Jeremiah 8:19

8:19 I hear my dear people ¹  crying out ² 

throughout the length and breadth of the land. ³ 

They are crying, ‘Is the Lord no longer in Zion?

Is her divine King ⁴  no longer there?’”

The Lord answers, ⁵ 

“Why then do they provoke me to anger with their images,

with their worthless foreign idols?” ⁶ 

Jeremiah 12:5

12:5 The Lord answered, ⁷ 

“If you have raced on foot against men and they have worn you out,

how will you be able to compete with horses?

And if you feel secure only ⁸  in safe and open country, ⁹ 

how will you manage in the thick undergrowth along the Jordan River? ¹⁰ 

Jeremiah 14:18

14:18 If I go out into the countryside,

I see those who have been killed in battle.

If I go into the city,

I see those who are sick because of starvation. ¹¹ 

For both prophet and priest go about their own business

in the land without having any real understanding.’” ¹² 

Jeremiah 15:2

15:2 If they ask you, ‘Where should we go?’ tell them the Lord says this:

“Those who are destined to die of disease will go to death by disease.

Those who are destined to die in war will go to death in war.

Those who are destined to die of starvation will go to death by starvation.

Those who are destined to go into exile will go into exile.” ¹³ 

Jeremiah 23:32

23:32 I, the Lord, affirm ¹⁴  that I am opposed to those prophets who dream up lies and report them. They are misleading my people with their reckless lies. ¹⁵  I did not send them. I did not commission them. They are not helping these people at all. ¹⁶  I, the Lord, affirm it!” ¹⁷ 

Jeremiah 25:30

25:30 “Then, Jeremiah, ¹⁸  make the following prophecy ¹⁹  against them:

‘Like a lion about to attack, ²⁰  the Lord will roar from the heights of heaven;

from his holy dwelling on high he will roar loudly.

He will roar mightily against his land. ²¹ 

He will shout in triumph like those stomping juice from the grapes ²² 

against all those who live on the earth.

Jeremiah 26:18

26:18 “Micah from Moresheth ²³  prophesied during the time Hezekiah was king of Judah. ²⁴  He told all the people of Judah,

‘The Lord who rules over all ²⁵  says,

“Zion ²⁶  will become a plowed field.

Jerusalem ²⁷  will become a pile of rubble.

The temple mount will become a mere wooded ridge.”’ ²⁸ 

Jeremiah 27:16

27:16 I also told the priests and all the people, “The Lord says, ‘Do not listen to what your prophets are saying. They are prophesying to you that ²⁹  the valuable articles taken from the Lord’s temple will be brought back from Babylon very soon. ³⁰  But they are prophesying a lie to you.

Jeremiah 30:10

30:10 So I, the Lord, tell you not to be afraid,

you descendants of Jacob, my servants. ³¹ 

Do not be terrified, people of Israel.

For I will rescue you and your descendants

from a faraway land where you are captives. ³² 

The descendants of Jacob will return to their land and enjoy peace.

They will be secure and no one will terrify them. ³³ 

Jeremiah 33:10

33:10 “I, the Lord, say: ³⁴  ‘You and your people are saying ³⁵  about this place, “It lies in ruins. There are no people or animals in it.” That is true. The towns of Judah and the streets of Jerusalem ³⁶  will soon be desolate, uninhabited either by people or by animals. But happy sounds will again be heard in these places.

Jeremiah 33:26

33:26 Just as surely as I have done this, so surely will I never reject the descendants of Jacob. Nor will I ever refuse to choose one of my servant David’s descendants to rule over the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Indeed, ³⁷  I will restore them ³⁸  and show mercy to them.”

Jeremiah 44:19

44:19 The women added, ³⁹  “We did indeed sacrifice and pour out drink offerings to the Queen of Heaven. But it was with the full knowledge and approval of our husbands that we made cakes in her image and poured out drink offerings to her.” ⁴⁰ 

Jeremiah 44:28

44:28 Some who survive in battle will return to the land of Judah from the land of Egypt. But they will be very few indeed! ⁴¹  Then the Judean remnant who have come to live in the land of Egypt will know whose word proves true, ⁴²  mine or theirs.’

