Yeremia 16:8

16:8 “‘Do not go to a house where people are feasting and sit down to eat and drink with them either.

Yeremia 30:13

30:13 There is no one to plead your cause.

There are no remedies for your wounds. ¹ 

There is no healing for you.

Yeremia 33:2

33:2 “I, the Lord, do these things. I, the Lord, form the plan to bring them about. ²  I am known as the Lord. I say to you,

Yeremia 36:15

36:15 They said to him, “Please sit down and read it to us.” So Baruch sat down and read it to them. ³ 

Yeremia 39:7

39:7 Then he had Zedekiah’s eyes put out and had him bound in chains ⁴  to be led off to Babylon.

Yeremia 48:42

48:42 Moab will be destroyed and no longer be a nation, ⁵ 

because she has vaunted herself against the Lord.

Yeremia 52:14

52:14 The whole Babylonian army that came with the captain of the royal guard tore down the walls that surrounded Jerusalem.

[30:13]  ¹ tc The translation of these first two lines follows the redivision of the lines suggested in NIV and NRSV rather than that of the Masoretes who read, “There is no one who pleads your cause with reference to [your] wound.”

[30:13]  sn This verse exhibits a mixed metaphor of an advocate pleading someone’s case (cf., Jer 5:28; 22:18) and of a physician applying medicine to wounds and sores resulting from them (see, e.g., Jer 8:18 for the latter metaphor). Zion’s sins are beyond defense and the wounds inflicted upon her beyond healing. However, God, himself, in his own time will forgive her sins (Jer 31:34; 33:8) and heal her wounds (Jer 30:17).

[33:2]  ² tn Or “I, the Lord, made the earth. I formed it in such a way as to firmly establish it”; Heb “Thus says the Lord who makes/does it, the Lord who forms it to establish it, whose name is the Lord.” It is unclear what the antecedent of “it” is. The Greek version supplies the object “the earth.” However, as D. Barthélemy, ed., Preliminary and Interim Report on the Hebrew Old Testament Text Project, 4:269, notes, this is probably a smoothing of a text which had no object other than the pronoun. No other text or version has an object other than the pronoun. It could be argued that “the earth” is to be understood as the intended referent from other contexts within the book of Jeremiah (Jer 10:12, 16; 51:15) where these verbs refer to the Lord as creator and from the prior context in 32:17 where the Lord’s power as creator is the basis for the assertion that nothing is too hard for him. This is the object that is supplied in a number of modern English versions and commentaries. However, the use of the feminine singular pronoun in other contexts to refer to an indefinite reality which is spelled out in the preceding or following context (cf. 2 Kgs 19:25; Isa 22:11; 37:26; 44:7) lends credence to the suggestion by the committee for The Hebrew Old Testament Project that the pronoun refers to the work or plan of the Lord, a view which is reflected in the NJPS and has been adopted here. For the use of the verb “form” here in the sense of “plan” see BDB 427 s.v. יָצַר 2.b and compare the usage in Isa 22:11; 37:26. The best discussion of options is given in G. L. Keown, P. J. Scalise, T. G. Smothers, Jeremiah 26-52 (WBC), 169-70, who see the pronoun referring ahead to the great and hidden things of v. 3. As in several other cases our translation has opted for a first person introduction rather than the third person of the original because the Lord himself is speaking.

[36:15]  ³ tn Or “‘to us personally’…to them personally”; Heb “‘in our ears’…in their ears.” Elsewhere this has been rendered “in the hearing of” or “where they could hear.” All three of those idioms sound unnatural in this context. The mere personal pronoun seems adequate.

[39:7]  ⁴ tn Heb “fetters of bronze.” The more generic “chains” is used in the translation because “fetters” is a word unfamiliar to most modern readers.

[48:42]  ⁵ tn Heb “Moab will be destroyed from [being] a people.”