Yeremia 1:14

1:14 Then the Lord said, “This means ¹  destruction will break out from the north on all who live in the land.

Yeremia 3:9

3:9 Because she took her prostitution so lightly, she defiled the land ²  through her adulterous worship of gods made of wood and stone. ³ 

Yeremia 4:23

4:23 “I looked at the land and saw ⁴  that it was an empty wasteland. ⁵ 

I looked up at the sky, and its light had vanished.

Yeremia 4:27

4:27 All this will happen because the Lord said, ⁶ 

“The whole land will be desolate;

however, I will not completely destroy it.

Yeremia 7:33

7:33 Then the dead bodies of these people will be left on the ground for the birds and wild animals to eat. ⁷  There will not be any survivors to scare them away.

Yeremia 15:7

15:7 The Lord continued, ⁸ 

“In every town in the land I will purge them

like straw blown away by the wind. ⁹ 

I will destroy my people.

I will kill off their children.

I will do so because they did not change their behavior. ¹⁰ 

Yeremia 22:27

22:27 You will never come back to this land to which you will long to return!” ¹¹ 

Yeremia 26:17

26:17 Then some of the elders of Judah ¹²  stepped forward and spoke to all the people gathered there. They said,

Yeremia 49:21

49:21 The people of the earth will quake when they hear of their downfall. ¹³ 

Their cries of anguish will be heard all the way to the Gulf of Aqaba. ¹⁴ 

Yeremia 50:23

50:23 Babylon hammered the whole world to pieces.

But see how that ‘hammer’ has been broken and shattered! ¹⁵ 

See what an object of horror

Babylon has become among the nations!

Yeremia 51:41

51:41 “See how Babylon ¹⁶  has been captured!

See how the pride of the whole earth has been taken!

See what an object of horror

Babylon has become among the nations! ¹⁷ 

Yeremia 51:49

51:49 “Babylon must fall ¹⁸ 

because of the Israelites she has killed, ¹⁹ 

just as the earth’s mortally wounded fell

because of Babylon. ²⁰ 

Yeremia 52:6

52:6 By the ninth day of the fourth month ²¹  the famine in the city was so severe the residents ²²  had no food.

[1:14]  ¹ tn There is nothing in the Hebrew text for these words but it is implicit in the connection. Once again the significance of the vision is spelled out. Compare the translator’s note on v. 12.

[3:9]  ² tc The translation reads the form as a causative (Hiphil, תַּהֲנֵף, tahanef) with some of the versions in place of the simple stative (Qal, תֶּחֱנַף, tekhenaf) in the MT.

[3:9]  ³ tn Heb “because of the lightness of her prostitution, she defiled the land and committed adultery with stone and wood.”

[4:23]  ⁴ tn Heb “I looked at the land and behold...” This indicates the visionary character of Jeremiah’s description of the future condition of the land of Israel.

[4:23]  ⁵ tn Heb “formless and empty.” This is a case of hendiadys (two nouns joined by “and” both describe the same thing): one noun retains its full nominal force, the other functions as an adjective. The words תֹהוּ וָבֹהוּ (tohu vavohu) allude to Gen 1:2, hyperbolically picturing a reversal of creation and return to the original precreation chaos.

[4:27]  ⁶ tn Heb “For this is what the Lord said,”

[7:33]  ⁷ tn Heb “Their dead bodies will be food for the birds of the air and the beasts of the earth.”

[15:7]  ⁸ tn The words “The Lord continued” are not in the text. They have been supplied in the translation to show the shift back to talking about the people instead of addressing them. The obvious speaker is the Lord; the likely listener is Jeremiah as in vv. 1-4.

[15:7]  ⁹ tn Heb “I have winnowed them with a winnowing fork in the gates of the land.” The word “gates” is here being used figuratively for the cities, the part for the whole. See 14:2 and the notes there.

[15:7]  sn Like straw blown away by the wind. A figurative use of the process of winnowing is referred to here. Winnowing was the process whereby a mixture of grain and straw was thrown up into the wind to separate the grain from the straw and the husks. The best description of the major steps in threshing and winnowing grain in the Bible is seen in another figurative passage in Isa 41:15-16.

