Yeremia 21:7

21:7 Then ¹  I, the Lord, promise that ²  I will hand over King Zedekiah of Judah, his officials, and any of the people who survive the war, starvation, and disease. I will hand them over to King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon and to their enemies who want to kill them. He will slaughter them with the sword. He will not show them any mercy, compassion, or pity.’

Yeremia 24:8-10

24:8 “I, the Lord, also solemnly assert: ‘King Zedekiah of Judah, his officials, and the people who remain in Jerusalem ³  or who have gone to live in Egypt are like those bad figs. I consider them to be just like those bad figs that are so bad they cannot be eaten. ⁴  24:9 I will bring such disaster on them that all the kingdoms of the earth will be horrified. I will make them an object of reproach, a proverbial example of disaster. I will make them an object of ridicule, an example to be used in curses. ⁵  That is how they will be remembered wherever I banish them. ⁶  24:10 I will bring war, starvation, and disease ⁷  on them until they are completely destroyed from the land I gave them and their ancestors.’” ⁸ 

Yeremia 34:19-21

34:19 I will punish the leaders of Judah and Jerusalem, the court officials, ⁹  the priests, and all the other people of the land who passed between the pieces of the calf. ¹⁰  34:20 I will hand them over to their enemies who want to kill them. Their dead bodies will become food for the birds and the wild animals. ¹¹  34:21 I will also hand King Zedekiah of Judah and his officials over to their enemies who want to kill them. I will hand them over to the army of the king of Babylon, even though they have temporarily withdrawn from attacking you. ¹² 

[21:7]  ¹ tn Heb “And afterward.”

[21:7]  ² tn Heb “oracle of the Lord.”

[24:8]  ³ map For location see Map5 B1; Map6 F3; Map7 E2; Map8 F2; Map10 B3; JP1 F4; JP2 F4; JP3 F4; JP4 F4.

[24:8]  ⁴ tn Heb “Like the bad figs which cannot be eaten from badness [= because they are so bad] surely [emphatic כִּי, ki] so I regard Zedekiah, king of Judah, and his officials and the remnant of Jerusalem which remains in this land and those who are living in Egypt.” The sentence has been restructured in the translation to conform more to contemporary English style. For the use of נָתַן (natan) meaning “regard” or “treat like” see BDB 681 s.v. נָתַן 3.c and compare the usage in Ezek 28:6;Gen 42:30.

[24:9]  ⁵ tn Or “an object of reproach in peoples’ proverbs…an object of ridicule in people’s curses.” The alternate translation treats the two pairs which are introduced without vavs (ו) but are joined by vavs as examples of hendiadys. This is very possible here but the chain does not contain this pairing in 25:18; 29:18.

[24:9]  sn For an example of how the “example used in curses” worked, see Jer 29:22. Sodom and Gomorrah evidently function much that same way (see 23:14; 49:18; 50:40; Deut 29:23; Zeph 2:9).

[24:9]  ⁶ tn Heb “I will make them for a terror for disaster to all the kingdoms of the earth, for a reproach and for a proverb, for a taunt and a curse in all the places which I banish them there.” The complex Hebrew sentence has been broken down into equivalent shorter sentences to conform more with contemporary English style.

[24:10]  ⁷ sn See Jer 14:12 and the study note there.

[24:10]  ⁸ tn Heb “fathers.”

[34:19]  ⁹ tn For the rendering of this term see the translator’s note on 29:2.

[34:19]  ¹⁰ tn This verse is not actually a sentence in the Hebrew original but is a prepositioned object to the verb in v. 20, “I will hand them over.” This construction is called casus pendens in the older grammars and is used to call attention to a subject or object (cf. GKC 458 §143.d and compare the usage in 33:24). The same nondescript “I will punish” which was used to resolve the complex sentence in the previous verse has been chosen to introduce the objects here before the more specific “I will hand them over” in the next verse.

[34:20]  ¹¹ sn See this same phrase in Jer 7:33; 16:4; 19:7.

[34:21]  ¹² tn Heb “And Zedekiah king of Judah and his officials I will give into the hand of their enemies and into the hand of those who seek their lives and into the hands of the army of the king of Babylon which has gone up from against them.” The last two “and into the hand” phrases are each giving further explication of “their enemies” (the conjunction is explicative [cf. BDB 252 s.v. וְ 1.b]). The sentence has been broken down into shorter English sentences in conformity with contemporary English style.

[34:21]  sn This refers to the relief offered by the withdrawal of the Babylonian troops to fight against the Egyptians which were coming to Zedekiah’s aid (cf. 37:5, 7, 11).