Jeremiah 46:24

46:24 Poor dear Egypt ¹  will be put to shame.

She will be handed over to the people from the north.”

Jeremiah 3:18

3:18 At that time ²  the nation of Judah and the nation of Israel will be reunited. ³  Together they will come back from a land in the north to the land that I gave to your ancestors as a permanent possession. ” ⁴ 

Jeremiah 6:22

6:22 “This is what the Lord says:

‘Beware! An army ⁵  is coming from a land in the north.

A mighty nation is stirring into action in faraway parts of the earth.

Jeremiah 10:22

10:22 Listen! News is coming even now. ⁶ 

The rumble of a great army is heard approaching ⁷  from a land in the north. ⁸ 

It is coming to turn the towns of Judah into rubble,

places where only jackals live.

Jeremiah 31:8

31:8 Then I will reply, ⁹  ‘I will bring them back from the land of the north.

I will gather them in from the distant parts of the earth.

Blind and lame people will come with them,

so will pregnant women and women about to give birth.

A vast throng of people will come back here.

Jeremiah 16:15

16:15 But in that time they will affirm them with ‘I swear as surely as the Lord lives who delivered the people of Israel from the land of the north and from all the other lands where he had banished them.’ At that time I will bring them back to the land I gave their ancestors.” ¹⁰ 

Jeremiah 46:10

46:10 But that day belongs to the Lord God who rules over all. ¹¹ 

It is the day when he will pay back his enemies. ¹² 

His sword will devour them until its appetite is satisfied!

It will drink their blood until it is full! ¹³ 

For the Lord God who rules over all ¹⁴  will offer them up as a sacrifice

in the land of the north by the Euphrates River.

Jeremiah 50:9

50:9 For I will rouse into action and bring against Babylon

a host of mighty nations ¹⁵  from the land of the north.

They will set up their battle lines against her.

They will come from the north and capture her. ¹⁶ 

Their arrows will be like a skilled soldier ¹⁷ 

who does not return from the battle empty-handed. ¹⁸ 

Jeremiah 25:9

25:9 So I, the Lord, affirm that ¹⁹  I will send for all the peoples of the north ²⁰  and my servant, ²¹  King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon. I will bring them against this land and its inhabitants and all the nations that surround it. I will utterly destroy ²²  this land, its inhabitants, and all the nations that surround it ²³  and make them everlasting ruins. ²⁴  I will make them objects of horror and hissing scorn. ²⁵ 

[46:24]  ¹ tn Heb “Daughter Egypt.” See the translator’s note on v. 19.

[3:18]  ² tn Heb “In those days.”

[3:18]  ³ tn Heb “the house of Judah will walk together with the house of Israel.”

[3:18]  ⁴ tn Heb “the land that I gave your [fore]fathers as an inheritance.”

[6:22]  ³ tn Heb “people.”

[10:22]  ⁴ tn Heb “The sound of a report, behold, it is coming.”

[10:22]  ⁵ tn Heb “ coming, even a great quaking.”

[10:22]  ⁶ sn Compare Jer 6:22.

[31:8]  ⁵ tn The words “And I will reply” are not in the text but the words vv. 8-9 appear to be the answer to the petition at the end of v. 7. These words are supplied in the translation for clarity.

[16:15]  ⁶ tn These two verses which constitute one long sentence with compound, complex subordinations has been broken up for sake of English style. It reads, “Therefore, behold the days are coming, says the Lord [Heb ‘oracle of the Lord’] and it will not be said any longer, ‘By the life of the Lord who…Egypt’ but ‘by the life of the Lord who…’ and I will bring them back….”

[46:10]  ⁷ tn Heb “the Lord Yahweh of armies.” See the study note at 2:19 for the translation and significance of this title for God.

[46:10]  ⁸ sn Most commentators think that this is a reference to the Lord exacting vengeance on Pharaoh Necho for killing Josiah, carrying Jehoahaz off into captivity, and exacting heavy tribute on Judah in 609 b.c. (2 Kgs 23:29, 33-35).

[46:10]  ⁹ tn Or more paraphrastically, “he will kill them/ until he has exacted full vengeance”; Heb “The sword will eat and be sated; it will drink its fill of their blood.”

[46:10]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “the Lord Yahweh of armies.” See the study note at 2:19 for the translation and significance of this title for God.

[50:9]  ⁸ sn Some of these are named in Jer 51:27-28.

[50:9]  ⁹ tn Heb “She will be captured from there (i.e., from the north).”

[50:9]  ¹⁰ tc Read Heb ַָמשְׂכִּיל (moskil) with a number of Hebrew mss and some of the versions in place of מַשְׁכִּיל (mashkil, “one who kills children”) with the majority of Hebrew mss and some of the versions. See BHS note d for the details.

[50:9]  ¹¹ tn Or more freely, “Their arrows will be as successful at hitting their mark // as a skilled soldier always returns from battle with plunder.”

[25:9]  ⁹ tn Heb “Oracle of the Lord.”

[25:9]  ¹⁰ sn The many allusions to trouble coming from the north are now clarified: it is the armies of Babylon which included within it contingents from many nations. See 1:14, 15; 4:6; 6:1, 22; 10:22; 13:20 for earlier allusions.

[25:9]  ¹¹ sn Nebuchadnezzar is called the Lord’s servant also in Jer 27:6; 43:10. He was the Lord’s servant in that he was the agent used by the Lord to punish his disobedient people. Assyria was earlier referred to as the Lord’s “rod” (Isa 10:5-6) and Cyrus is called his “shepherd” and his “anointed” (Isa 44:28; 45:1). P. C. Craigie, P. H. Kelley, and J. F. Drinkard (Jeremiah 1-25 [WBC], 364) make the interesting observation that the terms here are very similar to the terms in v. 4. The people of Judah ignored the servants, the prophets, he sent to turn them away from evil. So he will send other servants whom they cannot ignore.

[25:9]  ¹² tn The word used here was used in the early years of Israel’s conquest for the action of killing all the men, women, and children in the cities of Canaan, destroying all their livestock, and burning their cities down. This policy was intended to prevent Israel from being corrupted by paganism (Deut 7:2; 20:17-18; Josh 6:18, 21). It was to be extended to any city that led Israel away from worshiping God (Deut 13:15) and any Israelite who brought an idol into his house (Deut 7:26). Here the policy is being directed against Judah as well as against her neighbors because of her persistent failure to heed God’s warnings through the prophets. For further usage of this term in application to foreign nations in the book of Jeremiah see 50:21, 26; 51:3.

[25:9]  ¹³ tn Heb “will utterly destroy them.” The referent (this land, its inhabitants, and the nations surrounding it) has been specified in the translation for clarity, since the previous “them” referred to Nebuchadnezzar and his armies.

[25:9]  ¹⁴ sn The Hebrew word translated “everlasting” is the word often translated “eternal.” However, it sometimes has a more limited time reference. For example it refers to the lifetime of a person who became a “lasting slave” to another person (see Exod 21:6; Deut 15:17). It is also used to refer to the long life wished for a king (1 Kgs 1:31; Neh 2:3). The time frame here is to be qualified at least with reference to Judah and Jerusalem as seventy years (see 29:10-14 and compare v. 12).

[25:9]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “I will make them an object of horror and a hissing and everlasting ruins.” The sentence has been broken up to separate the last object from the first two which are of slightly different connotation, i.e., they denote the reaction to the latter.