Jeremiah 48:2

48:2 People will not praise Moab any more.

The enemy will capture Heshbon ⁴³  and plot ⁴⁴  how to destroy Moab, ⁴⁵ 

saying, ‘Come, let’s put an end to that nation!’

City of Madmen, you will also be destroyed. ⁴⁶ 

A destructive army will march against you. ⁴⁷ 

Jeremiah 49:2

49:2 Because you did that,

I, the Lord, affirm that ⁴⁸  a time is coming

when I will make Rabbah, the capital city of Ammon,

hear the sound of the battle cry.

It will become a mound covered with ruins. ⁴⁹ 

Its villages will be burned to the ground. ⁵⁰ 

Then Israel will take back its land

from those who took their land from them.

I, the Lord, affirm it! ⁵¹ 

Jeremiah 51:46

51:46 Do not lose your courage or become afraid

because of the reports that are heard in the land.

For a report will come in one year.

Another report will follow it in the next.

There will be violence in the land

with ruler fighting against ruler.”

Jeremiah 52:7

52:7 They broke through the city walls, and all the soldiers tried to escape. They left the city during the night. They went through the gate between the two walls that is near the king’s garden. ⁵²  (The Babylonians had the city surrounded.) Then they headed for the Jordan Valley. ⁵³ 

[8:19]  ¹ tn Heb “daughter of my people.” For the translation given here see 4:11 and the note on the phrase “dear people” there.

[8:19]  ² tn Heb “Behold the voice of the crying of the daughter of my people.”

[8:19]  ³ tn Heb “Land of distances, i.e., of wide extent.” For parallel usage cf. Isa 33:17.

[8:19]  ⁴ tn Heb “her King” but this might be misunderstood by some to refer to the Davidic ruler even with the capitalization.

[8:19]  ⁵ tn The words, “The Lord would answer” are not in the text but are implicit from the words that follow. They are supplied in the translation for clarity. Another option would be to add “And I can just hear the Lord reply.”

[8:19]  ⁶ sn The people’s cry and the Lord’s interruption reflect the same argument that was set forth in the preceding chapter. They have misguided confidence that the Lord is with them regardless of their actions and he responds that their actions have provoked him to the point of judging them. See especially 7:4 and 7:30.

[12:5]  ⁷ tn The words “The Lord answered” are not in the text but are implicit from the context. They are supplied in the translation for clarity.

[12:5]  ⁸ tn Some commentaries and English versions follow the suggestion given in HALOT 116 s.v. II בָּטַח that a homonym meaning “to stumble, fall down” is involved here and in Prov 14:16. The evidence for this homonym is questionable because both passages can be explained on other grounds with the usual root.

[12:5]  ⁹ tn Heb “a land of tranquility.” The expression involves a figure of substitution where the feeling engendered is substituted for the conditions that engender it. For the idea see Isa 32:18. The translation both here and in the following line is intended to bring out the contrast implicit in the emotive connotations connected with “peaceful country” and “thicket along the Jordan.”

[12:5]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “the thicket along the Jordan.” The word “River” is not in the Hebrew text, but has been supplied in the translation for clarity.

[14:18]  ¹³ tn The word “starvation” has been translated “famine” elsewhere in this passage. It is the word which refers to hunger. The “starvation” here may be war induced and not simply that which comes from famine per se. “Starvation” will cover both.

