Jeremiah 8:9

8:9 Your wise men will be put to shame.

They will be dumbfounded and be brought to judgment. ¹ 

Since they have rejected the word of the Lord,

what wisdom do they really have?

Jeremiah 9:15

9:15 So then, listen to what I, the Lord God of Israel who rules over all, ²  say. ³  ‘I will make these people eat the bitter food of suffering and drink the poison water of judgment. ⁴ 

Jeremiah 10:21

10:21 For our leaders ⁵  are stupid.

They have not sought the Lord’s advice. ⁶ 

So they do not act wisely,

and the people they are responsible for ⁷  have all been scattered.

Jeremiah 11:22

11:22 So the Lord who rules over all ⁸  said, “I will surely ⁹  punish them! Their young men will be killed in battle. ¹⁰  Their sons and daughters will die of starvation.

Jeremiah 12:8

12:8 The people I call my own ¹¹  have turned on me

like a lion ¹²  in the forest.

They have roared defiantly ¹³  at me.

So I will treat them as though I hate them. ¹⁴ 

Jeremiah 16:12

16:12 And you have acted even more wickedly than your ancestors! Each one of you has followed the stubborn inclinations of your own wicked heart and not obeyed me. ¹⁵ 

Jeremiah 19:6

19:6 So I, the Lord, say: ¹⁶  “The time will soon come that people will no longer call this place Topheth or the Hinnom Valley. But they will call this valley ¹⁷  the Valley of Slaughter!

Jeremiah 23:18

23:18 Yet which of them has ever stood in the Lord’s inner circle ¹⁸ 

so they ¹⁹  could see and hear what he has to say? ²⁰ 

Which of them have ever paid attention or listened to what he has said?

Jeremiah 25:7

25:7 So, now the Lord says, ²¹  ‘You have not listened to me. But ²²  you have made me angry by the things that you have done. ²³  Thus you have brought harm on yourselves.’

Jeremiah 36:4

36:4 So Jeremiah summoned Baruch son of Neriah. Then Jeremiah dictated to Baruch everything the Lord had told him to say and Baruch wrote it all down in a scroll. ²⁴ 

Jeremiah 42:8

42:8 So Jeremiah summoned Johanan son of Kareah and all the army officers who were with him and all the people of every class. ²⁵ 

Jeremiah 42:22

42:22 So now be very sure of this: You will die from war, starvation, or disease in the place where you want to go and live.”

Jeremiah 48:26

48:26 “Moab has vaunted itself against me.

So make him drunk with the wine of my wrath ²⁶ 

until he splashes ²⁷  around in his own vomit,

until others treat him as a laughingstock.

Jeremiah 48:36

48:36 So my heart moans for Moab

like a flute playing a funeral song.

Yes, like a flute playing a funeral song,

my heart moans for the people of Kir Heres.

For the wealth they have gained will perish.

[8:9]  ¹ tn Heb “be trapped.” However, the word “trapped” generally carries with it the connotation of divine judgment. See BDB 540 s.v. לָכַד Niph.2, and compare usage in Jer 6:11 for support. The verbs in the first two lines are again the form of the Hebrew verb that emphasizes that the action is as good as done (Hebrew prophetic perfects).

[9:15]  ² tn Heb “Yahweh of armies, the God of Israel.”

[9:15]  ³ tn Heb “Therefore, thus says the Lord…” The person is shifted from third to first to better conform with English style.

[9:15]  ⁴ tn Heb “I will feed this people wormwood and make them drink poison water.” “Wormwood” and “poison water” are not to be understood literally here but are symbolic of judgment and suffering. See, e.g., BDB 542 s.v. לַעֲנָה.

[10:21]  ³ tn Heb “the shepherds.”

[10:21]  ⁴ tn Heb “They have not sought the Lord.”

[10:21]  ⁵ tn Heb “all their flock (or “pasturage”).”

[11:22]  ⁴ tn Heb “Yahweh of armies.”

[11:22]  ⁵ tn Heb “Behold I will.” For the function of this particle see the translator’s note on 1:6.

