Jeremiah 6:8

6:8 So ¹  take warning, Jerusalem,

or I will abandon you in disgust ² 

and make you desolate,

a place where no one can live.”

Jeremiah 12:7

12:7 “I will abandon my nation. ³ 

I will forsake the people I call my own. ⁴ 

I will turn my beloved people ⁵ 

over to the power ⁶  of their enemies.

Jeremiah 32:41

32:41 I will take delight in doing good to them. I will faithfully and wholeheartedly plant them ⁷  firmly in the land.’

Jeremiah 4:19

4:19 I said, ⁸ 

“Oh, the feeling in the pit of my stomach! ⁹ 

I writhe in anguish.

Oh, the pain in my heart! ¹⁰ 

My heart pounds within me.

I cannot keep silent.

For I hear the sound of the trumpet; ¹¹ 

the sound of the battle cry pierces my soul! ¹² 

Jeremiah 5:9

5:9 I will surely punish them for doing such things!” says the Lord.

“I will surely bring retribution on such a nation as this!” ¹³ 

Jeremiah 5:29

5:29 I will certainly punish them for doing such things!” says the Lord.

“I will certainly bring retribution on such a nation as this! ¹⁴ 

Jeremiah 9:9

9:9 I will certainly punish them for doing such things!” says the Lord.

“I will certainly bring retribution on such a nation as this!” ¹⁵ 

Jeremiah 13:17

13:17 But if you will not pay attention to this warning, ¹⁶ 

I will weep alone because of your arrogant pride.

I will weep bitterly and my eyes will overflow with tears ¹⁷ 

because you, the Lord’s flock, ¹⁸  will be carried ¹⁹  into exile.”

Jeremiah 15:1

15:1 Then the Lord said to me, “Even if Moses and Samuel stood before me pleading for ²⁰  these people, I would not feel pity for them! ²¹  Get them away from me! Tell them to go away! ²² 

Jeremiah 4:31

4:31 In fact, ²³  I hear a cry like that of a woman in labor,

a cry of anguish like that of a woman giving birth to her first baby.

It is the cry of Daughter Zion ²⁴  gasping for breath,

reaching out for help, ²⁵  saying, “I am done in! ²⁶ 

My life is ebbing away before these murderers!”

[6:8]  ¹ tn This word is not in the text but is supplied in the translation. Jeremiah uses a figure of speech (enallage) where the speaker turns from talking about someone to address him/her directly.

[6:8]  ² tn Heb “lest my soul [= I] becomes disgusted with you.”

[12:7]  ³ 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]  ⁴ tn Heb “my inheritance.”

[12:7]  ⁵ tn Heb “the beloved of my soul.” Here “soul” stands for the person and is equivalent to “my.”

[12:7]  ⁶ tn Heb “will give…into the hands of.”

[32:41]  ⁵ tn Heb “will plant them in the land with faithfulness with all my heart and with all my soul.” The latter expressions are, of course, anthropomorphisms (see Deut 6:5).

[4:19]  ⁷ tn The words “I said” are not in the text. They are used to mark the shift from the Lord’s promise of judgment to Jeremiah’s lament concerning it.

[4:19]  ⁸ tn Heb “My bowels! My bowels!”

[4:19]  ⁹ tn Heb “the walls of my heart!”

[4:19]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “ram’s horn,” but the modern equivalent is “trumpet” and is more readily understandable.

[4:19]  ¹¹ tc The translation reflects a different division of the last two lines than that suggested by the Masoretes. The written text (the Kethib) reads “for the sound of the ram’s horn I have heard [or “you have heard,” if the form is understood as the old second feminine singular perfect] my soul” followed by “the battle cry” in the last line. The translation is based on taking “my soul” with the last line and understanding an elliptical expression “the battle cry [to] my soul.” Such an elliptical expression is in keeping with the elliptical nature of the exclamations at the beginning of the verse (cf. the literal translations of the first two lines of the verse in the notes on the words “stomach” and “heart”).

[5:9]  ⁹ tn Heb “Should I not punish them…? Should I not bring retribution…?” The rhetorical questions have the force of strong declarations.

[5:29]  ¹¹ tn Heb “Should I not punish…? Should I not bring retribution…?” The rhetorical questions function as emphatic declarations.

[9:9]  ¹³ tn Heb “Should I not punish them…? Should I not bring retribution…?” The rhetorical questions function as emphatic declarations.

[13:17]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “If you will not listen to it.” For the use of the feminine singular pronoun to refer to the idea(s) expressed in the preceding verse(s), see GKC 440-41 §135.p.

[13:17]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “Tearing [my eye] will tear and my eye will run down [= flow] with tears.”

[13:17]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “because the Lord’s flock will…” The pronoun “you” is supplied in the translation to avoid the shift in English from the second person address at the beginning to the third person affirmation at the end. It also helps explain the metaphor of the people of Israel as God’s flock for some readers who may be unfamiliar with that metaphor.

[13:17]  ¹⁸ tn The verb is once again in the form of “as good as done” (the Hebrew prophetic perfect).

[15:1]  ¹⁷ tn The words “pleading for” have been supplied in the translation to explain the idiom (a metonymy). For parallel usage see BDB 763 s.v. עָמַד Qal.1.a and compare usage in Gen 19:27, Deut 4:10.

[15:1]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “my soul would not be toward them.” For the usage of “soul” presupposed here see BDB 660 s.v. נֶפֶשׁ 6 in the light of the complaints and petitions in Jeremiah’s prayer in 14:19, 21.

[15:1]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “Send them away from my presence and let them go away.”

[4:31]  ¹⁹ tn The particle כִּי (ki) is more likely asseverative here than causal.

[4:31]  ²⁰ sn Jerusalem is personified as a helpless maiden.

[4:31]  ²¹ tn Heb “spreading out her hands.” The idea of asking or pleading for help is implicit in the figure.

[4:31]  ²² tn Heb “Woe, now to me!” See the translator’s note on 4:13 for the usage of “Woe to…”