Jeremiah 42:2

42:2 They said to him, “Please grant our request ¹  and pray to the Lord your God for all those of us who are still left alive here. ²  For, as you yourself can see, there are only a few of us left out of the many there were before. ³ 

Jeremiah 42:2

42:2 They said to him, “Please grant our request ⁴  and pray to the Lord your God for all those of us who are still left alive here. ⁵  For, as you yourself can see, there are only a few of us left out of the many there were before. ⁶ 

Jeremiah 19:4

19:4 I will do so because these people ⁷  have rejected me and have defiled ⁸  this place. They have offered sacrifices in it to other gods which neither they nor their ancestors ⁹  nor the kings of Judah knew anything about. They have filled it with the blood of innocent children. ¹⁰ 

Jeremiah 19:6

19:6 So I, the Lord, say: ¹¹  “The time will soon come that people will no longer call this place Topheth or the Hinnom Valley. But they will call this valley ¹²  the Valley of Slaughter!

Jeremiah 19:1

An Object Lesson from a Broken Clay Jar

19:1 The Lord told Jeremiah, ¹³  “Go and buy a clay jar from a potter. ¹⁴  Take with you ¹⁵  some of the leaders of the people and some of the leaders ¹⁶  of the priests.

Jeremiah 22:15-20

22:15 Does it make you any more of a king

that you outstrip everyone else in ¹⁷  building with cedar?

Just think about your father.

He was content that he had food and drink. ¹⁸ 

He did what was just and right. ¹⁹ 

So things went well with him.

22:16 He upheld the cause of the poor and needy.

So things went well for Judah.’ ²⁰ 

The Lord says,

‘That is a good example of what it means to know me.’ ²¹ 

22:17 But you are always thinking and looking

for ways to increase your wealth by dishonest means.

Your eyes and your heart are set

on killing some innocent person

and committing fraud and oppression. ²² 

22:18 So ²³  the Lord has this to say about Josiah’s son, King Jehoiakim of Judah:

People will not mourn for him, saying,

“This makes me sad, my brother!

This makes me sad, my sister!”

They will not mourn for him, saying,

“Poor, poor lord! Poor, poor majesty!” ²⁴ 

22:19 He will be left unburied just like a dead donkey.

His body will be dragged off and thrown outside the gates of Jerusalem.’” ²⁵ 

Warning to Jerusalem

22:20 People of Jerusalem, ²⁶  go up to Lebanon and cry out in mourning.

Go to the land of Bashan and cry out loudly.

Cry out in mourning from the mountains of Moab. ²⁷ 

For your allies ²⁸  have all been defeated.

[42:2]  ¹ tn Heb “please let our petition fall before you.” For the idiom here see 37:20 and the translator’s note there.

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

[42:2]  ³ 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.

[42:2]  ⁴ tn Heb “please let our petition fall before you.” For the idiom here see 37:20 and the translator’s note there.

[42:2]  ⁵ tn Heb “on behalf of us, [that is] on behalf of all this remnant.”

[42:2]  ⁶ 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.

[19:4]  ⁷ tn The text merely has “they.” But since a reference is made later to “they” and “their ancestors,” the referent must be to the people that the leaders of the people and leaders of the priests represent.

[19:4]  ⁸ sn Heb “have made this city foreign.” The verb here is one that is built off of the noun and adjective which relate to foreign nations. Comparison may be made to Jer 2:21 where the adjective refers to the strange, wild vine as opposed to the choice vine the Lord planted and to 5:19 and 8:19 where the noun is used of worshiping foreign gods. Israel through its false worship has “denationalized” itself in its relation to God.

[19:4]  ⁹ tn Heb “fathers.”

[19:4]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “the blood of innocent ones.” This must be a reference to child sacrifice as explained in the next verse. Some have seen a reference to the sins of social injustice alluded to in 2 Kgs 21:16 and 24:4 but those are connected with the city itself. Hence the word children is supplied in the translation to make the referent explicit.

[19:6]  ¹⁰ tn This phrase (Heb “Oracle of the Lord”) has been handled this way on several occasions when it occurs within first person addresses where the Lord is the speaker. See, e.g., 16:16; 17:24; 18:6.

[19:6]  ¹¹ tn Heb “it will no longer be called to this place Topheth or the Valley of Ben Hinnom but the Valley of Slaughter.”

