Jeremiah 52:34

52:34 He was given daily provisions by the king of Babylon for the rest of his life until the day he died.

Jeremiah 20:14

20:14 Cursed be the day I was born!

May that day not be blessed when my mother gave birth to me. ¹ 

Jeremiah 17:18

17:18 May those who persecute me be disgraced.

Do not let me be disgraced.

May they be dismayed.

Do not let me be dismayed.

Bring days of disaster on them.

Bring on them the destruction they deserve.” ² 

Jeremiah 17:22

17:22 Do not carry any loads out of your houses or do any work on the Sabbath day. ³  But observe the Sabbath day as a day set apart to the Lord, ⁴  as I commanded your ancestors. ⁵ 

Jeremiah 27:22

27:22 He has said, ‘They will be carried off to Babylon. They will remain there until it is time for me to show consideration for them again. ⁶  Then I will bring them back and restore them to this place.’ I, the Lord, affirm this!” ⁷ 

Jeremiah 31:6

31:6 Yes, a time is coming

when watchmen ⁸  will call out on the mountains of Ephraim,

“Come! Let us go to Zion

to worship the Lord our God!”’” ⁹ 

Jeremiah 38:28

38:28 So Jeremiah remained confined ¹⁰  in the courtyard of the guardhouse until the day Jerusalem ¹¹  was captured.

The Fall of Jerusalem and Its Aftermath

The following events occurred when Jerusalem ¹²  was captured. ¹³ 

Jeremiah 52:11

52:11 He had Zedekiah’s eyes put out and had him bound in chains. ¹⁴  Then the king of Babylon had him led off to Babylon and he was imprisoned there until the day he died.

Jeremiah 7:25

7:25 From the time your ancestors departed the land of Egypt until now, ¹⁵  I sent my servants the prophets to you again and again, ¹⁶  day after day. ¹⁷ 

Jeremiah 17:24

17:24 The Lord says, ¹⁸  ‘You must make sure to obey me. You must not bring any loads through the gates of this city on the Sabbath day. You must set the Sabbath day apart to me. You must not do any work on that day.

Jeremiah 17:27

17:27 But you must obey me and set the Sabbath day apart to me. You must not carry any loads in through ¹⁹  the gates of Jerusalem on the Sabbath day. If you disobey, I will set the gates of Jerusalem on fire. It will burn down all the fortified dwellings in Jerusalem and no one will be able to put it out.’”

Jeremiah 46:10

46:10 But that day belongs to the Lord God who rules over all. ²⁰ 

It is the day when he will pay back his enemies. ²¹ 

His sword will devour them until its appetite is satisfied!

It will drink their blood until it is full! ²² 

For the Lord God who rules over all ²³  will offer them up as a sacrifice

in the land of the north by the Euphrates River.

Jeremiah 46:21

46:21 Even her mercenaries ²⁴ 

will prove to be like pampered, ²⁵  well-fed calves.

For they too will turn and run away.

They will not stand their ground

when ²⁶  the time for them to be destroyed comes,

the time for them to be punished.

[20:14]  ¹ sn From the heights of exaltation, Jeremiah returns to the depths of despair. For similar mood swings in the psalms of lament compare Ps 102. Verses 14-18 are similar in tone and mood to Job 3:1-10. They are very forceful rhetorical ways of Job and Jeremiah expressing the wish that they had never been born.

[17:18]  ¹ tn Or “complete destruction.” See the translator’s note on 16:18.

[17:22]  ¹ tn Heb “Do not carry any loads out of your houses on the Sabbath day and do not do any work.” Translating literally might give the wrong impression that they were not to work at all. The phrase “on the Sabbath day” is, of course, intended to qualify both prohibitions.

[17:22]  ² tn Heb “But sanctify [or set apart as sacred] the Sabbath day.” The idea of setting it apart as something sacred to the Lord is implicit in the command. See the explicit statements of this in Exod 20:10; 31:5; 35:2; Lev 24:8. For some readers the idea of treating the Sabbath day as something sacred won’t mean much without spelling the qualification out specifically. Sabbath observance was not just a matter of not working.

[17:22]  ³ tn Heb “fathers.”

[27:22]  ¹ tn This verb is a little difficult to render here. The word is used in the sense of taking note of something and acting according to what is noticed. It is the word that has been translated several times throughout Jeremiah as “punish [someone].” It is also used in the opposite of sense of taking note and “show consideration for” (or “care for;” see, e.g., Ruth 1:6). Here the nuance is positive and is further clarified by the actions that follow, bringing them back and restoring them.

[27:22]  ² tn Heb “oracle of the Lord.”

[31:6]  ¹ sn Watchmen were stationed at vantage points to pass on warning of coming attack (Jer 6:17; Ezek 33:2, 6) or to spread the news of victory (Isa 52:8). Here reference is made to the watchmen who signaled the special times of the year such as the new moon and festival times when Israel was to go to Jerusalem to worship. Reference is not made to these in the Hebrew Bible but there is a good deal of instruction regarding them in the later Babylonian Talmud.

