Jeremiah 4:7
Context4:7 Like a lion that has come up from its lair 1
the one who destroys nations has set out from his home base. 2
He is coming out to lay your land waste.
Your cities will become ruins and lie uninhabited.
Jeremiah 19:8
Context19:8 I will make this city an object of horror, a thing to be hissed at. All who pass by it will be filled with horror and will hiss out their scorn 3 because of all the disasters that have happened to it. 4
Jeremiah 25:11
Context25:11 This whole area 5 will become a desolate wasteland. These nations will be subject to the king of Babylon for seventy years.’ 6
Jeremiah 25:18
Context25:18 I made Jerusalem 7 and the cities of Judah, its kings and its officials drink it. 8 I did it so Judah would become a ruin. I did it so Judah, its kings, and its officials would become an object 9 of horror and of hissing scorn, an example used in curses. 10 Such is already becoming the case! 11
Jeremiah 25:38
Context25:38 The Lord is like a lion who has left his lair. 12
So their lands will certainly 13 be laid waste
by the warfare of the oppressive nation 14
and by the fierce anger of the Lord.”
Jeremiah 46:19
Context46:19 Pack your bags for exile,
you inhabitants of poor dear Egypt. 15
For Memphis will be laid waste.
It will lie in ruins 16 and be uninhabited.
Jeremiah 49:13
Context49:13 For I solemnly swear,” 17 says the Lord, “that Bozrah 18 will become a pile of ruins. It will become an object of horror and ridicule, an example to be used in curses. 19 All the towns around it will lie in ruins forever.”
Jeremiah 51:29
Context51:29 The earth will tremble and writhe in agony. 20
For the Lord will carry out his plan.
He plans to make the land of Babylonia 21
a wasteland where no one lives. 22
Jeremiah 51:43
Context51:43 The towns of Babylonia have become heaps of ruins.
She has become a dry and barren desert.
No one lives in those towns any more.
No one even passes through them. 23


[4:7] 1 tn Heb “A lion has left its lair.” The metaphor is turned into a simile for clarification. The word translated “lair” has also been understood to refer to a hiding place. However, it appears to be cognate in meaning to the word translated “lair” in Ps 10:9; Jer 25:38, a word which also refers to the abode of the
[19:8] 3 sn See 18:16 and the study note there.
[19:8] 4 tn Heb “all its smitings.” This word has been used several times for the metaphorical “wounds” that Israel has suffered as a result of the blows from its enemies. See, e.g., 14:17. It is used in the Hebrew Bible of scourging, both literally and metaphorically (cf. Deut 25:3; Isa 10:26), and of slaughter and defeat (1 Sam 4:10; Josh 10:20). Here it refers to the results of the crushing blows at the hands of her enemies which has made her the object of scorn.
[25:11] 5 tn Heb “All this land.”
[25:11] 6 sn It should be noted that the text says that the nations will be subject to the king of Babylon for seventy years, not that they will lie desolate for seventy years. Though several proposals have been made for dating this period, many ignore this fact. This most likely refers to the period beginning with Nebuchadnezzar’s defeat of Pharaoh Necho at Carchemish in 605
[25:18] 7 map For location see Map5 B1; Map6 F3; Map7 E2; Map8 F2; Map10 B3; JP1 F4; JP2 F4; JP3 F4; JP4 F4.
[25:18] 8 tn The words “I made” and “drink it” are not in the text. The text from v. 18 to v. 26 contains a list of the nations that Jeremiah “made drink it.” The words are supplied in the translation here and at the beginning of v. 19 for the sake of clarity. See also the note on v. 26.
[25:18] 9 tn Heb “in order to make them a ruin, an object of…” The sentence is broken up and the antecedents are made specific for the sake of clarity and English style.
[25:18] 10 tn See the study note on 24:9 for explanation.
[25:18] 11 tn Heb “as it is today.” This phrase would obviously be more appropriate after all these things had happened as is the case in 44:6, 23 where the verbs referring to these conditions are past. Some see this phrase as a marginal gloss added after the tragedies of 597
[25:38] 9 tn Heb “Like a lion he has left his lair.”
[25:38] 10 tn This is a way of rendering the Hebrew particle כִּי (ki) which is probably here for emphasis rather than indicating cause (see BDB 473 s.v. כִּי 1.e and compare usage in Jer 22:22).
[25:38] 11 tc Heb “by the sword of the oppressors.” The reading here follows a number of Hebrew
[46:19] 11 tn Heb “inhabitants of daughter Egypt.” Like the phrase “daughter Zion,” “daughter Egypt” is a poetic personification of the land, here perhaps to stress the idea of defenselessness.
[46:19] 12 tn For the verb here see HALOT 675 s.v. II נָצָה Nif and compare the usage in Jer 4:7; 9:11 and 2 Kgs 19:25. BDB derives the verb from יָצַת (so BDB 428 s.v. יָצַת Niph meaning “kindle, burn”) but still give it the meaning “desolate” here and in 2:15 and 9:11.
[49:13] 13 tn Heb “I swear by myself.” See 22:5 and the study note there.
[49:13] 14 sn Bozrah appears to have been the chief city in Edom, its capital city (see its parallelism with Edom in Isa 34:6; 63:1; Jer 49:22). The reference to “its towns” (translated here “all the towns around it”) could then be a reference to all the towns in Edom. It was located about twenty-five miles southeast of the southern end of the Dead Sea apparently in the district of Teman (see the parallelism in Amos 1:12).
[49:13] 15 tn See the study note on 24:9 for the rendering of this term.
[51:29] 15 sn The figure here is common in the poetic tradition of the
[51:29] 16 tn Heb “For the plans of the
[51:29] 17 tn The verbs in this verse and v. 30 are all in the past tense in Hebrew, in the tense that views the action as already as good as done (the Hebrew prophetic perfect). The verb in v. 31a, however, is imperfect, viewing the action as future; the perfects that follow are all dependent on that future. Verse 33 looks forward to a time when Babylon will be harvested and trampled like grain on the threshing floor and the imperatives imply a time in the future. Hence the present translation has rendered all the verbs in vv. 29-30 as future.
[51:43] 17 tn Heb “Its towns have become a desolation, [it has become] a dry land and a desert, a land which no man passes through them [referring to “her towns”] and no son of man [= human being] passes through them.” Here the present translation has followed the suggestion of BHS and a number of the modern commentaries in deleting the second occurrence of the word “land,” in which case the words that follow are not a relative clause but independent statements. A number of modern English versions appear to ignore the third feminine plural suffixes which refer back to the cities and refer the statements that follow to the land.