Jeremiah 4:4

4:4 Just as ritual circumcision cuts away the foreskin

as an external symbol of dedicated covenant commitment,

you must genuinely dedicate yourselves to the Lord

and get rid of everything that hinders your commitment to me, ¹ 

people of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem.

If you do not, ²  my anger will blaze up like a flaming fire against you

that no one will be able to extinguish.

That will happen because of the evil you have done.”

Jeremiah 21:12

21:12 O royal family descended from David. ³ 

The Lord says:

‘See to it that people each day ⁴  are judged fairly. ⁵ 

Deliver those who have been robbed from those ⁶  who oppress them.

Otherwise, my wrath will blaze out against you.

It will burn like a fire that cannot be put out

because of the evil that you have done. ⁷ 

Jeremiah 32:31

32:31 This will happen because ⁸  the people of this city have aroused my anger and my wrath since the time they built it until now. ⁹  They have made me so angry that I am determined to remove ¹⁰  it from my sight.

[4:4]  ¹ tn Heb “Circumcise yourselves to the Lord and remove the foreskin of your heart.” The translation is again an attempt to bring out the meaning of a metaphor. The mention of the “foreskin of the heart” shows that the passage is obviously metaphorical and involves heart attitude, not an external rite.

[4:4]  ² tn Heb “lest.”

[21:12]  ³ tn Heb “house of David.” This is essentially equivalent to the royal court in v. 11.

[21:12]  ⁴ tn Heb “to the morning” = “morning by morning” or “each morning.” See Isa 33:2 and Amos 4:4 for parallel usage.

[21:12]  ⁵ sn The kings of Israel and Judah were responsible for justice. See Pss 122:5. The king himself was the final court of appeals judging from the incident of David with the wise woman of Tekoa (2 Sam 14), Solomon and the two prostitutes (1 Kgs 3:16-28), and Absalom’s attempts to win the hearts of the people of Israel by interfering with due process (2 Sam 15:2-4). How the system was designed to operate may be seen from 2 Chr 19:4-11.

[21:12]  ⁶ tn Heb “from the hand [or power] of.”

[21:12]  ⁷ tn Heb “Lest my wrath go out like fire and burn with no one to put it out because of the evil of your deeds.”

[32:31]  ⁵ tn The statements in vv. 28-29 regarding the certain destruction of the city are motivated by three parallel causal clauses in vv. 30a, b, 31, the last of which extends through subordinate and coordinate clauses until the end of v. 35. An attempt has been made to bring out this structure by repeating the idea “This/it will happen” in front of each of these causal clauses in the English translation.

[32:31]  ⁶ tn Heb “from the day they built it until this day.”

[32:31]  ⁷ tn Heb “For this city has been to me for a source of my anger and my wrath from the day they built it until this day so as remove it.” The preposition ְל (lamed) with the infinitive (Heb “so as to remove it”; לַהֲסִירָהּ, lahasirah) expresses degree (cf. R. J. Williams, Hebrew Syntax, 37, §199, and compare usage in 2 Sam 13:2).