Jeremiah 9:8

9:8 Their tongues are like deadly arrows. ¹ 

They are always telling lies. ² 

Friendly words for their neighbors come from their mouths.

But their minds are thinking up ways to trap them. ³ 

Jeremiah 17:10

17:10 I, the Lord, probe into people’s minds.

I examine people’s hearts. ⁴ 

I deal with each person according to how he has behaved.

I give them what they deserve based on what they have done.

Jeremiah 34:9

34:9 Everyone was supposed to free their male and female Hebrew slaves. No one was supposed to keep a fellow Judean enslaved. ⁵ 

[9:8]  ¹ tc This reading follows the Masoretic consonants (the Kethib, a Qal active participle from שָׁחַט, shakhat). The Masoretes preferred to read “a sharpened arrow” (the Qere, a Qal passive participle from the same root or a homonym, meaning “hammered, beaten”). See HALOT 1354 s.v. II שָׁחַט for discussion. The exact meaning of the word makes little difference to the meaning of the metaphor itself.

[9:8]  ² tn Heb “They speak deceit.”

[9:8]  ³ tn Heb “With his mouth a person speaks peace to his neighbor, but in his heart he sets an ambush for him.”

[17:10]  ⁴ tn The term rendered “mind” here and in the previous verse is actually the Hebrew word for “heart.” However, in combination with the word rendered “heart” in the next line, which is the Hebrew for “kidneys,” it is best rendered “mind” because the “heart” was considered the center of intellect, conscience, and will and the “kidneys” the center of emotions.

[34:9]  ⁷ tn Heb “after King Zedekiah made a covenant…to proclaim liberty to them [the slaves mentioned in the next verse] so that each would send away free his male slave and his female slave, the Hebrew man and the Hebrew woman, so that a man would not hold them in bondage, namely a Judean, his brother [this latter phrase is explicative of “them” because it repeats the preposition in front of “them”].” The complex Hebrew syntax has been broken down into shorter English sentences but an attempt has been made to retain the proper subordinations.