[11:22]  ⁶ tn Heb “will die by the sword.” Here “sword” stands contextually for “battle” while “starvation” stands for death by starvation during siege.

[12:8]  ⁵ tn See the note on the previous verse.

[12:8]  ⁶ tn Heb “have become to me like a lion.”

[12:8]  ⁷ tn Heb “have given against me with her voice.”

[12:8]  ⁸ tn Or “so I will reject her.” The word “hate” is sometimes used in a figurative way to refer to being neglected, i.e., treated as though unloved. In these contexts it does not have the same emotive connotations that a typical modern reader would associate with hate. See Gen 29:31, 33 and E. W. Bullinger, Figures of Speech, 556.

[16:12]  ⁶ sn For the argumentation here compare Jer 7:23-26.

[19:6]  ⁷ tn This phrase (Heb “Oracle of the Lord”) has been handled this way on several occasions when it occurs within first person addresses where the Lord is the speaker. See, e.g., 16:16; 17:24; 18:6.

[19:6]  ⁸ tn Heb “it will no longer be called to this place Topheth or the Valley of Ben Hinnom but the Valley of Slaughter.”

[23:18]  ⁸ tn Or “has been the Lord’s confidant.”

[23:18]  ⁹ tn The form here is a jussive with a vav of subordination introducing a purpose after a question (cf. GKC 322 §109.f).

[23:18]  ¹⁰ tc Heb “his word.” In the second instance (“what he has said” at the end of the verse) the translation follows the suggestion of the Masoretes (Qere) and many Hebrew mss rather than the consonantal text (Kethib) of the Leningrad Codex.

[25:7]  ⁹ tn Heb “Oracle of the Lord.”

[25:7]  ¹⁰ tn This is a rather clear case where the Hebrew particle לְמַעַן (lÿma’an) introduces a consequence and not a purpose, contrary to the dictum of BDB 775 s.v. מַעַן note 1. They have not listened to him in order to make him angry but with the result that they have made him angry by going their own way. Jeremiah appears to use this particle for result rather than purpose on several other occasions (see, e.g., 7:18, 19; 27:10, 15; 32:29).

[25:7]  ¹¹ tn Heb “make me angry with the work of your hands.” The term “work of your own hands” is often interpreted as a reference to idolatry as is clearly the case in Isa 2:8; 37:19. However, the parallelism in 25:14 and the context in 32:30 show that it is more general and refers to what they have done. That is likely the meaning here as well.

[36:4]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “Then Baruch wrote down on a scroll from the mouth of Jeremiah all the words of the Lord which he [the Lord] had spoken to him [Jeremiah].” The syntax of the Hebrew sentence is awkward and hard to reproduce “literally” in any meaningful way. The English sentence has been restructured to reproduce all the pertinent facts in more simplified language.

[42:8]  ¹¹ tn Or “without distinction,” or “All the people from the least important to the most important”; Heb “from the least to the greatest.” This is a figure of speech that uses polar opposites as an all-inclusive designation of everyone without exception (i.e., it included all the people from the least important or poorest to the most important or richest.)

[48:26]  ¹² tn Heb “Make him drunk because he has magnified himself against the Lord.” The first person has again been adopted for consistency within a speech of the Lord. Almost all of the commentaries relate the figure of drunkenness to the figure of drinking the cup of God’s wrath spelled out in Jer 25 where reference is made at one point to the nations drinking, staggering, vomiting, and falling (25:27 and see G. L. Keown, P. J. Scalise, T. G. Smothers, Jeremiah 26-52 [WBC], 316, for a full list of references to this figure including this passage and 49:12-13; 51:6-10, 39, 57).

[48:26]  ¹³ tn The meaning of this word is uncertain. It is usually used of clapping the hands or the thigh in helpless anger or disgust. Hence J. Bright (Jeremiah [AB], 321) paraphrases “shall vomit helplessly.” HALOT 722 s.v. II סָפַק relates this to an Aramaic word and see a homonym meaning “vomit” or “spew out.” The translation is that of BDB 706 s.v. סָפַק Qal.3, “splash (fall with a splash),” from the same root that refers to slapping or clapping the thigh.