[15:7]  ¹⁰ tn Or “did not repent of their wicked ways”; Heb “They did not turn back from their ways.” There is no casual particle here (either כִּי [ki], which is more formally casual, or וְ [vÿ], which sometimes introduces casual circumstantial clauses). The causal idea is furnished by the connection of ideas. If the verbs throughout this section are treated as pasts and this section seen as a lament, then the clause could be sequential: “but they still did not turn…”

[22:27]  ¹¹ tn Heb “And unto the land to which they lift up their souls to return there, there they will not return.” Once again there is a sudden shift in person from the second plural to the third plural. As before the translation levels the pronouns to avoid confusion. For the idiom “to lift up the soul to” = “to long/yearn to/for” see BDB 670 s.v. נָשָׂא 1.b(9).

[26:17]  ¹² tn Heb “elders of the land.”

[26:17]  sn The elders were important land-owning citizens, separate from the “heads” or leaders of the tribes, the officers and the judges. They were very influential in both the judicial, political, and religious proceedings of the cities and the state. (See, e.g., Josh 24:1; 2 Sam 19:11; 2 Kgs 23:1 for elders of Israel/Judah, and Deut 21:1-9; Ruth 4:1-2 for elders of the cities.)

[49:21]  ¹³ tn Heb “The earth will quake when at the sound of their downfall.” However, as in many other places “earth” stands here metonymically for the inhabitants or people of the earth (see E. W. Bullinger, Figures of Speech, 578-79, and compare usage in 2 Sam 15:23; Ps 66:4).

[49:21]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “the Red Sea,” of which the Gulf of Aqaba formed the northeastern arm. The land of Edom once reached this far according to 1 Kgs 9:26.

[50:23]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “How broken and shattered is the hammer of all the earth!” The “hammer” is a metaphor for Babylon who was God’s war club to shatter the nations and destroy kingdoms just like Assyria is represented in Isa 10:5 as a rod and a war club. Some readers, however, might not pick up on the metaphor or identify the referent, so the translation has incorporated an identification of the metaphor and the referent within it. “See how” and “See what” are an attempt to capture the nuance of the Hebrew particle אֵיךְ (’ekh) which here expresses an exclamation of satisfaction in a taunt song (cf. BDB 32 s.v. אֵיךְ 2 and compare usage in Isa 14:4, 12; Jer 50:23).

[51:41]  ¹⁶ sn Heb “Sheshach.” For an explanation of the usage of this name for Babylon see the study note on Jer 25:26 and that on 51:1 for a similar phenomenon. Babylon is here called “the pride of the whole earth” because it was renowned for its size, its fortifications, and its beautiful buildings.

[51:41]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “How Sheshach has been captured, the pride of the whole earth has been seized! How Babylon has become an object of horror among the nations!” For the usage of “How” here see the translator’s note on 50:23.

[51:41]  sn This is part of a taunt song (see Isa 14:4) and assumes prophetically that the city has already been captured. The verbs in vv. 41-43a are all in the Hebrew tense that the prophets often use to look at the future as “a done deal” (the so-called prophetic perfect). In v. 44 which is still a part of this picture the verbs are in the future. The Hebrew tense has been retained here and in vv. 42-43 but it should be remembered that the standpoint is prophetic and future.

[51:49]  ¹⁸ tn The infinitive construct is used here to indicate what is about to take place. See IBHS 610 §36.2.3g.

[51:49]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “the slain of Israel.” The words “because of” are supplied in the translation for clarification. The preceding context makes it clear that Babylon would be judged for its atrocities against Israel (see especially 50:33-34; 51:10, 24, 35).

[51:49]  ²⁰ tn The juxtaposition of גַם…גַם (gam...gam), often “both…and,” here indicates correspondence. See BDB 169 s.v. גַּם 4. Appropriately Babylon will fall slain just as her victims, including God’s covenant people, did.

[52:6]  ²¹ sn According to modern reckoning that would have been July 18, 586 b.c. The siege thus lasted almost a full eighteen months.

[52:6]  ²² tn Heb “the people of the land.”