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 6:11

6:11 I am as full of anger as you are, Lord, ³ 

I am tired of trying to hold it in.”

The Lord answered, ⁴ 

“Vent it, then, ⁵  on the children who play in the street

and on the young men who are gathered together.

Husbands and wives are to be included, ⁶ 

as well as the old and those who are advanced in years.

Jeremiah 7:20

7:20 So,” the Lord God ⁷  says, “my raging fury will be poured out on this land. ⁸  It will be poured out on human beings and animals, on trees and crops. ⁹  And it will burn like a fire which cannot be extinguished.”

Jeremiah 10:25

10:25 Vent your anger on the nations that do not acknowledge you. ¹⁰ 

Vent it on the peoples ¹¹  who do not worship you. ¹² 

For they have destroyed the people of Jacob. ¹³ 

They have completely destroyed them ¹⁴ 

and left their homeland in utter ruin.

Jeremiah 21:12

21:12 O royal family descended from David. ¹⁵ 

The Lord says:

‘See to it that people each day ¹⁶  are judged fairly. ¹⁷ 

Deliver those who have been robbed from those ¹⁸  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. ¹⁹ 

Jeremiah 25:15

Judah and the Nations Will Experience God’s Wrath

25:15 So ²⁰  the Lord, the God of Israel, spoke to me in a vision. ²¹  “Take this cup from my hand. It is filled with the wine of my wrath. ²²  Take it and make the nations to whom I send you drink it.

Jeremiah 32:31

32:31 This will happen because ²³  the people of this city have aroused my anger and my wrath since the time they built it until now. ²⁴  They have made me so angry that I am determined to remove ²⁵  it from my sight.

Jeremiah 33:5

33:5 ‘The defenders of the city will go out and fight with the Babylonians. ²⁶  But they will only fill those houses and buildings with the dead bodies of the people that I will kill in my anger and my wrath. ²⁷  That will happen because I have decided to turn my back on ²⁸  this city on account of the wicked things they have done. ²⁹ 

Jeremiah 36:7

36:7 Perhaps then they will ask the Lord for mercy and will all stop doing the evil things they have been doing. ³⁰  For the Lord has threatened to bring great anger and wrath against these people.” ³¹ 

[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.”

[6:11]  ³ tn Heb “I am full of the wrath of the Lord.”

[6:11]  ⁴ tn These words are not in the text but are implicit from the words that follow. They are supplied in the translation for clarity.

[6:11]  ⁵ tn Heb “Pour it out.”

[6:11]  ⁶ tn Heb “are to be captured.”

[7:20]  ⁵ tn Heb “Lord Yahweh.” The translation follows the ancient Jewish tradition of substituting the Hebrew word for God for the proper name Yahweh.

[7:20]  ⁶ tn Heb “this place.” Some see this as a reference to the temple but the context has been talking about what goes on in the towns of Judah and Jerusalem and the words that follow, meant as a further explanation, are applied to the whole land.

[7:20]  ⁷ tn Heb “the trees of/in the field and the fruit of/in the ground.”

[10:25]  ⁷ tn Heb “know you.” For this use of the word “know” (יָדַע, yada’) see the note on 9:3.

[10:25]  ⁸ tn Heb “tribes/clans.”

[10:25]  ⁹ tn Heb “who do not call on your name.” The idiom “to call on your name” (directed to God) refers to prayer (mainly) and praise. See 1 Kgs 18:24-26 and Ps 116:13, 17. Here “calling on your name” is parallel to “acknowledging you.” In many locations in the OT “name” is equivalent to the person. In the OT, the “name” reflected the person’s character (cf. Gen 27:36; 1 Sam 25:25) or his reputation (Gen 11:4; 2 Sam 8:13). To speak in a person’s name was to act as his representative or carry his authority (1 Sam 25:9; 1 Kgs 21:8). To call someone’s name over something was to claim it for one’s own (2 Sam 12:28).

[10:25]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “have devoured Jacob.”

[10:25]  ¹¹ tn Or “have almost completely destroyed them”; Heb “they have devoured them and consumed them.” The figure of hyperbole is used here; elsewhere Jeremiah and God refer to the fact that they will not be completely consumed. See for example 4:27; 5:10, 18.

[21:12]  ⁹ tn Heb “house of David.” This is essentially equivalent to the royal court in v. 11.

[21:12]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “to the morning” = “morning by morning” or “each morning.” See Isa 33:2 and Amos 4:4 for parallel usage.

[21:12]  ¹¹ 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]  ¹² tn Heb “from the hand [or power] of.”

[21:12]  ¹³ 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.”

[25:15]  ¹¹ tn This is an attempt to render the Hebrew particle כִּי (ki) which is probably being used in the sense that BDB 473-74 s.v. כִּי 3.c notes, i.e., the causal connection is somewhat loose, related here to the prophecies against the nations. “So” seems to be the most appropriate way to represent this.

[25:15]  ¹² tn Heb “Thus said the Lord, the God of Israel, to me.” It is generally understood that the communication is visionary. God does not have a “hand” and the action of going to the nations and making them drink of the cup are scarcely literal. The words are supplied in the translation to show the figurative nature of this passage.

