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 4:31

4:31 In fact, ³  I hear a cry like that of a woman in labor,

a cry of anguish like that of a woman giving birth to her first baby.

It is the cry of Daughter Zion ⁴  gasping for breath,

reaching out for help, ⁵  saying, “I am done in! ⁶ 

My life is ebbing away before these murderers!”

Jeremiah 18:11

18:11 So now, tell the people of Judah and the citizens of Jerusalem ⁷  this: The Lord says, ‘I am preparing to bring disaster on you! I am making plans to punish you. ⁸  So, every one of you, stop the evil things you have been doing. ⁹  Correct the way you have been living and do what is right.’ ¹⁰ 

Jeremiah 19:9

19:9 I will reduce the people of this city to desperate straits during the siege imposed on it by their enemies who are seeking to kill them. I will make them so desperate that they will eat the flesh of their own sons and daughters and the flesh of one another.”’” ¹¹ 

Jeremiah 19:11

19:11 Tell them the Lord who rules over all says, ¹²  ‘I will do just as Jeremiah has done. ¹³  I will smash this nation and this city as though it were a potter’s vessel which is broken beyond repair. ¹⁴  The dead will be buried here in Topheth until there is no more room to bury them.’ ¹⁵ 

Jeremiah 21:12

21:12 O royal family descended from David. ¹⁶ 

The Lord says:

‘See to it that people each day ¹⁷  are judged fairly. ¹⁸ 

Deliver those who have been robbed from those ¹⁹  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. ²⁰ 

Jeremiah 41:1

41:1 But in the seventh month ²¹  Ishmael, the son of Nethaniah and grandson of Elishama who was a member of the royal family and had been one of Zedekiah’s chief officers, came with ten of his men to Gedaliah son of Ahikam at Mizpah. While they were eating a meal together with him there at Mizpah,

Jeremiah 41:9

41:9 Now the cistern where Ishmael threw all the dead bodies of those he had killed was a large one ²²  that King Asa had constructed as part of his defenses against King Baasha of Israel. ²³  Ishmael son of Nethaniah filled it with dead bodies. ²⁴ 

Jeremiah 46:27

A Promise of Hope for Israel

46:27 ²⁵ “You descendants of Jacob, my servants, ²⁶  do not be afraid;

do not be terrified, people of Israel.

For I will rescue you and your descendants

from the faraway lands where you are captives. ²⁷ 

The descendants of Jacob will return to their land and enjoy peace.

They will be secure and no one will terrify them.

[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.”

[4:31]  ³ tn The particle כִּי (ki) is more likely asseverative here than causal.

[4:31]  ⁴ sn Jerusalem is personified as a helpless maiden.

[4:31]  ⁵ tn Heb “spreading out her hands.” The idea of asking or pleading for help is implicit in the figure.

[4:31]  ⁶ tn Heb “Woe, now to me!” See the translator’s note on 4:13 for the usage of “Woe to…”

[18:11]  ⁵ map For location see Map5 B1; Map6 F3; Map7 E2; Map8 F2; Map10 B3; JP1 F4; JP2 F4; JP3 F4; JP4 F4.

[18:11]  ⁶ sn Heb “I am forming disaster and making plans against you.” The word translated “forming” is the same as that for “potter,” so there is a wordplay taking the reader back to v. 5. They are in his hands like the clay in the hands of the potter. Since they have not been pliable he forms new plans. He still offers them opportunity to repent; but their response is predictable.

[18:11]  ⁷ tn Heb “Turn, each one from his wicked way.” See v. 8.

[18:11]  ⁸ tn Or “Make good your ways and your actions.” See the same expression in 7:3, 5.

[19:9]  ⁷ tn This verse has been restructured to try to bring out the proper thought and subordinations reflected in the verse without making the sentence too long and complex in English: Heb “I will make them eat the flesh of their sons and daughters. And they will eat one another’s flesh in the siege and in the straits which their enemies who are seeking their lives reduce them to.” This also shows the agency through which God’s causation was effected, i.e., the siege.