[31:6]  ² sn Not only will Israel and Judah be reunited under one ruler (cf. 23:5-6), but they will share a unified place and practice of worship once again in contrast to Israel using the illicit places of worship, illicit priesthood, and illicit feasts instituted by Jeroboam (1 Kgs 12:26-31) and continued until the downfall of Samaria in 722 b.c.

[38:28]  ¹ tn Heb “And Jeremiah stayed/remained in the courtyard of the guardhouse…” The translation once again intends to reflect the situation. Jeremiah had a secret meeting with the king at the third entrance to the temple (v. 14). He was returned to the courtyard of the guardhouse (cf. v. 13) after the conversation with the king where the officials came to question him (v. 27). He was not sent back to the dungeon in Jonathan’s house as he feared, but was left confined in the courtyard of the guardhouse.

[38:28]  ² map For location see Map5 B1; Map6 F3; Map7 E2; Map8 F2; Map10 B3; JP1 F4; JP2 F4; JP3 F4; JP4 F4.

[38:28]  ³ map For location see Map5 B1; Map6 F3; Map7 E2; Map8 F2; Map10 B3; JP1 F4; JP2 F4; JP3 F4; JP4 F4.

[38:28]  ⁴ tc The precise meaning of this line and its relation to the context are somewhat uncertain. This line is missing from the Greek and Syriac versions and from a few Hebrew mss. Some English versions and commentaries omit it as a double writing of the final words of the preceding line (see, e.g., REB; W. L. Holladay, Jeremiah [Hermeneia], 2:268). Others see it as misplaced from the beginning of 39:3 (see, e.g., NRSV, TEV, J. Bright, Jeremiah [AB], 245). The clause probably does belong syntactically with 39:3 (i.e., כַּאֲשֶׁר [ka’asher] introduces a temporal clause which is resumed by the vav consecutive on וַיָּבֹאוּ (vayyavo’u; see BDB 455 s.v. כַּאֲשֶׁר 3), but it should not be moved there because there is no textual evidence for doing so. The intervening verses are to be interpreted as parenthetical, giving the background for the events that follow (see, e.g., the translation in D. Barthélemy, ed., Preliminary and Interim Report on the Hebrew Old Testament Text Project, 4:280). The chapter is not so much concerned with describing how Jerusalem fell as it is with contrasting the fate of Zedekiah who disregarded the word of the Lord with the fate of Jeremiah and that of Jeremiah’s benefactor Ebed Melech. The best way to treat the line without actually moving it before 39:3a is to treat it as a heading as has been done here.

[52:11]  ¹ tn Heb “fetters of bronze.” The more generic “chains” is used in the translation because “fetters” is a word unfamiliar to most modern readers.

[7:25]  ¹ tn Heb “from the day your ancestors…until this very day.” However, “day” here is idiomatic for “the present time.”

[7:25]  ² tn On the Hebrew idiom see the note at 7:13.

[7:25]  ³ tc There is some textual debate about the legitimacy of this expression here. The text reads merely “day” (יוֹם, yom). BHS suggests the word is to be deleted as a dittography of the plural ending of the preceding word. The word is in the Greek and Latin, and the Syriac represents the typical idiom “day after day” as though the noun were repeated. Either יוֹם has dropped out by haplography or a ם (mem) has been left out, i.e., reading יוֹמָם (yomam, “daily”).

[17:24]  ¹ tn Heb “Oracle of the Lord.”

[17:27]  ¹ tn Heb “carry loads on the Sabbath and bring [them] in through.” The translation treats the two verbs “carry” and “bring in” are an example of hendiadys (see the note on “through” in 17:21).

[46:10]  ¹ tn Heb “the Lord Yahweh of armies.” See the study note at 2:19 for the translation and significance of this title for God.

[46:10]  ² sn Most commentators think that this is a reference to the Lord exacting vengeance on Pharaoh Necho for killing Josiah, carrying Jehoahaz off into captivity, and exacting heavy tribute on Judah in 609 b.c. (2 Kgs 23:29, 33-35).

[46:10]  ³ tn Or more paraphrastically, “he will kill them/ until he has exacted full vengeance”; Heb “The sword will eat and be sated; it will drink its fill of their blood.”

[46:10]  ⁴ tn Heb “the Lord Yahweh of armies.” See the study note at 2:19 for the translation and significance of this title for God.

[46:21]  ¹ tn Heb “her hirelings in her midst.”

[46:21]  ² tn The word “pampered” is not in the text. It is supplied in the translation to explain the probable meaning of the simile. The mercenaries were well cared for like stall-fed calves, but in the face of the danger they will prove no help because they will turn and run away without standing their ground. Some see the point of the simile to be that they too are fattened for slaughter. However, the next two lines do not fit that interpretation too well.

[46:21]  ³ tn The temporal use of the particle כִּי (ki; BDB 472 s.v. כִּי 2.a) seems more appropriate to the context than the causal use.