[14:18]  ¹⁴ tn The meaning of these last two lines is somewhat uncertain. The meaning of these two lines is debated because of the uncertainty of the meaning of the verb rendered “go about their business” (סָחַר, sakhar) and the last phrase translated here “without any real understanding.” The verb in question most commonly occurs as a participle meaning “trader” or “merchant” (cf., e.g., Ezek 27:21, 36; Prov 31:14). It occurs as a finite verb elsewhere only in Gen 34:10, 21; 42:34 and there in a literal sense of “trading,” “doing business.” While the nuance is metaphorical here it need not extend to “journeying into” (cf., e.g., BDB 695 s.v. סָחַר Qal.1) and be seen as a reference to exile as is sometimes assumed. That seems at variance with the causal particle which introduces this clause, the tense of the verb, and the surrounding context. People are dying in the land (vv. 17-18a) not because prophet and priest have gone (the verb is the Hebrew perfect or past) into exile but because prophet and priest have no true knowledge of God or the situation. The clause translated here “without having any real understanding” (Heb “and they do not know”) is using the verb in the absolute sense indicated in BDB 394 s.v. יָדַע Qal.5 and illustrated in Isa 1:3; 56:10. For a more thorough discussion of the issues one may consult W. McKane, Jeremiah (ICC), 1:330-31.

[15:2]  ¹⁹ tn It is difficult to render the rhetorical force of this passage in meaningful English. The text answers the question “Where should we go?” with four brief staccato-like expressions with a play on the preposition “to”: Heb “Who to the death, to the death and who to the sword, to the sword and who to the starvation, to the starvation and who to the captivity, to the captivity.” The word “death” here is commonly understood to be a poetic substitute for “plague” because of the standard trio of sword, famine, and plague (see, e.g., 14:12 and the notes there). This is likely here and in 18:21. For further support see W. L. Holladay, Jeremiah (Hermeneia), 1:440. The nuance “starvation” rather than “famine” has been chosen in the translation because the referents here are all things that accompany war.

[23:32]  ²⁵ tn Heb “Oracle of the Lord.”

[23:32]  ²⁶ tn Heb “with their lies and their recklessness.” This is an example of hendiadys where two nouns (in this case a concrete and an abstract one) are joined by “and” but one is intended to be the adjectival modifier of the other.

[23:32]  ²⁷ sn In the light of what has been said this is a rhetorical understatement; they are not only “not helping,” they are leading them to their doom (cf. vv. 19-22). This figure of speech is known as litotes.

[23:32]  ²⁸ tn Heb “Oracle of the Lord.”

[25:30]  ³¹ tn The word “Jeremiah” is not in the text. It is supplied in the translation to make clear who is being addressed.

[25:30]  ³² tn Heb “Prophesy against them all these words.”

[25:30]  ³³ tn The words “like a lion about to attack” are not in the text but are implicit in the metaphor. The explicit comparison of the Lord to a lion is made at the end of the passage in v. 38. The words are supplied in the translation here for clarity.

[25:30]  ³⁴ sn The word used here (Heb “his habitation”) refers to the land of Canaan which the Lord chose to make his earthly dwelling (Exod 15:13) and which was the dwelling place of his chosen people (Jer 10:25; Isa 32:18). Judgment would begin at the “house of God” (v. 29; 1 Pet 4:17) but would extend to the rest of the earth (v. 29).

[25:30]  ³⁵ sn The metaphor shifts from God as a lion to God as a mighty warrior (Jer 20:11; Isa 42:13; Zeph 3:17) shouting in triumph over his foes. Within the metaphor is a simile where the warrior is compared to a person stomping on grapes to remove the juice from them in the making of wine. The figure will be invoked later in a battle scene where the sounds of joy in the grape harvest are replaced by the sounds of joy of the enemy soldiers (Jer 48:33). The picture is drawn in more gory detail in Isa 63:1-6.

[26:18]  ³⁷ sn Micah from Moresheth was a contemporary of Isaiah (compare Mic 1:1 with Isa 1:1) from the country town of Moresheth in the hill country southwest of Jerusalem. The prophecy referred to is found in Mic 3:12. This is the only time in the OT where an OT prophet is quoted verbatim and identified.

[26:18]  ³⁸ sn Hezekiah was co-regent with his father Ahaz from 729-715 b.c. and sole ruler from 715-686 b.c. His father was a wicked king who was responsible for the incursions of the Assyrians (2 Kgs 16; 2 Chr 28). Hezekiah was a godly king, noted for his religious reforms and for his faith in the Lord in the face of the Assyrian threat (2 Kgs 18–19; 2 Chr 32:1-23). The deliverance of Jerusalem in response to his prayers of faith (2 Kgs 19:14-19, 29-36) was undoubtedly well-known to the people of Jerusalem and Judah and may have been one of the prime reasons for their misplaced trust in the inviolability of Zion/Jerusalem (see Ps 46, 76) though the people of Micah’s day already believed it too (Mic 3:11).

