Jeremiah 5:5

5:5 I will go to the leaders ¹ 

and speak with them.

Surely they know what the Lord demands. ² 

Surely they know what their God requires of them.” ³ 

Yet all of them, too, have rejected his authority

and refuse to submit to him. ⁴ 

Jeremiah 6:11

6:11 I am as full of anger as you are, Lord, ⁵ 

I am tired of trying to hold it in.”

The Lord answered, ⁶ 

“Vent it, then, ⁷  on the children who play in the street

and on the young men who are gathered together.

Husbands and wives are to be included, ⁸ 

as well as the old and those who are advanced in years.

Jeremiah 6:21

6:21 So, this is what the Lord says:

‘I will assuredly ⁹  make these people stumble to their doom. ¹⁰ 

Parents and children will stumble and fall to their destruction. ¹¹ 

Friends and neighbors will die.’

Jeremiah 41:1

41:1 But in the seventh month ¹²  Ishmael, the son of Nethaniah and grandson of Elishama who was a member of the royal family and had been one of Zedekiah’s chief officers, came with ten of his men to Gedaliah son of Ahikam at Mizpah. While they were eating a meal together with him there at Mizpah,

Jeremiah 50:4

50:4 “When that time comes,” says the Lord, ¹³ 

“the people of Israel and Judah will return to the land together.

They will come back with tears of repentance

as they seek the Lord their God. ¹⁴ 

[5:5]  ¹ tn Or “people in power”; Heb “the great ones.”

[5:5]  ² tn Heb “the way of the Lord.”

[5:5]  ³ tn Heb “the judgment [or ordinance] of their God.”

[5:5]  ⁴ tn Heb “have broken the yoke and torn off the yoke ropes.” Compare Jer 2:20 and the note there.

[6:11]  ⁵ tn Heb “I am full of the wrath of the Lord.”

[6:11]  ⁶ tn These words are not in the text but are implicit from the words that follow. They are supplied in the translation for clarity.

[6:11]  ⁷ tn Heb “Pour it out.”

[6:11]  ⁸ tn Heb “are to be captured.”

[6:21]  ⁹ tn This is an attempt to render the Hebrew particle rendered “behold” joined to the first person pronoun.

[6:21]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “I will put stumbling blocks in front of these people.” In this context the stumbling blocks are the invading armies.

[6:21]  ¹¹ tn The words “and fall to their destruction” are implicit in the metaphor and are supplied in the translation for clarity.

[41:1]  ¹³ sn It is not altogether clear whether this is in the same year that Jerusalem fell or not. The wall was breached in the fourth month (= early July; 39:2) and Nebuzaradan came and burned the palace, the temple, and many of the houses and tore down the wall in the fifth month (= early August; 52:12). That would have left time between the fifth month and the seventh month (October) to gather in the harvest of grapes, dates and figs, and olives (40:12). However, many commentators feel that too much activity takes place in too short a time for this to have been in the same year and posit that it happened the following year or even five years later when a further deportation took place, possibly in retaliation for the murder of Gedaliah and the Babylonian garrison at Mizpah (52:30). The assassination of Gedaliah had momentous consequences and was commemorated in one of the post exilic fast days lamenting the fall of Jerusalem (Zech 8:19).

[50:4]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “oracle of the Lord.”

[50:4]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “and the children of Israel will come, they and the children of Judah together. They shall go, weeping as they go, and they will seek the Lord their God.” The concept of “seeking” the Lord often has to do with seeking the Lord in worship (by sacrifice [Hos 5:6; 2 Chr 11:16]; prayer [Zech 8:21, 22; 2 Sam 12:16; Isa 65:1; 2 Chr 15:4]). In Hos 7:10 it is in parallel with returning to the Lord. In Ps 69:6 it is in parallel with hoping in or trusting in the Lord. Perhaps the most helpful parallels here, however, are Hos 3:5 (in comparison with Jer 30:9) and 2 Chr 15:15 where it is in the context of a covenant commitment to be loyal to the Lord which is similar to the context here (see the next verse). The translation is admittedly paraphrastic but “seeking the Lord” does not mean here looking for God as though he were merely a person to be found.