to harmonize the data of 27:1 and 28:1. I.e., it left out both the heading at 27:1, and “in that year” and “at the beginning of the reign of” in the heading here because it thought the data was contradictory. However, it is just as likely that there is really no contradiction here. I.e., the term “beginning of the reign” can include the fourth year. E. H. Merrill has argued that the term here refers not to the accession year (see the translator’s note on 26:1) but to the early years in general (“The ‘Accession Year’ and Davidic Chronology,” JANESCU 19 [1989]: 105-6, and cf. note 18 for bibliography on Akkadian parallels). Hence the phrase has been translated both here and in 27:1 “early in the reign of…” For other attempts at harmonization see the discussion in G. L. Keown, P. J. Scalise, T. G. Smothers, Jeremiah 26-52 (WBC), 41, n. 1a.

[28:1]  ²⁷ tn Heb “to me.” The rest of the chapter is all in third person narrative (see vv. 5, 6, 10, 11, 12, 15). Hence, many explain the first person here as a misunderstanding of the abbreviation “to Jeremiah” (אֶל יִרְמִיָּה [’el yirmiyyah] = אֵלַי, [’elay]). It is just as likely that there is a similar kind of disjunction here that was found in 27:1-2 only in the opposite direction. There what started out as a third person report was really a first person report. Here what starts out as a first person report is really a third person report. The text betrays both the hands of the narrator, probably Baruch, and the reportee, Jeremiah, who dictated a synopsis of his messages and his stories to Baruch to write down (Jer 36:4, 32).

[28:1]  ²⁸ tn Heb “And it happened in that year in the beginning of the reign of Zedekiah king of Judah, in the fourth year, in the fifth month, Hananiah son of Azzur the prophet who was from Gibeon said to me in…” The sentence has been broken up in conformity with contemporary English style and the flavor given in modern equivalent terms.

[28:11]  ³¹ tn Heb “I will break the yoke of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon from upon the necks of all the nations.”

[28:11]  ³² tn Heb “Then the prophet Jeremiah went his way.”

[29:21]  ³⁶ tn Heb “Yahweh of armies, the God of Israel.”

[29:21]  ³⁷ tn Heb “prophesying lies in my name.” For an explanation of this idiom see the study notes on 14:14 and 23:27.

[32:30]  ⁴¹ tn Heb “that which is evil in my eyes.” For this idiom see BDB 744 s.v. עַיִן 3.c and compare usage in 18:10.

[32:30]  ⁴² tn Heb “from their youth.”

[32:30]  ⁴³ tn Heb “the people of Israel.” However, since “people of Israel” has been used in the preceding line for the northern kingdom as opposed to the kingdom of Judah, it might lead to confusion to translate literally. Moreover, the pronoun “they” accomplishes the same purpose.

[32:30]  ⁴⁴ tn Heb “by the work of their hands.” See the translator’s note on 25:6 and the parallelism in 25:14 for this rendering rather than referring it to the making of idols as in 1:16; 10:3.

[32:30]  ⁴⁵ tn Heb “Oracle of the Lord.”

[34:15]  ⁴⁶ tn The presence of the independent pronoun in the Hebrew text is intended to contrast their actions with those of their ancestors.

[34:15]  ⁴⁷ sn This refers to the temple. See Jer 7:10, 11, 14, 30 and see the translator’s note on 7:10 and the study note on 10:25 for the explanation of the idiom involved here.

[42:2]  ⁵¹ tn Heb “please let our petition fall before you.” For the idiom here see 37:20 and the translator’s note there.

[42:2]  ⁵² tn Heb “on behalf of us, [that is] on behalf of all this remnant.”

[42:2]  ⁵³ 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.