Jeremiah 5:12

5:12 “These people have denied what the Lord says. ¹ 

They have said, ‘That is not so! ² 

No harm will come to us.

We will not experience war and famine. ³ 

Jeremiah 9:16

9:16 I will scatter them among nations that neither they nor their ancestors ⁴  have known anything about. I will send people chasing after them with swords ⁵  until I have destroyed them.’” ⁶ 

Jeremiah 14:15-16

14:15 I did not send those prophets, though they claim to be prophesying in my name. They may be saying, ‘No war or famine will happen in this land.’ But I, the Lord, say this about ⁷  them: ‘War and starvation will kill those prophets.’ ⁸  14:16 The people to whom they are prophesying will die through war and famine. Their bodies will be thrown out into the streets of Jerusalem ⁹  and there will be no one to bury them. This will happen to the men and their wives, their sons, and their daughters. ¹⁰  For I will pour out on them the destruction they deserve.” ¹¹ 

Jeremiah 15:2

15:2 If they ask you, ‘Where should we go?’ tell them the Lord says this:

“Those who are destined to die of disease will go to death by disease.

Those who are destined to die in war will go to death in war.

Those who are destined to die of starvation will go to death by starvation.

Those who are destined to go into exile will go into exile.” ¹² 

Jeremiah 16:4

16:4 They will die of deadly diseases. No one will mourn for them. They will not be buried. Their dead bodies will lie like manure spread on the ground. They will be killed in war or die of starvation. Their corpses will be food for the birds and wild animals.

Jeremiah 19:7

19:7 In this place I will thwart ¹³  the plans of the people of Judah and Jerusalem. I will deliver them over to the power of their enemies who are seeking to kill them. They will die by the sword ¹⁴  at the hands of their enemies. ¹⁵  I will make their dead bodies food for the birds and wild beasts to eat.

Jeremiah 34:17

34:17 So I, the Lord, say: “You have not really obeyed me and granted freedom to your neighbor and fellow countryman. ¹⁶  Therefore, I will grant you freedom, the freedom ¹⁷  to die in war, or by starvation or disease. I, the Lord, affirm it! ¹⁸  I will make all the kingdoms of the earth horrified at what happens to you. ¹⁹ 

Isaiah 51:19

51:19 These double disasters confronted you.

But who feels sorry for you?

Destruction and devastation,

famine and sword.

But who consoles you? ²⁰ 

Ezekiel 5:12-17

5:12 A third of your people will die of plague or be overcome by the famine within you. ²¹  A third of your people will fall by the sword surrounding you, ²²  and a third I will scatter to the winds. I will unleash a sword behind them. 5:13 Then my anger will be fully vented; I will exhaust my rage on them, and I will be appeased. ²³  Then they will know that I, the Lord, have spoken in my jealousy ²⁴  when I have fully vented my rage against them.

5:14 “I will make you desolate and an object of scorn among the nations around you, in the sight of everyone who passes by. 5:15 You will be ²⁵  an object of scorn and taunting, ²⁶  a prime example of destruction ²⁷  among the nations around you when I execute judgments against you in anger and raging fury. ²⁸  I, the Lord, have spoken! 5:16 I will shoot against them deadly, ²⁹  destructive ³⁰  arrows of famine, ³¹  which I will shoot to destroy you. ³²  I will prolong a famine on you and will remove the bread supply. ³³  5:17 I will send famine and wild beasts against you and they will take your children from you. ³⁴  Plague and bloodshed will overwhelm you, ³⁵  and I will bring a sword against you. I, the Lord, have spoken!”

Ezekiel 6:12-14

6:12 The one far away will die by pestilence, the one close by will fall by the sword, and whoever is left and has escaped these ³⁶  will die by famine. I will fully vent my rage against them. 6:13 Then you will know that I am the Lord – when their dead lie among their idols around their altars, on every high hill and all the mountaintops, under every green tree and every leafy oak, ³⁷  the places where they have offered fragrant incense to all their idols. 6:14 I will stretch out my hand against them ³⁸  and make the land a desolate waste from the wilderness to Riblah, ³⁹  in all the places where they live. Then they will know that I am the Lord!”

Ezekiel 7:15

7:15 The sword is outside; pestilence and famine are inside the house. Whoever is in the open field will die by the sword, and famine and pestilence will consume everyone in the city.

Ezekiel 14:12-21

14:12 The word of the Lord came to me: 14:13 “Son of man, suppose a country sins against me by being unfaithful, and I stretch out my hand against it, cut off its bread supply, ⁴⁰  cause famine to come on it, and kill both people and animals. 14:14 Even if these three men, Noah, Daniel, ⁴¹  and Job, were in it, they would save only their own lives by their righteousness, declares the sovereign Lord.

14:15 “Suppose I were to send wild animals through the land and kill its children, leaving it desolate, without travelers due to the wild animals. 14:16 Even if these three men were in it, as surely as I live, declares the sovereign Lord, they could not save their own sons or daughters; they would save only their own lives, and the land would become desolate.

