Jeremiah 5:15-22

5:15 The Lord says, ¹  “Listen, ²  nation of Israel! ³ 

I am about to bring a nation from far away to attack you.

It will be a nation that was founded long ago

and has lasted for a long time.

It will be a nation whose language you will not know.

Its people will speak words that you will not be able to understand.

5:16 All of its soldiers are strong and mighty. ⁴ 

Their arrows will send you to your grave. ⁵ 

5:17 They will eat up your crops and your food.

They will kill off ⁶  your sons and your daughters.

They will eat up your sheep and your cattle.

They will destroy your vines and your fig trees. ⁷ 

Their weapons will batter down ⁸ 

the fortified cities you trust in.

5:18 Yet even then ⁹  I will not completely destroy you,” says the Lord. 5:19 “So then, Jeremiah, ¹⁰  when your people ¹¹  ask, ‘Why has the Lord our God done all this to us?’ tell them, ‘It is because you rejected me and served foreign gods in your own land. So ¹²  you must serve foreigners ¹³  in a land that does not belong to you.’

5:20 “Proclaim ¹⁴  this message among the descendants of Jacob. ¹⁵ 

Make it known throughout Judah.

5:21 Tell them: ‘Hear this,

you foolish people who have no understanding,

who have eyes but do not discern,

who have ears but do not perceive: ¹⁶ 

5:22 “You should fear me!” says the Lord.

“You should tremble in awe before me! ¹⁷ 

I made the sand to be a boundary for the sea,

a permanent barrier that it can never cross.

Its waves may roll, but they can never prevail.

They may roar, but they can never cross beyond that boundary.” ¹⁸ 

[5:15]  ¹ tn Heb “oracle of the Lord.”

[5:15]  ² tn Heb “Behold!”

[5:15]  ³ tn Heb “house of Israel.”

[5:16]  ⁴ tn Heb “All of them are mighty warriors.”

[5:16]  ⁵ tn Heb “his quiver [is] an open grave.” The order of the lines has been reversed to make the transition from “nation” to “their arrows” easier.

[5:17]  ⁶ tn Heb “eat up.”

[5:17]  ⁷ tn Or “eat up your grapes and figs”; Heb “eat up your vines and your fig trees.”

[5:17]  ⁸ tn Heb “They will beat down with the sword.” The term “sword” is a figure of speech (synecdoche) for military weapons in general. Siege ramps, not swords, beat down city walls; swords kill people, not city walls.

[5:18]  ⁹ tn Heb “in those days.”

[5:19]  ¹⁰ tn The word, “Jeremiah,” is not in the text but the second person address in the second half of the verse is obviously to him. The word is supplied in the translation here for clarity.

[5:19]  ¹¹ tn The MT reads the second masculine plural; this is probably a case of attraction to the second masculine plural pronoun in the preceding line. An alternative would be to understand a shift from speaking first to the people in the first half of the verse and then speaking to Jeremiah in the second half where the verb is second masculine singular. E.g., “When you [people] say, “Why…?” then you, Jeremiah, tell them…”

[5:19]  ¹² tn Heb “As you left me and…, so you will….” The translation was chosen so as to break up a rather long and complex sentence.

[5:19]  ¹³ sn This is probably a case of deliberate ambiguity (double entendre). The adjective “foreigners” is used for both foreign people (so Jer 30:8; 51:51) and foreign gods (so Jer 2:25; 3:13). See also Jer 16:13 for the idea of having to serve other gods in the lands of exile.

[5:20]  ¹⁴ sn The verbs are second plural here. Jeremiah, speaking for the Lord, addresses his people, calling on them to make the message further known.

[5:20]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “in the house of Jacob.”

[5:21]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “they have eyes but they do not see, they have ears but they do not hear.”

[5:22]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “Should you not fear me? Should you not tremble in awe before me?” The rhetorical questions expect the answer explicit in the translation.

[5:22]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “it.” The referent is made explicit to avoid any possible confusion.