Jeremiah 5:10

5:10 The Lord commanded the enemy, ¹ 

“March through the vineyards of Israel and Judah and ruin them. ² 

But do not destroy them completely.

Strip off their branches

for these people do not belong to the Lord. ³ 

Jeremiah 5:18

5:18 Yet even then ⁴  I will not completely destroy you,” says the Lord.

Jeremiah 30:11

30:11 For I, the Lord, affirm ⁵  that

I will be with you and will rescue you.

I will completely destroy all the nations where I scattered you.

But I will not completely destroy you.

I will indeed discipline you, but only in due measure.

I will not allow you to go entirely unpunished.” ⁶ 

Jeremiah 46:28

46:28 I, the Lord, tell ⁷  you not to be afraid,

you descendants of Jacob, my servant,

for I am with you.

Though I completely destroy all the nations where I scatter you,

I will not completely destroy you.

I will indeed discipline you but only in due measure.

I will not allow you to go entirely unpunished.” ⁸ 

Leviticus 26:44

26:44 In spite of this, however, when they are in the land of their enemies I will not reject them and abhor them to make a complete end of them, to break my covenant with them, for I am the Lord their God.

Isaiah 24:12-13

24:12 The city is left in ruins; ⁹ 

the gate is reduced to rubble. ¹⁰ 

24:13 This is what will happen throughout ¹¹  the earth,

among the nations.

It will be like when they beat an olive tree,

and just a few olives are left at the end of the harvest. ¹² 

Ezekiel 11:13

11:13 Now, while I was prophesying, Pelatiah son of Benaiah died. Then I threw myself face down and cried out with a loud voice, “Alas, sovereign Lord! You are completely wiping out the remnant of Israel!” ¹³ 

Amos 9:8-9

9:8 Look, the sovereign Lord is watching ¹⁴  the sinful nation, ¹⁵ 

and I will destroy it from the face of the earth.

But I will not completely destroy the family ¹⁶  of Jacob,” says the Lord.

9:9 “For look, I am giving a command

and I will shake the family of Israel together with all the nations.

It will resemble a sieve being shaken,

when not even a pebble falls to the ground. ¹⁷ 

Romans 9:27-29

9:27 And Isaiah cries out on behalf of Israel, “Though the number of the children ¹⁸  of Israel are as the sand of the sea, only the remnant will be saved, 9:28 for the Lord will execute his sentence on the earth completely and quickly.” ¹⁹  9:29 Just ²⁰  as Isaiah predicted,

“If the Lord of armies ²¹  had not left us descendants,

we would have become like Sodom,

and we would have resembled Gomorrah.” ²² 

Romans 11:1-7

Israel’s Rejection not Complete nor Final

11:1 So I ask, God has not rejected his people, has he? Absolutely not! For I too am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, from the tribe of Benjamin. 11:2 God has not rejected his people whom he foreknew! Do you not know what the scripture says about Elijah, how he pleads with God against Israel? 11:3 “Lord, they have killed your prophets, they have demolished your altars; I alone am left and they are seeking my life!” ²³  11:4 But what was the divine response ²⁴  to him? “I have kept for myself seven thousand people ²⁵  who have not bent the knee to Baal.” ²⁶ 

11:5 So in the same way at the present time there is a remnant chosen by grace. 11:6 And if it is by grace, it is no longer by works, otherwise grace would no longer be grace. 11:7 What then? Israel failed to obtain what it was diligently seeking, but the elect obtained it. The ²⁷  rest were hardened,

[5:10]  ¹ tn These words to not appear in the Hebrew text but have been added in the translation for the sake of clarity to identify the implied addressee.

[5:10]  ² tn Heb “through her vine rows and destroy.” No object is given but “vines” must be implicit. The word for “vineyards” (or “vine rows”) is a hapax legomenon and its derivation is debated. BDB 1004 s.v. שּׁוּרָה repoints שָׁרוֹתֶיהָ (sharoteha) to שֻׁרוֹתֶיהָ (shuroteha) and relates it to a Mishnaic Hebrew and Palestinian Aramaic word meaning “row.” HALOT 1348 s.v. שּׁוּרָה also repoints to שֻׁרוֹתֶיהָ and relates it to a noun meaning “wall,” preferring to see the reference here to the walled terraces on which the vineyards were planted. The difference in meaning is minimal.