[26:18]  ³⁹ tn Heb “Yahweh of armies.”

[26:18]  ⁴⁰ sn Zion was first of all the citadel that David captured (2 Sam 5:6-10), then the city of David and the enclosed temple area, then the whole city of Jerusalem. It is often in poetic parallelism with Jerusalem as it is here (see, e.g., Ps 76:2; Amos 1:2).

[26:18]  ⁴¹ map For location see Map5 B1; Map6 F3; Map7 E2; Map8 F2; Map10 B3; JP1 F4; JP2 F4; JP3 F4; JP4 F4.

[26:18]  ⁴² sn There is irony involved in this statement. The text reads literally “high places of a forest/thicket.” The “high places” were the illicit places of worship that Jerusalem was supposed to replace. Because of their sin, Jerusalem would be like one of the pagan places of worship with no place left sacrosanct. It would even be overgrown with trees and bushes. So much for its inviolability!

[27:16]  ⁴³ tn Heb “don’t listen to the words of the prophets who are prophesying to you….” The sentence has been broken up for the sake of English style and one level of embedded quotes has been eliminated to ease complexity.

[27:16]  ⁴⁴ sn This refers to the valuable articles of the temple treasury which were carried off by Nebuchadnezzar four years earlier when he carried off Jeconiah, his family, some of his nobles, and some of the cream of Judean society (2 Kgs 24:10-16, especially v. 13 and see also vv. 19-20 in the verses following).

[30:10]  ⁴⁹ tn Heb “So do not be afraid, my servant Jacob, oracle of the Lord.” Here and elsewhere in the verse the terms Jacob and Israel are poetic for the people of Israel descended from the patriarch Jacob. The terms have been supplied throughout with plural referents for greater clarity.

[30:10]  ⁵⁰ tn Heb “For I will rescue you from far away, your descendants from the land of their captivity.”

[30:10]  ⁵¹ sn Compare the ideals of the Mosaic covenant in Lev 26:6, the Davidic covenant in 2 Sam 7:10-11, and the new covenant in Ezek 34:25-31.

[33:10]  ⁵⁵ tn Heb “Thus says the Lord.” For the first person rendering see the translator’s note at the end of v. 2.

[33:10]  ⁵⁶ tn Heb “You.” However, the pronoun is plural as in 32:36, 43. See the translator’s note on 32:36.

[33:10]  ⁵⁷ map For location see Map5 B1; Map6 F3; Map7 E2; Map8 F2; Map10 B3; JP1 F4; JP2 F4; JP3 F4; JP4 F4.

[33:26]  ⁶¹ tn The Hebrew particle כִּי (ki) is probably intensive here as it has been on a number of occasions in the book of Jeremiah (see BDB 472 s.v. כִּי 1.e for the category).

[33:26]  ⁶² tn Or “I will make them prosperous once again,” or “I will bring them back from captivity.”

[44:19]  ⁶⁷ tc The words “And the women added” are not in the Hebrew text. They are, however, implicit in what is said. They are found in the Syriac version and in one recension of the Greek version. W. L. Holladay (Jeremiah [Hermeneia], 2:279, n. 19a) suggests that these words are missing from the Hebrew text because of haplography, i.e., that the scribe left out וַהַנָּשִׁים אָמְרוּ כִי (vahannashim ’omru khi) because his eye jumped from the ו at the beginning to the כִּי (ki) that introduced the temporal clause and left out everything in between. It is, however, just as likely, given the fact that there are several other examples of quotes which have not been formally introduced in the book of Jeremiah, that the words were not there and are supplied by these two ancient versions as a translator’s clarification.

