Jeremiah 9:5

9:5 One friend deceives another

and no one tells the truth.

These people have trained themselves ¹  to tell lies.

They do wrong and are unable to repent.

Jeremiah 13:19

13:19 The gates of the towns in southern Judah will be shut tight. ² 

No one will be able to go in or out of them. ³ 

All Judah will be carried off into exile.

They will be completely carried off into exile.’” ⁴ 

Jeremiah 36:16

36:16 When they had heard it all, ⁵  they expressed their alarm to one another. ⁶  Then they said to Baruch, “We must certainly give the king a report about everything you have read!” ⁷ 

Jeremiah 51:43

51:43 The towns of Babylonia have become heaps of ruins.

She has become a dry and barren desert.

No one lives in those towns any more.

No one even passes through them. ⁸ 

[9:5]  ¹ tn Heb “their tongues.” However, this is probably not a natural idiom in contemporary English and the tongue may stand as a part for the whole anyway.

[13:19]  ² tn Heb “The towns of the Negev will be shut.”

[13:19]  ³ tn Heb “There is no one to open them.” The translation is based on the parallel in Josh 6:1 where the very expression in the translation is used. Opening the city would have permitted entrance (of relief forces) as well as exit (of fugitives).

[13:19]  ⁴ sn The statements are poetic exaggerations (hyperbole), as most commentaries note. Even in the exile of 587 b.c. not “all” of the people of Jerusalem or of Judah were exiled. Cf. the context of 2 Kgs 24:14-16 again.

[36:16]  ³ tn Heb “all the words.”

[36:16]  ⁴ tn According to BDB 808 s.v. פָּחַד Qal.1 and 40 s.v. אֶל 3.a, this is an example of the “pregnant” use of a preposition where an implied verb has to be supplied in the translation to conform the normal range of the preposition with the verb that is governing it. The Hebrew text reads: “they feared unto one another.” BDB translates “they turned in dread to each other.” The translation adopted seems more appropriate in this context.

[36:16]  ⁵ tn Heb “We must certainly report to the king all these things.” Here the word דְּבָרִים (dÿvarim) must mean “things” (cf. BDB 183 s.v. דָּבָר IV.3) rather than “words” because a verbatim report of all the words in the scroll is scarcely meant. The present translation has chosen to use a form that suggests a summary report of all the matters spoken about in the scroll rather than the indefinite “things.”

[51:43]  ⁴ tn Heb “Its towns have become a desolation, [it has become] a dry land and a desert, a land which no man passes through them [referring to “her towns”] and no son of man [= human being] passes through them.” Here the present translation has followed the suggestion of BHS and a number of the modern commentaries in deleting the second occurrence of the word “land,” in which case the words that follow are not a relative clause but independent statements. A number of modern English versions appear to ignore the third feminine plural suffixes which refer back to the cities and refer the statements that follow to the land.