[5:10]  ³ tn Heb “for they do not belong to the Lord.” In the light of the context and Jeremiah’s identification of Israel as a vine (cf., e.g., 2:21) and a vineyard (cf., e.g., 12:10), it is likely that this verse has a totally metaphorical significance. The enemy is to go through the vineyard that is Israel and Judah and destroy all those who have been unfaithful to the Lord. It is not impossible, however, that the verse has a double meaning, a literal one and a figurative one: the enemy is not only to destroy Israel and Judah’s vines but to destroy Israel and Judah, lopping off the wicked Israelites who, because of their covenant unfaithfulness, the Lord has disowned. If the verse is totally metaphorical one might translate: “Pass through my vineyard, Israel and Judah, wreaking destruction. But do not destroy all of the people. Cut down like branches those unfaithful people because they no longer belong to the Lord.”

[5:18]  ⁴ tn Heb “in those days.”

[30:11]  ⁵ tn Heb “Oracle of the Lord.”

[30:11]  ⁶ tn The translation “entirely unpunished” is intended to reflect the emphatic construction of the infinitive absolute before the finite verb.

[46:28]  ⁷ tn Heb “Oracle of the Lord.” Again the first person is adopted because the Lord is speaking and the indirect quotation is used to avoid an embedded quotation with quotation marks on either side.

[46:28]  ⁸ tn The translation “entirely unpunished” is intended to reflect the emphatic construction of the infinitive absolute before the finite verb.

[24:12]  ⁹ tn Heb “and there is left in the city desolation.”

[24:12]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “and [into] rubble the gate is crushed.”

[24:13]  ¹¹ tn Heb “in the midst of” (so KJV, ASV, NASB).

[24:13]  ¹² sn The judgment will severely reduce the earth’s population. See v. 6.

[11:13]  ¹³ tc The LXX reads this statement as a question. Compare this to the question in 9:8. It is possible that the interrogative particle has been omitted by haplography. However, an exclamatory statement as in the MT also makes sense and the LXX may have simply tried to harmonize this passage with 9:8.

[9:8]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “the eyes of the sovereign Lord are on.”

[9:8]  ¹⁵ tn Or “kingdom.”

[9:8]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “house” (also in the following verse).

[9:9]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “like being shaken with a sieve, and a pebble does not fall to the ground.” The meaning of the Hebrew word צְרוֹר (tsÿror), translated “pebble,” is unclear here. In 2 Sam 17:13 it appears to refer to a stone. If it means “pebble,” then the sieve described in v. 6 allows the grain to fall into a basket while retaining the debris and pebbles. However, if one interprets צְרוֹר as a “kernel of grain” (cf. NASB, NIV, NKJV, NLT) then the sieve is constructed to retain the grain and allow the refuse and pebbles to fall to the ground. In either case, the simile supports the last statement in v. 8 by making it clear that God will distinguish between the righteous (the grain) and the wicked (the pebbles) when he judges, and will thereby preserve a remnant in Israel. Only the sinners will be destroyed (v. 10).

[9:27]  ¹⁸ tn Grk “sons.”

[9:28]  ¹⁹ tc In light of the interpretive difficulty of this verse, a longer reading seems to have been added to clarify the meaning. The addition, in the middle of the sentence, makes the whole verse read as follows: “For he will execute his sentence completely and quickly in righteousness, because the Lord will do it quickly on the earth.” The shorter reading is found largely in Alexandrian mss (Ì⁴⁶ א* A B 6 1506 1739 1881 pc co), while the longer reading is found principally in Western and Byzantine mss (א² D F G Ψ 33 Ï lat). The longer reading follows Isa 10:22-23 (LXX) verbatim, while Paul in the previous verse quoted the LXX loosely. This suggests the addition was made by a copyist trying to make sense out of a difficult passage rather than by the author himself.

[9:29]  ²⁰ tn Here καί (kai) has not been translated because of differences between Greek and English style.

[9:29]  ²¹ tn Traditionally, “Lord of hosts”; Grk “Lord Sabaoth,” which means “Lord of the [heavenly] armies,” sometimes translated more generally as “Lord Almighty.”

[9:29]  ²² sn A quotation from Isa 1:9.

[11:3]  ²³ sn A quotation from 1 Kgs 19:10, 14.

[11:4]  ²⁴ tn Grk “the revelation,” “the oracle.”

[11:4]  ²⁵ tn The Greek term here is ἀνήρ (anhr), which only exceptionally is used in a generic sense of both males and females. In this context, it appears to be a generic usage (“people”) since when Paul speaks of a remnant of faithful Israelites (“the elect,” v. 7), he is not referring to males only. It can also be argued, however, that it refers only to adult males here (“men”), perhaps as representative of all the faithful left in Israel.

[11:4]  ²⁶ sn A quotation from 1 Kgs 19:18.

[11:7]  ²⁷ tn Here καί (kai) has not been translated because of differences between Greek and English style.