[25:15]  ¹³ sn “Drinking from the cup of wrath” is a common figure to represent being punished by God. Isaiah had used it earlier to refer to the punishment which Judah was to suffer and from which God would deliver her (Isa 51:17, 22) and Jeremiah’s contemporary Habakkuk uses it of Babylon “pouring out its wrath” on the nations and in turn being forced to drink the bitter cup herself (Hab 2:15-16). In Jer 51:7 the Lord will identify Babylon as the cup which makes the nations stagger. In v. 16 drinking from the cup will be identified with the sword (i.e., wars) that the Lord will send against the nations. Babylon is also to be identified as the sword (cf. Jer 51:20-23). What is being alluded to here in highly figurative language is the judgment that the Lord will wreak on the nations listed here through the Babylonians. The prophecy given here in symbolical form is thus an expansion of the one in vv. 9-11.

[32:31]  ¹³ 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]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “from the day they built it until this day.”

[32:31]  ¹⁵ 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).

[33:5]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “The Chaldeans.” See the study note on 21:4 for further explanation.

[33:5]  ¹⁶ sn This refers to the tearing down of buildings within the city to strengthen the wall or to fill gaps in it which had been broken down by the Babylonian battering rams. For a parallel to this during the siege of Sennacherib in the time of Hezekiah see Isa 22:10; 2 Chr 32:5. These torn-down buildings were also used as burial mounds for those who died in the fighting or through starvation and disease during the siege. The siege prohibited them from taking the bodies outside the city for burial and leaving them in their houses or in the streets would have defiled them.

[33:5]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “Because I have hidden my face from.” The modern equivalent for this gesture of rejection is “to turn the back on.” See Ps 13:1 for comparable usage. The perfect is to be interpreted as a perfect of resolve (cf. IBHS 488-89 §30.5.1d and compare the usage in Ruth 4:3).

[33:5]  ¹⁸ tn The translation and meaning of vv. 4-5 are somewhat uncertain. The translation and precise meaning of vv. 4-5 are uncertain at a number of points due to some difficult syntactical constructions and some debate about the text and meaning of several words. The text reads more literally, “33:4 For thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, concerning the houses of this city and concerning the houses of the kings of Judah which have been torn down on account the siege ramps and the sword 33:5 going to fight the Chaldeans and to fill them with the dead bodies of the men whom I have killed in my anger and in my wrath and on account of all whose wickedness I have hidden my face from this city.” There are two difficult syntactical forms (1) the participle at the beginning of v. 5 “going [or those going] to fight” (בָּאִים, ba’im) and (2) the infinitive plus suffix that introduces the next clause “and to fill them” (וּלְמַלְאָם, ulÿmal’am). The translation has interpreted the former as a verbal use of the participle with an indefinite subject “they” (= the defenders of Jerusalem who have torn down the buildings; cf. GKC 460-61 §144.i for this point of grammar). The conjunction plus preposition plus infinitive construct has been interpreted as equivalent to a finite verb (cf. IBHS 611 §36.3.2a, i.e., “and they will fill them [the houses and buildings of v. 4]”). Adopting the Greek text of these two verses would produce a smoother reading. It reads “For thus says the Lord concerning the houses of this city and concerning the houses of the kings of Judah which have been pulled down for mounds and fortifications to fight against the Chaldeans and to fill it [should be “them”] with the corpses of men whom I smote in my anger and my wrath and I turned away my face from them [rather than from “this city” of the Hebrew text] for all their wickedness: Behold I will…” The Greek does not have the problem with the participle because it has seen it as part of a word meaning fortification. This also eliminates the problem with the infinitive because it is interpreted as parallel with “to fight.” I.e., the defenders used these torn-down buildings for defensive fortifications and for burial places. It would be tempting to follow this reading. However, there is no graphically close form for “fortification” that would explain how the more difficult בָּאִים הֶחָרֶב (hekharev ba’im) of the Hebrew text arose and there is doubt whether סֹלְלוֹת (solÿlot) can refer to a defense mound. W. L. Holladay (Jeremiah [Hermeneia], 2:221, 225) has suggested reading הַחֲרַכִּים (hakharakim) in place of הֶחָרֶב (hekharev) in the technical sense of “crenels,” the gaps between the raised portion on top of the wall (which raised portion he calls “merlons” and equates with סֹלְלוֹת, solÿlot). He does not, however, further suggest seeing בָּאִים (ba’im) as part of this corrupted form, choosing to see it rather as a gloss. His emendation and interpretation, however, have been justly criticized as violating the usage of both סֹלְלוֹת which is elsewhere “siege mound” and חֲרַכִּים (kharakim) which elsewhere refers only to the latticed opening of a window (Song 2:9). Until a more acceptable explanation of how the difficult Hebrew text could have arisen from the Greek, the Hebrew should be retained, though it is admittedly awkward. G. L. Keown, P. J. Scalise, and T. G. Smothers (Jeremiah 26-52 [WBC], 166, 172) have perhaps the best discussion of the issues and the options involved here.

[36:7]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “will turn each one from his wicked way.”

[36:7]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “For great is the anger and the wrath which the Lord has spoken against this people.” The translation uses the more active form which is more in keeping with contemporary English style.