14:17 “Or suppose I were to bring a sword against that land and say, ‘Let a sword pass through the land,’ and I were to kill both people and animals. 14:18 Even if these three men were in it, as surely as I live, declares the sovereign Lord, they could not save their own sons or daughters – they would save only their own lives.

14:19 “Or suppose I were to send a plague into that land, and pour out my rage on it with bloodshed, killing both people and animals. 14:20 Even if Noah, Daniel, and Job were in it, as surely as I live, declares the sovereign Lord, they could not save their own son or daughter; they would save only their own lives by their righteousness.

14:21 “For this is what the sovereign Lord says: How much worse will it be when I send my four terrible judgments – sword, famine, wild animals, and plague – to Jerusalem ⁴²  to kill both people and animals!

Ezekiel 33:27

33:27 “This is what you must say to them, ‘This is what the sovereign Lord says: As surely as I live, those living in the ruins will die ⁴³  by the sword, those in the open field I will give to the wild beasts for food, and those who are in the strongholds and caves will die of disease.

[5:12]  ¹ tn Heb “have denied the Lord.” The words “What…says” are implicit in what follows.

[5:12]  ² tn Or “he will do nothing”; Heb “Not he [or it]!”

[5:12]  ³ tn Heb “we will not see the sword and famine.”

[9:16]  ⁴ tn Heb “fathers.”

[9:16]  ⁵ tn Heb “I will send the sword after them.” The sword here is probably not completely literal but refers to death by violent means, including death by the sword.

[9:16]  ⁶ sn He will destroy them but not completely. See Jer 5:18; 30:11; 46:28.

[14:15]  ⁷ tn Heb “Thus says the Lord about.” The first person construction has been used in the translation for better English style.

[14:15]  ⁸ tn Heb “Thus says the Lord concerning the prophets who are prophesying in my name and I did not send them [= whom I did not send] and they are saying [= who are saying], ‘Sword and famine…’, by sword and famine those prophets will be killed.” This sentence has been restructured to conform to contemporary English style.

[14:16]  ⁹ map For location see Map5 B1; Map6 F3; Map7 E2; Map8 F2; Map10 B3; JP1 F4; JP2 F4; JP3 F4; JP4 F4.

[14:16]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “And the people to whom they are prophesying will be thrown out into the streets of Jerusalem and there will not be anyone to bury them, they, their wives, and their sons and their daughters.” This sentence has been restructured to break up a long Hebrew sentence and to avoid some awkwardness due to differences in the ancient Hebrew and contemporary English styles.

[14:16]  ¹¹ tn Heb “their evil.” Hebrew words often include within them a polarity of cause and effect. Thus the word for “evil” includes both the concept of wickedness and the punishment for it. Other words that function this way are “iniquity” = “guilt [of iniquity]” = “punishment [for iniquity].” Context determines which nuance is proper.

[15:2]  ¹² tn It is difficult to render the rhetorical force of this passage in meaningful English. The text answers the question “Where should we go?” with four brief staccato-like expressions with a play on the preposition “to”: Heb “Who to the death, to the death and who to the sword, to the sword and who to the starvation, to the starvation and who to the captivity, to the captivity.” The word “death” here is commonly understood to be a poetic substitute for “plague” because of the standard trio of sword, famine, and plague (see, e.g., 14:12 and the notes there). This is likely here and in 18:21. For further support see W. L. Holladay, Jeremiah (Hermeneia), 1:440. The nuance “starvation” rather than “famine” has been chosen in the translation because the referents here are all things that accompany war.

[19:7]  ¹³ sn There is perhaps a two-fold wordplay in the use of this word. One involves the sound play with the word for “jar,” which has been explained as a water decanter. The word here is בַקֹּתִי (vaqqoti). The word for jar in v. 1 is בַקְבֻּק (vaqbuq). There may also be a play on the literal use of this word to refer to the laying waste or destruction of a land (see Isa 24:3; Nah 2:3). Many modern commentaries think that at this point Jeremiah emptied out the contents of the jar, symbolizing the “emptying” out of their plans.

[19:7]  ¹⁴ sn This refers to the fact that they will die in battle. The sword would be only one of the weapons that strikes them down. It is one of the trio of “sword,” “starvation,” and “disease” which were the concomitants of war referred to so often in the book of Jeremiah. Starvation is referred to in v. 9.

[19:7]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “I will cause them to fall by the sword before their enemies and in the hand of those who seek their soul [= life].” In this context the two are meant as obvious qualifications of one entity, not two. Some rearrangement of the qualifiers had to be made in the English translation to convey this.

[34:17]  ¹⁶ tn The Hebrew text has a compound object, the two terms of which have been synonyms in vv. 14, 15. G. L. Keown, P. J. Scalise, and T. G. Smothers (Jeremiah 26-52 [WBC], 189) make the interesting observation that these two terms (Heb “brother” and “neighbor”) emphasize the relationships that should have taken precedence over their being viewed as mere slaves.

