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 9:1

9:1 (8:23) ⁵  I wish that my head were a well full of water ⁶ 

and my eyes were a fountain full of tears!

If they were, I could cry day and night

for those of my dear people ⁷  who have been killed.

Jeremiah 33:20

33:20 “I, Lord, make the following promise: ⁸  ‘I have made a covenant with the day ⁹  and with the night that they will always come at their proper times. Only if you people ¹⁰  could break that covenant

Jeremiah 33:25

33:25 But I, the Lord, make the following promise: ¹¹  I have made a covenant governing the coming of day and night. I have established the fixed laws governing heaven and earth.

Jeremiah 15:9

15:9 The mother who had seven children ¹²  will grow faint.

All the breath will go out of her. ¹³ 

Her pride and joy will be taken from her in the prime of their life.

It will seem as if the sun had set while it was still day. ¹⁴ 

She will suffer shame and humiliation. ¹⁵ 

I will cause any of them who are still left alive

to be killed in war by the onslaughts of their enemies,” ¹⁶ 

says the Lord.

Jeremiah 16:13

16:13 So I will throw you out of this land into a land that neither you nor your ancestors have ever known. There you must worship other gods day and night, for I will show you no mercy.’”

Jeremiah 31:35

The Lord Guarantees Israel’s Continuance

31:35 The Lord has made a promise to Israel.

He promises it as the one who fixed the sun to give light by day

and the moon and stars to give light by night.

He promises it as the one who stirs up the sea so that its waves roll.

He promises it as the one who is known as the Lord who rules over all. ¹⁷ 

[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.

[9:1]  ⁵ sn Beginning with 9:1, the verse numbers through 9:26 in the English Bible differ from the verse numbers in the Hebrew text (BHS), with 9:1 ET = 8:23 HT, 9:2 ET = 9:1 HT, 9:3 ET = 9:2 HT, etc., through 9:26 ET = 9:25 HT. Beginning with 10:1 the verse numbers in the ET and HT are again the same.

[9:1]  ⁶ tn Heb “I wish that my head were water.”

[9:1]  ⁷ tn Heb “daughter of my people.” For the translation given here see 4:11 and the note on the phrase “dear people” there.

[33:20]  ⁹ tn Heb “Thus says the Lord.” However, the Lord is speaking so the first person introduction has again been adopted. The content of the verse shows that it is a promise to David (vv. 21-22) and the Levites based on a contrary to fact condition (v. 20). See further the translator’s note at the end of the next verse for explanation of the English structure adopted here.

[33:20]  ¹⁰ tn The word יוֹמָם (yomam) is normally an adverb meaning “daytime, by day, daily.” However, here and in v. 25 and in Jer 15:9 it means “day, daytime” (cf. BDB 401 s.v. יוֹמָם 1).

[33:20]  ¹¹ tn Heb “you.” The pronoun is plural as in 32:36, 43; 33:10.

[33:25]  ¹³ tn Heb “Thus says the Lord.” See the translator’s note at the beginning of v. 20 for the style adopted here. Here the promise is in v. 26 following the contrary to fact condition in v. 25. The Hebrew text of vv. 25-26 reads: “Thus says the Lord, “If I have not established my covenant with day and night [and] the laws/statutes of heaven and earth, also I could reject the seed of Jacob and David my servant from taking from his seed as rulers over the seed of Abraham…” The syntax of the original is a little awkward because it involves the verbs “establish” and “reject” governing two objects, the first governing two similar objects “my covenant” and “the regulations” and the second governing two dissimilar objects “the seed of Jacob” and “my servant David from taking [so as not to take].” The translation has sought to remove these awkward syntactical constructions and also break down the long complex original sentence in such a way as to retain its original intent, i.e., the guarantee of the continuance of the seed of Jacob and of the rule of a line of David’s descendants over them based on the fixed order of God’s creation decrees.

[15:9]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “who gave birth to seven.”

[15:9]  ¹⁸ tn The meaning of this line is debated. Some understand this line to mean “she has breathed out her life” (cf., e.g., BDB 656 s.v. נָפַח and 656 s.v. ֶנפֶשׁ 1.c). However, as several commentaries have noted (e.g., W. McKane, Jeremiah [ICC], 1:341; J. Bright, Jeremiah [AB], 109) it makes little sense to talk about her suffering shame and embarrassment if she has breathed her last. Both the Greek and Latin versions understand “soul” not as the object but as the subject and the idea being one of fainting under despair. This idea seems likely in light of the parallelism. Bright suggests the phrase means either “she gasped out her breath” or “her throat gasped.” The former is more likely. One might also render “she fainted dead away,” but that idiom might not be familiar to all readers.

[15:9]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “Her sun went down while it was still day.”

[15:9]  ²⁰ sn She has lost her position of honor and the source of her pride. For the concepts here see 1 Sam 2:5.

[15:9]  ²¹ tn Heb “I will deliver those of them that survive to the sword before their enemies.” The referent of “them” is ambiguous. Does it refer to the children of the widow (nearer context) or the people themselves (more remote context, v. 7)? Perhaps it was meant to include both. Verse seven spoke of the destruction of the people and the killing off of the children.

[31:35]  ²¹ tn Heb “Yahweh of armies.” See the study note on 2:19 for this title. In the Hebrew text the verse reads: “Thus says the Lord who provides the sun for light by day, the fixed ordering of the moon and stars for light by night, who stirs up the sea and its waves roar, whose name is Yahweh of armies, ‘…’” The hymnic introduction to the quote which does not begin until v. 36 has been broken down to avoid a long awkward sentence in English. The word “said” has been translated “made a promise” to reflect the nature of the content in vv. 36-37. The first two lines of the Hebrew poetry are a case of complex or supplementary ellipsis where the complete idea of “providing/establishing the fixed laws” is divided between the two lines (cf. E. W. Bullinger, Figures of Speech, 110-13). The necessity for recombining the ellipsis is obvious from reference to the fixed ordering in the next verse. (Some commentators prefer to delete the word as an erroneous glossing of the word in the following line (see, e.g., J. Bright, Jeremiah [AB], 277, n. y).