Jeremiah 50:46

50:46 The people of the earth will quake when they hear Babylon has been captured.

Her cries of anguish will be heard by the other nations.” ¹ 

Jeremiah 49:21

49:21 The people of the earth will quake when they hear of their downfall. ² 

Their cries of anguish will be heard all the way to the Gulf of Aqaba. ³ 

Jeremiah 42:6

42:6 We will obey what the Lord our God to whom we are sending you tells us to do. It does not matter whether we like what he tells us or not. We will obey what he tells us to do so that things will go well for us.” ⁴ 

Jeremiah 3:21

3:21 “A noise is heard on the hilltops.

It is the sound of the people of Israel crying and pleading to their gods.

Indeed they have followed sinful ways; ⁵ 

they have forgotten to be true to the Lord their God. ⁶ 

Jeremiah 8:16

8:16 The snorting of the enemy’s horses

is already being heard in the city of Dan.

The sound of the neighing of their stallions ⁷ 

causes the whole land to tremble with fear.

They are coming to destroy the land and everything in it!

They are coming to destroy ⁸  the cities and everyone who lives in them!”

Jeremiah 9:19

9:19 For the sound of wailing is soon to be heard in Zion.

They will wail, ⁹  ‘We are utterly ruined! ¹⁰  We are completely disgraced!

For our houses have been torn down

and we must leave our land.’” ¹¹ 

Jeremiah 31:15

31:15 The Lord says,

“A sound is heard in Ramah, ¹² 

a sound of crying in bitter grief.

It is the sound of Rachel weeping for her children

and refusing to be comforted, because her children are gone.” ¹³ 

Jeremiah 38:27

38:27 All the officials did indeed come and question Jeremiah. ¹⁴  He told them exactly what the king had instructed him to say. ¹⁵  They stopped questioning him any further because no one had actually heard their conversation. ¹⁶ 

Jeremiah 42:14

42:14 You must not say, ‘No, we will not stay. Instead we will go and live in the land of Egypt where we will not face war, ¹⁷  or hear the enemy’s trumpet calls, ¹⁸  or starve for lack of food.’ ¹⁹ 

[50:46]  ¹ tn Heb “among the nations.” With the exception of this phrase, the different verb in v. 46a, the absence of a suffix on the word for “land” in v. 45d, the third plural suffix instead of the third singular suffix on the verb for “chase…off of,” this passage is identical with 49:19-21 with the replacement of Babylon or the land of the Chaldeans for Edom. For the translation notes explaining the details of the translation here see the translator’s notes on 49:19-21.

[49:21]  ² tn Heb “The earth will quake when at the sound of their downfall.” However, as in many other places “earth” stands here metonymically for the inhabitants or people of the earth (see E. W. Bullinger, Figures of Speech, 578-79, and compare usage in 2 Sam 15:23; Ps 66:4).

[49:21]  ³ tn Heb “the Red Sea,” of which the Gulf of Aqaba formed the northeastern arm. The land of Edom once reached this far according to 1 Kgs 9:26.

[42:6]  ³ tn Heb “Whether good or whether evil we will hearken to the voice of the Lord our God to whom we are sending you in order that it may go well for us because/when we hearken to the voice of the Lord our God.” The phrase “whether good or whether evil” is an abbreviated form of the idiomatic expressions “to be good in the eyes of” = “to be pleasing to” (BDB 374 s.v. טוֹב 2.f and see 1 Kgs 21:2) and “to be bad in the eyes of” = “to be displeasing to” (BDB 948 s.v. רַע 3 and see Num 22:34). The longer Hebrew sentence has been broken down and restructured to better conform with contemporary English style.

[3:21]  ⁴ tn Heb “A sound is heard on the hilltops, the weeping of the supplication of the children of Israel because [or indeed] they have perverted their way.” At issue here is whether the supplication is made to Yahweh in repentance because of what they have done or whether it is supplication to the pagan gods which is evidence of their perverted ways. The reference in this verse to the hilltops where idolatry was practiced according to 3:2 and the reference to Israel’s unfaithfulness in the preceding verse make the latter more likely. For the asseverative use of the Hebrew particle (here rendered “indeed”) where the particle retains some of the explicative nuance; cf. BDB 472-73 s.v. כִּי 1.e and 3.c.

[3:21]  ⁵ tn Heb “have forgotten the Lord their God,” but in the view of the parallelism and the context, the word “forget” (like “know” and “remember”) involves more than mere intellectual activity.

[8:16]  ⁵ tn Heb “his stallions.”

[8:16]  ⁶ tn The words “They are coming to destroy” are not in the text. They are inserted to break up a long sentence in conformity with contemporary English style.

[9:19]  ⁶ tn The words “They will wail” are not in the text. They are supplied in the translation to make clear that this is the wailing that will be heard.

[9:19]  ⁷ tn Heb “How we are ruined!”

[9:19]  ⁸ tn The order of these two lines has been reversed for English stylistic reasons. The text reads in Hebrew “because we have left our land because they have thrown down our dwellings.” The two clauses offer parallel reasons for the cries “How ruined we are! [How] we are greatly disgraced!” But the first line must contain a prophetic perfect (because the lament comes from Jerusalem) and the second a perfect referring to a destruction that is itself future. This seems the only way to render the verse that would not be misleading.

[31:15]  ⁷ sn Ramah is a town in Benjamin approximately five miles (8 km) north of Jerusalem. It was on the road between Bethel and Bethlehem. Traditionally, Rachel’s tomb was located near there at a place called Zelzah (1 Sam 10:2). Rachel was the mother of Joseph and Benjamin and was very concerned about having children because she was barren (Gen 30:1-2) and went to great lengths to have them (Gen 30:3, 14-15, 22-24). She was the grandmother of Ephraim and Manasseh which were two of the major tribes in northern Israel. Here Rachel is viewed metaphorically as weeping for her “children,” the descendants of Ephraim and Manasseh, who had been carried away into captivity in 722 b.c.

[31:15]  ⁸ tn Or “gone into exile” (cf. v. 16), though some English versions take this as meaning “dead” (e.g., NCV, CEV, NLT), presumably in light of Matt 2:18.

[38:27]  ⁸ tn Heb “All the officials came to Jeremiah and questioned him.”

[38:27]  ⁹ tn Heb “And he reported to them according to all these words which the king had commanded.”

[38:27]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “And they were silent from him because the word/matter [i.e., the conversation between Jeremiah and the king] had not been heard.” According to BDB 578 s.v. מִן 1.a the preposition “from” is significant in this construction, implying a verb of motion. I.e., “they were [fell] silent [and turned away] from him.”

[42:14]  ⁹ tn Heb “see [or experience] war.”

[42:14]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “hear the sound of the trumpet.” The trumpet was used to gather the troops and to sound the alarm for battle.

[42:14]  ¹¹ tn Jer 42:13-14 are a long complex condition (protasis) whose consequence (apodosis) does not begin until v. 15. The Hebrew text of vv. 13-14 reads: 42:13 “But if you say [or continue to say (the form is a participle)], ‘We will not stay in this land’ with the result that you do not obey [or “more literally, do not hearken to the voice of] the Lord your God, 42:14 saying, ‘No, but to the land of Egypt we will go where we…and there we will live,’ 42:15 now therefore hear the word of the Lord…” The sentence has been broken up and restructured to better conform with contemporary English style but an attempt has been made to maintain the contingencies and the qualifiers that are in the longer Hebrew original.