Jeremiah 50:27

50:27 Kill all her soldiers! ¹ 

Let them be slaughtered! ² 

They are doomed, ³  for their day of reckoning ⁴  has come,

the time for them to be punished.”

Jeremiah 2:7

2:7 I brought you ⁵  into a fertile land

so you could enjoy ⁶  its fruits and its rich bounty.

But when you entered my land, you defiled it; ⁷ 

you made the land I call my own ⁸  loathsome to me.

[50:27]  ¹ tn Heb “Kill all her young bulls.” Commentators are almost universally agreed that the reference to “young bulls” is figurative here for the princes and warriors (cf. BDB 831 s.v. פַּר 2.f, which compares Isa 34:7 and Ezek 39:18). This is virtually certain because of the reference to the time coming for them to be punished; this would scarcely fit literal bulls. For the verb rendered “kill” here see the translator’s note on v. 21.

[50:27]  ² tn Heb “Let them go down to the slaughter.”

[50:27]  ³ tn Or “How terrible it will be for them”; Heb “Woe to them.” See the study note on 22:13 and compare the usage in 23:1; 48:1.

[50:27]  ⁴ tn The words “of reckoning” are not in the text but are implicit from the context. They are supplied in the translation for clarity.

[2:7]  ⁵ sn Note how contemporary Israel is again identified with her early ancestors. See the study note on 2:2.

[2:7]  ⁶ tn Heb “eat.”

[2:7]  ⁷ sn I.e., made it ceremonially unclean. See Lev 18:19-30; Num 35:34; Deut 21:23.

[2:7]  ⁸ tn Heb “my inheritance.” Or “the land [i.e., inheritance] I gave you,” reading the pronoun as indicating source rather than possession. The parallelism and the common use in Jeremiah of the term to refer to the land or people as the Lord’s (e.g., 12:7, 8, 9; 16:18; 50:11) make the possessive use more likely here.