Jeremiah 42:2-6

Context
42:2 They said to him, “Please grant our request¹ 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 42:3 Pray that the Lord your God will tell us where we should go and what we should do.” 42:4 The prophet Jeremiah answered them, “Agreed!⁴ I will indeed pray to the Lord your God as you have asked. I will tell you everything the Lord replies in response to you.⁵ I will not keep anything back from you.” 42:5 They answered Jeremiah, “May the Lord be a true and faithful witness against us if we do not do just as⁶ the Lord sends you to tell us to do. 42:6 We will obey what the Lord our God to whom we are sending you tells us to do. It does not matter whether we like what he tells us or not. We will obey what he tells us to do so that things will go well for us.”⁷

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

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

[42:2] ³tn 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.

[42:4] ⁴tn Heb “I have heard” = “I agree.” For this nuance of the verb see BDB 1034 s.v. שָׁמַע Qal.1.j and compare the usage in Gen 37:27 and Judg 11:17 listed there.

[42:4] ⁵tn Heb “all the word which the Lord will answer you.

[42:5] ⁶tn Heb “do according to all the word which.”

[42:6] ⁷tn Heb “Whether good or whether evil we will hearken to the voice of the Lord our God to whom we are sending you in order that it may go well for us because/when we hearken to the voice of the Lord our God.” The phrase “whether good or whether evil” is an abbreviated form of the idiomatic expressions “to be good in the eyes of” = “to be pleasing to” (BDB 374 s.v. טוֹב 2.f and see 1 Kgs 21:2) and “to be bad in the eyes of” = “to be displeasing to” (BDB 948 s.v. רַע 3 and see Num 22:34). The longer Hebrew sentence has been broken down and restructured to better conform with contemporary English style.