Jeremiah 43:3

43:3 But Baruch son of Neriah is stirring you up against us. ¹  He wants to hand us over ²  to the Babylonians ³  so that they will kill us or carry us off into exile in Babylon.”

Jeremiah 3:22

3:22 Come back to me, you wayward people.

I want to cure your waywardness. ⁴ 

Say, ⁵  ‘Here we are. We come to you

because you are the Lord our God.

Jeremiah 2:6

2:6 They did not ask:

‘Where is the Lord who delivered us out of Egypt,

who brought us through the wilderness,

through a land of desert sands and rift valleys,

through a land of drought and deep darkness, ⁶ 

through a land in which no one travels,

and where no one lives?’ ⁷ 

Jeremiah 8:8

8:8 How can you say, “We are wise!

We have the law of the Lord”?

The truth is, ⁸  those who teach it ⁹  have used their writings

to make it say what it does not really mean. ¹⁰ 

Jeremiah 14:21

14:21 For the honor of your name, ¹¹  do not treat Jerusalem ¹²  with contempt.

Do not treat with disdain the place where your glorious throne sits. ¹³ 

Be mindful of your covenant with us. Do not break it! ¹⁴ 

Jeremiah 42:2

42:2 They said to him, “Please grant our request ¹⁵  and pray to the Lord your God for all those of us who are still left alive here. ¹⁶  For, as you yourself can see, there are only a few of us left out of the many there were before. ¹⁷ 

[43:3]  ¹ tn Or “is inciting you against us.”

[43:3]  ² tn Heb “in order to give us into the hands of the Chaldeans.” The substitution “he wants to” as the equivalent of the purpose clause has been chosen to shorten the sentence to better conform with contemporary English style.

[43:3]  ³ tn Heb “Chaldeans.” See the study note on 21:4 for explanation.

[3:22]  ⁴ tn Or “I will forgive your apostasies.” Heb “I will [or want to] heal your apostasies.” For the use of the verb “heal” (רָפָא, rafa’) to refer to spiritual healing and forgiveness see Hos 14:4.

[3:22]  ⁵ tn Or “They say.” There is an obvious ellipsis of a verb of saying here since the preceding words are those of the Lord and the following are those of the people. However, there is debate about whether these are the response of the people to the Lord’s invitation, a response which is said to be inadequate according to the continuation in 4:1-4, or whether these are the Lord’s model for Israel’s confession of repentance to which he adds further instructions about the proper heart attitude that should accompany it in 4:1-4. The former implies a dialogue with an unmarked twofold shift in speaker between 3:22b-25 and 4:1-4:4 while the latter assumes the same main speaker throughout with an unmarked instruction only in 3:22b-25. This disrupts the flow of the passage less and appears more likely.

[2:6]  ⁷ tn This word is erroneously rendered “shadow of death” in most older English versions; that translation is based on a faulty etymology. Contextual studies and comparative Semitic linguistics have demonstrated that the word is merely another word for darkness. It is confined to poetic texts and often carries connotations of danger and distress. It is associated in poetic texts with the darkness of a prison (Ps 107:10, 14), a mine (Job 28:3), and a ravine (Ps 23:4). Here it is associated with the darkness of the wasteland and ravines of the Sinai desert.

[2:6]  ⁸ sn The context suggests that the question is related to a lament where the people turn to God in their troubles, asking him for help and reminding him of his past benefactions. See for example Isa 63:11-19 and Ps 44. It is an implicit prayer for his intervention, cf. 2 Kgs 2:14.

[8:8]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “Surely, behold!”

[8:8]  ¹¹ tn Heb “the scribes.”

[8:8]  ¹² tn Heb “The lying pen of the scribes have made [it] into a lie.” The translation is an attempt to make the most common interpretation of this passage understandable for the average reader. This is, however, a difficult passage whose interpretation is greatly debated and whose syntax is capable of other interpretations. The interpretation of the NJPS, “Assuredly, for naught has the pen labored, for naught the scribes,” surely deserves consideration within the context; i.e. it hasn’t done any good for the scribes to produce a reliable copy of the law, which the people have refused to follow. That interpretation has the advantage of explaining the absence of an object for the verb “make” or “labored” but creates a very unbalanced poetic couplet.

[14:21]  ¹³ tn Heb “For the sake of your name.”

[14:21]  ¹⁴ map For location see Map5 B1; Map6 F3; Map7 E2; Map8 F2; Map10 B3; JP1 F4; JP2 F4; JP3 F4; JP4 F4.

[14:21]  ¹⁵ tn English versions quite commonly supply “us” as an object for the verb in the first line. This is probably wrong. The Hebrew text reads: “Do not treat with contempt for the sake of your name; do not treat with disdain your glorious throne.” This is case of poetic parallelism where the object is left hanging until the second line. For an example of this see Prov 13:1 in the original and consult E. W. Bullinger, Figures of Speech, 103-4. There has also been some disagreement whether “your glorious throne” refers to the temple (as in 17:12) or Jerusalem (as in 3:17). From the beginning of the prayer in v. 19 where a similar kind of verb has been used with respect to Zion/Jerusalem it would appear that the contextual referent is Jerusalem. The absence of an object from the first line makes it possible to retain part of the metaphor in the translation and still convey some meaning.

[14:21]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “Remember, do not break your covenant with us.”

[42:2]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “please let our petition fall before you.” For the idiom here see 37:20 and the translator’s note there.

[42:2]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “on behalf of us, [that is] on behalf of all this remnant.”

[42:2]  ¹⁸ 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.