[34:17]  ¹⁷ sn This is, of course, a metaphorical and ironical use of the term “to grant freedom to.” It is, however, a typical statement of the concept of talionic justice which is quite often operative in God’s judgments in the OT (cf., e.g., Obad 15).

[34:17]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “Oracle of the Lord.”

[34:17]  ¹⁹ sn Compare Jer 15:4; 24:9; 29:18.

[51:19]  ²⁰ tc The Hebrew text has אֲנַחֲמֵךְ (’anakhamekh), a first person form, but the Qumran scroll 1QIsa^a reads correctly יִנַחֲמֵךְ (yinakhamekh), a third person form.

[5:12]  ²¹ sn The judgment of plague and famine comes from the covenant curse (Lev 26:25-26). As in v. 10, the city of Jerusalem is figuratively addressed here.

[5:12]  ²² sn Judgment by plague, famine, and sword occurs in Jer 21:9; 27:13; Ezek 6:11, 12; 7:15.

[5:13]  ²³ tn Or “calm myself.”

[5:13]  ²⁴ tn The Hebrew noun translated “jealousy” is used in the human realm to describe suspicion of adultery (Num 5:14ff.; Prov 6:34). Since Israel’s relationship with God was often compared to a marriage this term is appropriate here. The term occurs elsewhere in Ezekiel in 8:3, 5; 16:38, 42; 23:25.

[5:15]  ²⁵ tc This reading is supported by the versions and by the Dead Sea Scrolls (11QEzek). Most Masoretic Hebrew mss read “it will be,” but if the final he (ה) is read as a mater lectionis, as it can be with the second masculine singular perfect, then they are in agreement. In either case the subject refers to Jerusalem.

[5:15]  ²⁶ tn The Hebrew word occurs only here in the OT. A related verb means “revile, taunt” (see Ps 44:16).

[5:15]  ²⁷ tn Heb “discipline and devastation.” These words are omitted in the Old Greek. The first term pictures Jerusalem as a recipient or example of divine discipline; the second depicts her as a desolate ruin (see Ezek 6:14).

[5:15]  ²⁸ tn Heb “in anger and in fury and in rebukes of fury.” The heaping up of synonyms emphasizes the degree of God’s anger.

[5:16]  ²⁹ tn The Hebrew word carries the basic idea of “bad, displeasing, injurious,” but when used of weapons has the nuance “deadly” (see Ps 144:10).

[5:16]  ³⁰ tn Heb “which are/were to destroy.”

[5:16]  ³¹ tn The language of this verse may have been influenced by Deut 32:23.

[5:16]  ³² tn Or “which were to destroy those whom I will send to destroy you” (cf. NASB).

[5:16]  ³³ tn Heb, “break the staff of bread.” The bread supply is compared to a staff that one uses for support. See 4:16, as well as the covenant curse in Lev 26:26.

[5:17]  ³⁴ tn Heb “will bereave you.”

[5:17]  ³⁵ tn Heb “will pass through you.” This threat recalls the warning of Lev 26:22, 25 and Deut 32:24-25.

[6:12]  ³⁶ tn Heb “the one who is left, the one who is spared.”

[6:13]  ³⁷ sn By referring to every high hill…all the mountaintops…under every green tree and every leafy oak Ezekiel may be expanding on the phraseology of Deut 12:2 (see 1 Kgs 14:23; 2 Kgs 16:4; 17:10; Jer 2:20; 3:6, 13; 2 Chr 28:4).

[6:14]  ³⁸ sn I will stretch out my hand against them is a common expression in the book of Ezekiel (14:9, 13; 16:27; 25:7; 35:3).

[6:14]  ³⁹ tc The Vulgate reads the name as “Riblah,” a city north of Damascus. The MT reads Diblah, a city otherwise unknown. The letters resh (ר) and dalet (ד) may have been confused in the Hebrew text. The town of Riblah was in the land of Hamath (2 Kgs 23:33) which represented the northern border of Israel (Ezek 47:14).

[14:13]  ⁴⁰ tn Heb “break its staff of bread.”

[14:14]  ⁴¹ sn Traditionally this has been understood as a reference to the biblical Daniel, though he was still quite young when Ezekiel prophesied. One wonders if he had developed a reputation as an intercessor by this point. For this reason some prefer to see a reference to a ruler named Danel, known in Canaanite legend for his justice and wisdom. In this case all three of the individuals named would be non-Israelites, however the Ugaritic Danel is not known to have qualities of faith in the Lord that would place him in the company of the other men. See D. I. Block, Ezekiel (NICOT), 1:447-50.

[14:21]  ⁴² map For location see Map5 B1; Map6 F3; Map7 E2; Map8 F2; Map10 B3; JP1 F4; JP2 F4; JP3 F4; JP4 F4.

[33:27]  ⁴³ tn Heb “fall.”