Discovery BoxJeremiah 48:14
Context48:14 How can you men of Moab say, ‘We are heroes,
men who are mighty in battle?’
Jeremiah 8:8
Context8:8 How can you say, “We are wise!
We have the law of the Lord”?
The truth is, 1 those who teach it 2 have used their writings
to make it say what it does not really mean. 3
Jeremiah 35:8
Context35:8 We and our wives and our sons and daughters have obeyed everything our ancestor Jonadab commanded us. We have never drunk wine. 4
Jeremiah 44:19
Context44:19 The women added, 5 “We did indeed sacrifice and pour out drink offerings to the Queen of Heaven. But it was with the full knowledge and approval of our husbands that we made cakes in her image and poured out drink offerings to her.” 6
Jeremiah 3:25
Context3:25 Let us acknowledge 7 our shame.
Let us bear the disgrace that we deserve. 8
For we have sinned against the Lord our God,
both we and our ancestors.
From earliest times to this very day
we have not obeyed the Lord our God.’
Jeremiah 8:14
Context“Why are we just sitting here?
Let us gather together inside the fortified cities. 10
Let us at least die there fighting, 11
since the Lord our God has condemned us to die.
He has condemned us to drink the poison waters of judgment 12
because we have sinned against him. 13
Jeremiah 42:6
Context42:6 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.” 14
Jeremiah 44:17
Context44:17 Instead we will do everything we vowed we would do. 15 We will sacrifice and pour out drink offerings to the goddess called the Queen of Heaven 16 just as we and our ancestors, our kings, and our leaders previously did in the towns of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem. For then we had plenty of food, were well-off, and had no troubles. 17
[8:8] 1 tn Heb “Surely, behold!”
[8:8] 3 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.
[35:8] 1 tn Heb “We have not drunk wine all our days.” Actually vv. 8b-9a are a series of infinitive constructs plus the negative לְבִלְתִּי (lÿvilti) explaining the particulars of how they have obeyed, i.e., by not drinking wine…and by not building….” The more direct declarative statement is used here to shorten the sentence and is more in keeping with contemporary style.
[44:19] 1 tc The words “And the women added” are not in the Hebrew text. They are, however, implicit in what is said. They are found in the Syriac version and in one recension of the Greek version. W. L. Holladay (Jeremiah [Hermeneia], 2:279, n. 19a) suggests that these words are missing from the Hebrew text because of haplography, i.e., that the scribe left out וַהַנָּשִׁים אָמְרוּ כִי (vahannashim ’omru khi) because his eye jumped from the ו at the beginning to the כִּי (ki) that introduced the temporal clause and left out everything in between. It is, however, just as likely, given the fact that there are several other examples of quotes which have not been formally introduced in the book of Jeremiah, that the words were not there and are supplied by these two ancient versions as a translator’s clarification.
[44:19] 2 tn Or “When we sacrificed and poured out drink offering to the Queen of Heaven and made cakes in her image, wasn’t it with the knowledge and approval of our husbands?” Heb “When we sacrificed to the Queen of Heaven and poured out drink offerings [for the use of לְ (lamed) + the infinitive construct to carry on the tense of the preceding verb see BDB 518 s.v. לְ 7.b(h)] to her, did we make cakes to make an image of her and pour out drink offerings apart from [i.e., “without the knowledge and consent of,” so BDB 116 s.v. בִּלְעֲדֵי b(a)] our husbands?” The question expects a positive answer and has been rendered as an affirmation in the translation. The long, complex Hebrew sentence has again been broken in two and restructured to better conform with contemporary English style.
[3:25] 1 tn Heb “Let us lie down in….”
[3:25] 2 tn Heb “Let us be covered with disgrace.”
[8:14] 1 tn The words “The people say” are not in the text but are implicit in the shift of speakers between vv. 4-13 and vv. 14-16. They are supplied in the translation for clarity.
[8:14] 2 tn Heb “Gather together and let us enter into the fortified cities.”
[8:14] 3 tn Heb “Let us die there.” The words “at least” and “fighting” are intended to bring out the contrast of passive surrender to death in the open country and active resistance to the death implicit in the context.
[8:14] 4 tn The words “of judgment” are not in the text but are intended to show that “poison water” is not literal but figurative of judgment at the hands of God through the agency of the enemy mentioned in v. 16.
[8:14] 5 tn Heb “against the
[42:6] 1 tn Heb “Whether good or whether evil we will hearken to the voice of the
[44:17] 1 tn Heb “that went out of our mouth.” I.e., everything we said, promised, or vowed.
[44:17] 2 tn Heb “sacrifice to the Queen of Heaven and pour out drink offerings to her.” The expressions have been combined to simplify and shorten the sentence. The same combination also occurs in vv. 18, 19.
[44:17] 3 tn Heb “saw [or experienced] no disaster/trouble/harm.”
