Jeremiah 6:3

6:3 Kings will come against it with their armies. ¹ 

They will encamp in siege all around it. ² 

Each of them will devastate the portion assigned to him. ³ 

Jeremiah 9:11

9:11 The Lord said, ⁴ 

“I will make Jerusalem ⁵  a heap of ruins.

Jackals will make their home there. ⁶ 

I will destroy the towns of Judah

so that no one will be able to live in them.”

Jeremiah 10:3

10:3 For the religion ⁷  of these people is worthless.

They cut down a tree in the forest,

and a craftsman makes it into an idol with his tools. ⁸ 

Jeremiah 11:23

11:23 Not one of them will survive. ⁹  I will bring disaster on those men from Anathoth who threatened you. ¹⁰  A day of reckoning is coming for them.” ¹¹ 

Jeremiah 12:7

12:7 “I will abandon my nation. ¹² 

I will forsake the people I call my own. ¹³ 

I will turn my beloved people ¹⁴ 

over to the power ¹⁵  of their enemies.

Jeremiah 28:9

28:9 So if a prophet prophesied ¹⁶  peace and prosperity, it was only known that the Lord truly sent him when what he prophesied came true.”

Jeremiah 46:12

46:12 The nations will hear of your devastating defeat. ¹⁷ 

your cries of distress will echo throughout the earth.

In the panic of their flight one soldier will trip over another

and both of them will fall down defeated.” ¹⁸ 

Jeremiah 48:8

48:8 The destroyer will come against every town.

Not one town will escape.

The towns in the valley will be destroyed.

The cities on the high plain will be laid waste. ¹⁹ 

I, the Lord, have spoken! ²⁰ 

Jeremiah 48:38

48:38 On all the housetops in Moab

and in all its public squares

there will be nothing but mourning.

For I will break Moab like an unwanted jar.

I, the Lord, affirm it! ²¹ 

[6:3]  ¹ tn Heb “Shepherds and their flocks will come against it.” Rulers are often depicted as shepherds; see BDB 945 s.v. רָעָה 1.d(2) (cf. Jer 12:10). The translation of this verse attempts to clarify the point of this extended metaphor.

[6:3]  ² tn Heb “They will thrust [= pitch] tents around it.” The shepherd imagery has a surprisingly ominous tone. The beautiful pasture filled with shepherds grazing their sheep is in reality a city under siege from an attacking enemy.

[6:3]  ³ tn Heb “They will graze each one his portion.” For the use of the verb “graze” to mean “strip” or “devastate” see BDB 945 s.v. רָעָה 2.c. For a similar use of the word normally meaning “hand” to mean portion compare 2 Sam 19:43 (19:44 HT).

[9:11]  ⁴ tn The words “the Lord said” are not in the text, but it is obvious from the content that he is the speaker. These words are supplied in the translation for clarity.

[9:11]  ⁵ map For location see Map5 B1; Map6 F3; Map7 E2; Map8 F2; Map10 B3; JP1 F4; JP2 F4; JP3 F4; JP4 F4.

[9:11]  ⁶ tn Heb “a heap of ruins, a haunt for jackals.”

[10:3]  ⁷ tn Heb “statutes.” According to BDB 350 s.v. חֻקָּה 2.b it refers to the firmly established customs or practices of the pagan nations. Compare the usage in Lev 20:23; 2 Kgs 17:8. Here it is essentially equivalent to דֶּרֶךְ (derekh) in v. 1, which has already been translated “religious practices.”

[10:3]  ⁸ sn This passage is dripping with sarcasm. It begins by talking about the “statutes” of the pagan peoples as a “vapor” using a singular copula and singular predicate. Then it suppresses the subject, the idol, as though it were too horrible to mention, using only the predications about it. The last two lines read literally: “[it is] a tree which one cuts down from the forest; the work of the hands of a craftsman with his chisel.”

[11:23]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “There will be no survivors for/among them.”

[11:23]  ¹¹ tn Heb “the men of Anathoth.” For the rationale for adding the qualification see the notes on v. 21.

[11:23]  ¹² tn Heb “I will bring disaster on…, the year of their punishment.”

[12:7]  ¹³ 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 b.c. by the Babylonians and the nations surrounding Judah recorded in 2 Kgs 24:14. No other major recent English version reflects these as prophetic perfects besides NIV and NCV, which does not use the future until v. 10. Hence the translation is somewhat tentative. C. Feinberg, “Jeremiah,” EBC 6:459 takes them as prophetic perfects and H. Freedman (Jeremiah [SoBB], 88) mentions that as a possibility for explaining the presence of this passage here. For another example of an extended use of the prophetic perfect without imperfects interspersed see Isa 8:23-9:6. The translation assumes they are prophetic and are part of the Lord’s answer to the complaint about the prosperity of the wicked; both the wicked Judeans and the wicked nations God will use to punish them will be punished.

[12:7]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “my inheritance.”

[12:7]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “the beloved of my soul.” Here “soul” stands for the person and is equivalent to “my.”

[12:7]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “will give…into the hands of.”

[28:9]  ¹⁶ tn The verbs in this verse are to be interpreted as iterative imperfects in past time rather than as futures because of the explicit contrast that is drawn in the two verses by the emphatic syntactical construction of the two verses. Both verses begin with a casus pendens construction to throw the two verses into contrast: Heb “The prophets who were before me and you from ancient times, they prophesied…The prophet who prophesied peace, when the word of that prophet came true, that prophet was known that the Lord truly sent him.”

[46:12]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “of your shame.” The “shame,” however, applies to the devastating defeat they will suffer.

[46:12]  ²⁰ tn The words “In the panic of their flight” and “defeated” are not in the text but are supplied in the translation to give clarity to the metaphor for the average reader. The verbs in this verse are all in the tense that emphasizes that the action is viewed as already having been accomplished (i.e., the Hebrew prophetic perfect). This is consistent with the vav consecutive perfects in v. 10 which look to the future.

[48:8]  ²² tn Heb “The valley will be destroyed and the tableland be laid waste.” However, in the context this surely refers to the towns and not to the valley and the tableland itself.

[48:8]  ²³ tn Heb “which/for/as the Lord has spoken.” The first person form has again been adopted because the Lord is the speaker throughout (cf. v. 1).

[48:38]  ²⁵ tn Heb “Oracle of the Lord.”