Discovery BoxJeremiah 50:17
Context50:17 “The people of Israel are like scattered sheep
which lions have chased away.
First the king of Assyria devoured them. 1
Now last of all King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon has gnawed their bones. 2
Jeremiah 50:33
Context50:33 The Lord who rules over all 3 says,
“The people of Israel are oppressed.
So too are the people of Judah. 4
All those who took them captive are holding them prisoners.
They refuse to set them free.
Jeremiah 12:7-11
Context12:7 “I will abandon my nation. 5
I will forsake the people I call my own. 6
I will turn my beloved people 7
over to the power 8 of their enemies.
12:8 The people I call my own 9 have turned on me
like a lion 10 in the forest.
They have roared defiantly 11 at me.
So I will treat them as though I hate them. 12
12:9 The people I call my own attack me like birds of prey or like hyenas. 13
But other birds of prey are all around them. 14
Let all the nations gather together like wild beasts.
Let them come and destroy these people I call my own. 15
12:10 Many foreign rulers 16 will ruin the land where I planted my people. 17
They will trample all over my chosen land. 18
They will turn my beautiful land
into a desolate wasteland.
12:11 They will lay it waste.
It will lie parched 19 and empty before me.
The whole land will be laid waste.
But no one living in it will pay any heed. 20
Psalms 79:7
Context79:7 For they have devoured Jacob
and destroyed his home.
Isaiah 9:12
Context9:12 Syria from the east,
and the Philistines from the west,
they gobbled up Israelite territory. 21
Despite all this, his anger does not subside,
and his hand is ready to strike again. 22
Isaiah 56:9
Context56:9 All you wild animals in the fields, come and devour,
all you wild animals in the forest!
[50:17] 1 sn The king of Assyria devoured them. This refers to the devastation wrought on northern Israel by the kings of Assyria beginning in 738
[50:17] 2 tn The verb used here only occurs this one time in the Hebrew Bible. It is a denominative from the Hebrew word for “bones” (עֶצֶם, ’etsem). BDB 1126 s.v. עֶָצַם, denom Pi, define it as “break his bones.” HALOT 822 s.v. II עָצַם Pi defines it as “gnaw on his bones.”
[50:33] 3 tn Heb “Yahweh of armies.” For an explanation of this title see the study note on 2:19.
[50:33] 4 tn Heb “Oppressed are the people of Israel and the people of Judah together,” i.e., both the people of Israel and Judah are oppressed. However, neither of these renderings is very poetic. The translation seeks to achieve the same meaning with better poetic expression.
[12:7] 5 tn Heb “my house.” Or “I have abandoned my nation.” The word “house” has been used throughout Jeremiah for both the temple (e.g., 7:2, 10), the nation or people of Israel or of Judah (e.g. 3:18, 20), or the descendants of Jacob (i.e., the Israelites, e.g., 2:4). Here the parallelism argues that it refers to the nation of Judah. The translation throughout vv. 5-17 assumes that the verb forms are prophetic perfects, the form that conceives of the action as being as good as done. It is possible that the forms are true perfects and refer to a past destruction of Judah. If so, it may have been connected with the assaults against Judah in 598/7
[12:7] 6 tn Heb “my inheritance.”
[12:7] 7 tn Heb “the beloved of my soul.” Here “soul” stands for the person and is equivalent to “my.”
[12:7] 8 tn Heb “will give…into the hands of.”
[12:8] 9 tn See the note on the previous verse.
[12:8] 10 tn Heb “have become to me like a lion.”
[12:8] 11 tn Heb “have given against me with her voice.”
[12:8] 12 tn Or “so I will reject her.” The word “hate” is sometimes used in a figurative way to refer to being neglected, i.e., treated as though unloved. In these contexts it does not have the same emotive connotations that a typical modern reader would associate with hate. See Gen 29:31, 33 and E. W. Bullinger, Figures of Speech, 556.
[12:9] 13 tn Or “like speckled birds of prey.” The meanings of these words are uncertain. In the Hebrew text sentence is a question: “Is not my inheritance to me a bird of prey [or] a hyena/a speckled bird of prey?” The question expects a positive answer and so is rendered here as an affirmative statement. The meaning of the word “speckled” is debated. It occurs only here. BDB 840 s.v. צָבוּעַ relates it to another word that occurs only once in Judg 5:30 which is translated “dyed stuff.” HALOT 936 s.v. צָבוּעַ relates a word found in the cognates meaning “hyena.” This is more likely and is the interpretation followed by the Greek which reads the first two words as “cave of hyena.” This translation has led some scholars to posit a homonym for the word “bird of prey” meaning “cave” which is based on Arabic parallels. The metaphor would then be of Israel carried off by hyenas and surrounded by birds of prey. The evidence for the meaning “cave” is weak and would involve a wordplay of a rare homonym with another word that is better known. For a discussion of the issues see J. Barr, Comparative Philology and the Text of the Old Testament, 128-29, 153.
[12:9] 14 tn Heb “Are birds of prey around her?” The question is again rhetorical and expects a positive answer. The birds of prey are of course the hostile nations surrounding her. The metaphor involved in these two lines may be interpreted differently. I.e., God considers Israel a proud bird of prey (hence the word for speckled) but one who is surrounded and under attack by other birds of prey. The fact that the sentences are divided into two rhetorical questions speaks somewhat against this.
[12:9] 15 tn Heb “Go, gather all the beasts of the field [= wild beasts]. Bring them to devour.” The verbs are masculine plural imperatives addressed rhetorically to some unidentified group (the heavenly counsel?) Cf. the notes on 5:1 for further discussion. Since translating literally would raise question about who the commands are addressed to, they have been turned into passive third person commands to avoid confusion. The metaphor has likewise been turned into a simile to help the modern reader. By the way, the imperatives here implying future action argue that the passage is future and that it is correct to take the verb forms as prophetic perfects.
[12:10] 16 tn Heb “Many shepherds.” For the use of the term “shepherd” as a figure for rulers see the notes on 10:21.
[12:10] 17 tn Heb “my vineyard.” To translate literally would presuppose an unlikely familiarity of this figure on the part of some readers. To translate as “vineyards” as some do would be misleading because that would miss the figurative nuance altogether.
[12:10] 18 tn Heb “my portion.”
[12:11] 19 tn For the use of this verb see the notes on 12:4. Some understand the homonym here meaning “it [the desolated land] will mourn to me.” However, the only other use of the preposition עַל (’al) with this root means “to mourn over” not “to” (cf. Hos 10:5). For the use of the preposition here see BDB 753 s.v. עַל II.1.b and compare the use in Gen 48:7.
[12:11] 20 tn Heb “But there is no man laying it to heart.” For the idiom here see BDB 525 s.v. לֵב II.3.d and compare the usage in Isa 42:25; 47:7.
[9:12] 21 tn Heb “and they devoured Israel with all the mouth”; NIV “with open mouth”; NLT “With bared fangs.”
[9:12] 22 tn Heb “in all this his anger is not turned, and still his hand is outstretched.” One could translate in the past tense here (and in 9:17b and 21b), but the appearance of the refrain in 10:4b, where it follows a woe oracle prophesying a future judgment, suggests it is a dramatic portrait of the judge which did not change throughout this period of past judgment and will remain unchanged in the future. The English present tense is chosen to best reflect this dramatic mood. (See also 5:25b, where the refrain appears following a dramatic description of coming judgment.)