[19:11]  ⁹ tn Heb “Thus says Yahweh of armies.” For this title see the study note on 2:19. The translation attempts to avoid the confusion of embedding quotes within quotes by reducing this one to an indirect quote.

[19:11]  ¹⁰ tn The adverb “Thus” or “Like this” normally points back to something previously mentioned. See, e.g., Exod 29:35; Num 11:15; 15:11; Deut 25:9.

[19:11]  ¹¹ tn Heb “Like this I will break this people and this city, just as one breaks the vessel of a potter which is not able to be repaired.”

[19:11]  ¹² sn See Jer 7:22-23 for parallels.

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

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

[21:12]  ¹³ 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]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “from the hand [or power] of.”

[21:12]  ¹⁵ 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.”

[41:1]  ¹³ sn It is not altogether clear whether this is in the same year that Jerusalem fell or not. The wall was breached in the fourth month (= early July; 39:2) and Nebuzaradan came and burned the palace, the temple, and many of the houses and tore down the wall in the fifth month (= early August; 52:12). That would have left time between the fifth month and the seventh month (October) to gather in the harvest of grapes, dates and figs, and olives (40:12). However, many commentators feel that too much activity takes place in too short a time for this to have been in the same year and posit that it happened the following year or even five years later when a further deportation took place, possibly in retaliation for the murder of Gedaliah and the Babylonian garrison at Mizpah (52:30). The assassination of Gedaliah had momentous consequences and was commemorated in one of the post exilic fast days lamenting the fall of Jerusalem (Zech 8:19).

[41:9]  ¹⁵ tc The translation here follows the reading of the Greek version. The meaning of the Hebrew is uncertain; some understand it to mean “because of Gedaliah [i.e., to cover up the affair with Gedaliah]” and others understand it to mean “alongside of Gedaliah.” The translation presupposes that the Hebrew text reads בּוֹר גָּדוֹל הוּא (bor gadol hu’) in place of בְּיַד־גְּדַלְיָהוּ הוּא (bÿyad-gÿdalyahu). The meaning of בְּיַד (bÿyad) does not fit any of the normal ones given for this expression and those who retain the Hebrew text normally explain it as an unparalleled use of “because” or “in the affair of” (so NJPS) or a rare use meaning “near, by the side of “ (see BDB 391 s.v. יָד 5.d where only Ps 141:6 and Zech 4:12 are cited. BDB themselves suggest reading with the Greek version as the present translation does [so BDB 391 s.v. יָד 5.c(3)]). For the syntax presupposed by the Greek text which has been followed consult IBHS 298 §16.3.3d and 133 §8.4.2b. The first clause is a classifying clause with normal order of subject-predicate-copulative pronoun and it is followed by a further qualifying relative clause.

[41:9]  ¹⁶ sn It is generally agreed that the cistern referred to here is one of several that Asa dug for supplying water as part of the defense system constructed at Mizpah (cf. 1 Kgs 15:22; 2 Chr 16:6).

[41:9]  ¹⁷ tn Or “with corpses”; Heb “with the slain.”

[46:27]  ¹⁷ sn Jer 46:27-28 are virtually the same as 30:10-11. The verses are more closely related to that context than to this. But the presence of a note of future hope for the Egyptians may have led to a note of encouragement also to the Judeans who were under threat of judgment at the same time (cf. the study notes on 46:2, 13 and 25:1-2 for the possible relative dating of these prophecies).

[46:27]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “And/But you do not be afraid, my servant Jacob.” Here and elsewhere in the verse the terms Jacob and Israel are poetic for the people of Israel descended from the patriarch Jacob. The terms have been supplied throughout with plural referents for greater clarity.

[46:27]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “For I will rescue you from far away, your descendants from the land of their captivity.”