[44:19]  ⁶⁸ tn Or “When we sacrificed and poured out drink offering to the Queen of Heaven and made cakes in her image, wasn’t it with the knowledge and approval of our husbands?” Heb “When we sacrificed to the Queen of Heaven and poured out drink offerings [for the use of לְ (lamed) + the infinitive construct to carry on the tense of the preceding verb see BDB 518 s.v. לְ 7.b(h)] to her, did we make cakes to make an image of her and pour out drink offerings apart from [i.e., “without the knowledge and consent of,” so BDB 116 s.v. בִּלְעֲדֵי b(a)] our husbands?” The question expects a positive answer and has been rendered as an affirmation in the translation. The long, complex Hebrew sentence has again been broken in two and restructured to better conform with contemporary English style.

[44:28]  ⁷³ tn Heb “The survivors of the sword will return from the land of Egypt to the land of Judah few in number [more literally, “men of number”; for the idiom see BDB 709 s.v. מִסְפָּר 1.a].” The term “survivors of the sword” may be intended to represent both those who survive death in war or death by starvation or disease, a synecdoche of species for all three genera.

[44:28]  ⁷⁴ tn Heb “will stand,” i.e., in the sense of being fulfilled, proving to be true, or succeeding (see BDB 878 s.v. קוּם 7.g).

[48:2]  ⁷⁹ sn Heshbon was originally a Moabite city but was captured by Sihon king of Og and made his capital (Num 21:26-30). It was captured from Sihon and originally assigned to the tribe of Reuben (Num 32:37; Josh 13:17). Later it was made a Levitical city and was assigned to the tribe of Gad (Josh 21:39). It formed the northern limits of Moab. It was located about eighteen miles east of the northern tip of the Dead Sea.

[48:2]  ⁸⁰ sn There is a wordplay in Hebrew on the word “Heshbon” and the word “plot” (חָשְׁבוּ, khoshvu).

[48:2]  ⁸¹ tn Heb “In Heshbon they plot evil against her [i.e., Moab].” The “they” is undefined, but it would scarcely be Moabites living in Heshbon. Hence TEV and CEV are probably correct in seeing a reference to the enemy which would imply the conquest of this city which lay on the northern border of Moab.

[48:2]  ⁸² tn The meaning of this line is somewhat uncertain. The translation here follows all the modern English versions and commentaries in reading the place name “Madmen” even though the place is otherwise unknown and the Greek, Syriac, and Latin version all read this word as an emphasizing infinitive absolute of the following verb “will be destroyed,” i.e. דָּמוֹם יִדֹּמּוּ (damom yiddommu). Some see this word as a variant of the name Dimon in Isa 15:9 which in turn is a playful variant of the place name Dibon. There is once again a wordplay on the word “Madmen” and “will be destroyed”: מַדְמֵן (madmen) and יִדֹּמּוּ (yiddommu). For the meaning of the verb = “perish” or “be destroyed” see Jer 8:14; Ps 31:18.

[48:2]  ⁸³ tn Heb “A sword will follow after you.” The sword is again figurative of destructive forces, here the army of the Babylonians.

[49:2]  ⁸⁵ tn Heb “oracle of the Lord.”

[49:2]  ⁸⁶ tn Heb “a desolate tel.” For the explanation of what a “tel” is see the study note on 30:18.

[49:2]  ⁸⁷ tn Heb “Its daughters will be burned with fire.” For the use of the word “daughters” to refer to the villages surrounding a larger city see BDB 123 s.v. I בַּת 4 and compare the usage in Judg 1:27.

[49:2]  ⁸⁸ tn Heb “says the Lord.” The first person is used to maintain the first person address throughout.

[52:7]  ⁹¹ sn The king’s garden is mentioned again in Neh 3:15 in conjunction with the pool of Siloam and the stairs that go down from the city of David. This would have been in the southern part of the city near the Tyropean Valley which agrees with the reference to the “two walls” which were probably the walls on the eastern and western hills.

[52:7]  ⁹² sn Heb “toward the Arabah.” The Arabah was the rift valley north and south of the Dead Sea. Here the intention was undoubtedly to escape across the Jordan to Moab or Ammon. It appears from 40:14; 41:15 that the Ammonites were known to harbor fugitives from the Babylonians.