Jeremiah 8:2

8:2 They will be spread out and exposed to the sun, the moon and the stars. ¹  These are things they ²  adored and served, things to which they paid allegiance, ³  from which they sought guidance, and worshiped. The bones of these people ⁴  will never be regathered and reburied. They will be like manure used to fertilize the ground. ⁵ 

Jeremiah 12:14

12:14 “I, the Lord, also have something to say concerning ⁶  the wicked nations who surround my land ⁷  and have attacked and plundered ⁸  the land that I gave to my people as a permanent possession. ⁹  I say: ‘I will uproot the people of those nations from their lands and I will free the people of Judah who have been taken there. ¹⁰ 

Jeremiah 18:21

18:21 So let their children die of starvation.

Let them be cut down by the sword. ¹¹ 

Let their wives lose their husbands and children.

Let the older men die of disease ¹² 

and the younger men die by the sword in battle.

Jeremiah 36:6

36:6 So you go there the next time all the people of Judah come in from their towns to fast ¹³  in the Lord’s temple. Read out loud where all of them can hear you what I told you the Lord said, which you wrote in the scroll. ¹⁴ 

Jeremiah 37:17

37:17 Then King Zedekiah had him brought to the palace. There he questioned him privately and asked him, ¹⁵  “Is there any message from the Lord?” Jeremiah answered, “Yes, there is.” Then he announced, ¹⁶  “You will be handed over to the king of Babylon.” ¹⁷ 

Jeremiah 44:7

44:7 “So now the Lord, the God who rules over all, the God of Israel, ¹⁸  asks, ‘Why will you do such great harm to yourselves? Why should every man, woman, child, and baby of yours be destroyed from the midst of Judah? Why should you leave yourselves without a remnant?

[8:2]  ¹ tc MT, 4QJer^a and LXX read “the sun and the moon and all the host of heaven,” but 4QJer^c reads “the sun and all the stars.”

[8:2]  ² tn Heb “the sun, moon, and host of heaven which they…”

[8:2]  ³ tn Heb “followed after.” See the translator’s note at 2:5 for the idiom.

[8:2]  ⁴ tn Heb “they will not” but the referent is far enough removed that it might be ambiguous.

[8:2]  ⁵ tn Heb “like dung/manure on the surface of the ground.”

[12:14]  ⁶ tn Heb “Thus says the Lord concerning….” This structure has been adopted to prevent a long dangling introduction to what the Lord has to say that does not begin until the middle of the verse in Hebrew. The first person address was adopted because the speaker is still the Lord as in vv. 7-13.

[12:14]  ⁷ tn Heb “my wicked neighbors.”

[12:14]  ⁸ tn Heb “touched.” For the nuance of this verb here see BDB 619 s.v. נָגַע Qal.3 and compare the usage in 1 Chr 16:22 where it is parallel to “do harm to” and Zech 2:8 where it is parallel to “plundered.”

[12:14]  ⁹ tn Heb “the inheritance which I caused my people Israel to inherit.” Compare 3:18.

[12:14]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “I will uproot the house of Judah from their midst.”

[18:21]  ¹¹ tn Heb “be poured out to the hand [= power] of the sword.” For this same expression see Ezek 35:5; Ps 63:10 (63:11 HT). Comparison with those two passages show that it involved death by violent means, perhaps death in battle.

[18:21]  ¹² tn Heb “be slain by death.” The commentaries are generally agreed that this refers to death by disease or plague as in 15:2. Hence, the reference is to the deadly trio of sword, starvation, and disease which were often connected with war. See the notes on 15:2.

[36:6]  ¹⁶ sn Regular fast days were not a part of Israel’s religious calendar. Rather fast days were called on special occasions, i.e., in times of drought or a locust plague (Joel 1:14; 2:15), or during a military crisis (2 Chr 20:3), or after defeat in battle (1 Sam 31:13; 2 Sam 1:12). A fast day was likely chosen for the reading of the scroll because the people would be more mindful of the crisis they were in and be in more of a repentant mood. The events referred to in the study note on v. 1 would have provided the basis for Jeremiah’s anticipation of a fast day when the scroll could be read.

[36:6]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “So you go and read from the scroll which you have written from my mouth the words of the Lord in the ears of the people in the house of the Lord on a fast day, and in that way [for the explanation of this rendering see below] you will be reading them in the ears of all Judah [= the people of Judah] who come from their towns [i.e., to the temple to fast].” Again the syntax of the original is awkward, separating several of the qualifying phrases from the word or phrase they are intended to modify. In most of the “literal” English versions the emphasis on “what the Lord said” tends to get lost and it looks like two separate groups are to be addressed rather than one. The intent of the phrase is to define who the people are who will hear; the וַ that introduces the clause is explicative (BDB 252 s.v. וַ 1.b) and the גַּם (gam) is used to emphasize the explicative “all Judah who come in from their towns” (cf. BDB 169 s.v. גַּם 2). If some force were to be given to the “literal” rendering of that particle here it would be “actually.” This is the group that is to be addressed according to v. 3. The complex Hebrew sentence has been restructured to include all the relevant information in more comprehensible and shorter English sentences.

[37:17]  ²¹ tn Heb “Then King Zedekiah sent and brought him and the king asked him privately [or more literally, in secret] and said.”

[37:17]  ²² tn Heb “Then he said.”

[37:17]  ²³ sn Jeremiah’s answer even under duress was the same that he had given Zedekiah earlier. (See Jer 34:3 and see the study note on 34:1 for the relative timing of these two incidents.)

[44:7]  ²⁶ tn Heb “Yahweh, the God of armies, the God of Israel.” Compare 35:17; 38:17 and for the title “God of armies” see the study note on 2:19.