[19:1]  ¹³ tn The word “Jeremiah” is not in the text. Some Hebrew mss and some of the versions have “to me.” This section, 19:1–20:6 appears to be one of the biographical sections of the book of Jeremiah where incidents in his life are reported in third person. See clearly 9:14 and 20:1-3. The mss and versions do not represent a more original text but are translational or interpretive attempts to fill in a text which had no referent. They are like the translational addition that has been supplied on the basis of contextual indicators.

[19:1]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “an earthenware jar of the potter.”

[19:1]  ¹⁵ tc The words “Take with you” follow the reading of the Syriac version and to a certain extent the reading of the Greek version (the latter does not have “with you”). The Hebrew text does not have these words but they are undoubtedly implicit.

[19:1]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “elders” both here and before “of the people.”

[22:15]  ¹⁶ tn For the use of this verb see Jer 12:5 where it is used of Jeremiah “competing” with horses. The form is a rare Tiphel (see GKC 153 §55.h).

[22:15]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “Your father, did he not eat and drink and do justice and right.” The copulative vav in front of the verbs here (all Hebrew perfects) shows that these actions are all coordinate not sequential. The contrast drawn here between the actions of Jehoiakim and Josiah show that the phrase eating and drinking should be read in the light of the same contrasts in Eccl 2 which ends with the note of contentment in Eccl 2:24 (see also Eccl 3:13; 5:18 [5:17 HT]; 8:15). The question is, of course, rhetorical setting forth the positive role model against which Jehoiakim’s actions are to be condemned. The key terms here are “then things went well with him” which is repeated in the next verse after the reiteration of Josiah’s practice of justice.

[22:15]  ¹⁸ sn The father referred to here is the godly king Josiah. He followed the requirements for kings set forth in 22:3 in contrast to his son who did not (22:13).

[22:16]  ¹⁹ tn The words “for Judah” are not in the text, but the absence of the preposition plus object as in the preceding verse suggests that this is a more general statement, i.e., “things went well for everyone.”

[22:16]  ²⁰ tn Heb “Is that not what it means to know me.” The question is rhetorical and expects a positive answer. It is translated in the light of the context.

[22:17]  ²² tn Heb “Your eyes and your heart do not exist except for dishonest gain and for innocent blood to shed [it] and for fraud and for oppression to do [them].” The sentence has been broken up to conform more to English style and the significance of “eyes” and “heart” explained before they are introduced into the translation.

[22:18]  ²⁵ sn This is the regular way of introducing the announcement of judgment after an indictment of crimes. See, e.g., Isa 5:13, 14; Jer 23:2.

[22:18]  ²⁶ tn The translation follows the majority of scholars who think that the address of brother and sister are the address of the mourners to one another, lamenting their loss. Some scholars feel that all four terms are parallel and represent the relation that the king had metaphorically to his subjects; i.e., he was not only Lord and Majesty to them but like a sister or a brother. In that case something like: “How sad it is for the one who was like a brother to us! How sad it is for the one who was like a sister to us.” This makes for poor poetry and is not very likely. The lover can call his bride sister in Song of Solomon (Song 4:9, 10) but there are no documented examples of a subject ever speaking of a king in this way in Israel or the ancient Near East.

[22:19]  ²⁸ sn A similar judgment against this ungodly king is pronounced by Jeremiah in 36:30. According to 2 Chr 36:6 he was bound over to be taken captive to Babylon but apparently died before he got there. According to the Jewish historian Josephus, Nebuchadnezzar ordered his body thrown outside the wall in fulfillment of this judgment. The Bible itself, however, does not tell us that.

[22:20]  ³¹ tn The words “people of Jerusalem” are not in the text. They are supplied in the translation to clarify the referent of the imperative. The imperative is feminine singular and it is generally agreed that personified Zion/Jerusalem is in view. The second feminine singular has commonly been applied to Jerusalem or the people of Judah throughout the book. The reference to allies (v. 20, 22) and to leaders (v. 22) make it very probable that this is the case here too.

[22:20]  ³² tn Heb “from Abarim.” This was the mountain range in Moab from which Moses viewed the promised land (cf. Deut 32:49).

[22:20]  ³³ tn Heb “your lovers.” For the usage of this term to refer to allies see 30:14 and a semantically similar term in 4:30.