Ulangan 28:63

28:63 This is what will happen: Just as the Lord delighted to do good for you and make you numerous, he ¹  will take delight in destroying and decimating you. You will be uprooted from the land you are about to possess.

Ulangan 30:9

30:9 The Lord your God will make the labor of your hands ²  abundantly successful and multiply your children, ³  the offspring of your cattle, and the produce of your soil. For the Lord your God will once more ⁴  rejoice over you to make you prosperous ⁵  just as he rejoiced over your ancestors,

Yesaya 5:5-7

5:5 Now I will inform you

what I am about to do to my vineyard:

I will remove its hedge and turn it into pasture, ⁶ 

I will break its wall and allow animals to graze there. ⁷ 

5:6 I will make it a wasteland;

no one will prune its vines or hoe its ground, ⁸ 

and thorns and briers will grow there.

I will order the clouds

not to drop any rain on it.

5:7 Indeed ⁹  Israel ¹⁰  is the vineyard of the Lord who commands armies,

the people ¹¹  of Judah are the cultivated place in which he took delight.

He waited for justice, but look what he got – disobedience! ¹² 

He waited for fairness, but look what he got – cries for help! ¹³ 

Yeremia 18:7-10

18:7 There are times, Jeremiah, ¹⁴  when I threaten to uproot, tear down, and destroy a nation or kingdom. ¹⁵  18:8 But if that nation I threatened stops doing wrong, ¹⁶  I will cancel the destruction ¹⁷  I intended to do to it. 18:9 And there are times when I promise to build up and establish ¹⁸  a nation or kingdom. 18:10 But if that nation does what displeases me and does not obey me, then I will cancel the good I promised to do to it.

[28:63]  ¹ tn Heb “the Lord.” See note on “he” in 28:8.

[30:9]  ² tc The MT reads “hand” (singular). Most versions read the plural.

[30:9]  ³ tn Heb “the fruit of your womb” (so NAB, NIV); NRSV “of your body.”

[30:9]  ⁴ tn Heb “return and.” The Hebrew verb is used idiomatically here to indicate the repetition of the following action.

[30:9]  ⁵ tn The Hebrew text includes “for good.”

[5:5]  ⁶ tn Heb “and it will become [a place for] grazing.” בָּעַר (ba’ar, “grazing”) is a homonym of the more often used verb “to burn.”

[5:5]  ⁷ tn Heb “and it will become a trampled place” (NASB “trampled ground”).

[5:6]  ⁸ tn Heb “it will not be pruned or hoed” (so NASB); ASV and NRSV both similar.

[5:7]  ⁹ tn Or “For” (KJV, ASV, NASB, NRSV).

[5:7]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “the house of Israel” (so NASB, NIV, NRSV).

[5:7]  ¹¹ tn Heb “men,” but in a generic sense.

[5:7]  ¹² tn Heb “but, look, disobedience.” The precise meaning of מִשְׂפָּח (mishpakh), which occurs only here in the OT, is uncertain. Some have suggested a meaning “bloodshed.” The term is obviously chosen for its wordplay value; it sounds very much like מִשְׁפָּט (mishpat, “justice”). The sound play draws attention to the point being made; the people have not met the Lord’s expectations.

[5:7]  ¹³ tn Heb “but, look, a cry for help.” The verb (“he waited”) does double duty in the parallelism. צְעָקָה (tsa’qah) refers to the cries for help made by the oppressed. It sounds very much like צְדָקָה (tsÿdaqah, “fairness”). The sound play draws attention to the point being made; the people have not met the Lord’s expectations.

[18:7]  ¹⁴ tn The word “Jeremiah” is not in the text but it is implicit from the introduction in v. 5 that he is being addressed. It is important to see how the rhetoric of this passage is structured. The words of vv. 7-10 lead up to the conclusion “So now” in v. 11 which in turns leads to the conclusion “Therefore” in v. 13. The tense of the verb in v. 12 is very important. It is a vav consecutive perfect indicating the future (cf. GKC 333 §112.p, r); their response is predictable. The words of vv. 7-10 are addressed to Jeremiah (v. 5) in fulfillment of the Lord’s promise to speak to him (v. 2) and furnish the basis for the Lord’s words of conditional threat to a people who show no promise of responding positively (vv. 11-12). Verse six then must be seen as another example of the figure of apostrophe (the turning aside from description about someone to addressing them directly; cf., e.g., Ps 6:8-9 (6:9-10 HT). Earlier examples of this figure have been seen in 6:20; 9:4; 11:13; 12:13; 15:6.

[18:7]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “One moment I may speak about a nation or kingdom to…” So also in v. 9. The translation is structured this way to avoid an awkward English construction and to reflect the difference in disposition. The constructions are, however, the same.

[18:8]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “turns from its wickedness.”

[18:8]  ¹⁷ tn There is a good deal of debate about how the word translated here “revoke” should be translated. There is a good deal of reluctance to translate it “change my mind” because some see that as contradicting Num 23:19 and thus prefer “relent.” However, the English word “relent” suggests the softening of an attitude but not necessarily the change of course. It is clear that in many cases (including here) an actual change of course is in view (see, e.g., Amos 7:3, 6; Jonah 3:9; Jer 26:19; Exod 13:17; 32:14). Several of these passages deal with “conditional” prophecies where a change in behavior of the people or the mediation of a prophet involves the change in course of the threatened punishment (or the promised benefit). “Revoke” or “forgo” may be the best way to render this in contemporary English idiom.

[18:8]  sn There is a wordplay here involving the word “evil” (רָעָה, ra’ah) which refers to both the crime and the punishment. This same play is carried further in Jonah 3:10-4:1 where Jonah becomes very displeased (Heb “it was very evil to Jonah with great evil”) when God forgoes bringing disaster (evil) on Nineveh because they have repented of their wickedness (evil).

[18:9]  ¹⁸ sn Heb “plant.” The terms “uproot,” “tear down,” “destroy,” “build,” and “plant” are the two sides of the ministry Jeremiah was called to (cf. Jer 1:10).