Yeremia 29:11-16

29:11 For I know what I have planned for you,’ says the Lord. ¹  ‘I have plans to prosper you, not to harm you. I have plans to give you ²  a future filled with hope. ³  29:12 When you call out to me and come to me in prayer, ⁴  I will hear your prayers. ⁵  29:13 When you seek me in prayer and worship, you will find me available to you. If you seek me with all your heart and soul, ⁶  29:14 I will make myself available to you,’ ⁷  says the Lord. ⁸  ‘Then I will reverse your plight ⁹  and will regather you from all the nations and all the places where I have exiled you,’ says the Lord. ¹⁰  ‘I will bring you back to the place from which I exiled you.’

29:15 “You say, ‘The Lord has raised up prophets of good news ¹¹  for us here in Babylon.’ 29:16 But just listen to what the Lord has to say about ¹²  the king who occupies David’s throne and all your fellow countrymen who are still living in this city of Jerusalem ¹³  and were not carried off into exile with you.

Yeremia 46:27-28

A Promise of Hope for Israel

46:27 ¹⁴ “You descendants of Jacob, my servants, ¹⁵  do not be afraid;

do not be terrified, people of Israel.

For I will rescue you and your descendants

from the faraway lands where you are captives. ¹⁶ 

The descendants of Jacob will return to their land and enjoy peace.

They will be secure and no one will terrify them.

46:28 I, the Lord, tell ¹⁷  you not to be afraid,

you descendants of Jacob, my servant,

for I am with you.

Though I completely destroy all the nations where I scatter you,

I will not completely destroy you.

I will indeed discipline you but only in due measure.

I will not allow you to go entirely unpunished.” ¹⁸ 

[29:11]  ¹ tn Heb “Oracle of the Lord.”

[29:11]  ² tn Heb “I know the plans that I am planning for you, oracle of the Lord, plans of well-being and not for harm to give to you….”

[29:11]  ³ tn Or “the future you hope for”; Heb “a future and a hope.” This is a good example of hendiadys where two formally coordinated nouns (adjectives, verbs) convey a single idea where one of the terms functions as a qualifier of the other. For this figure see E. W. Bullinger, Figures of Speech, 658-72. This example is discussed on p. 661.

[29:12]  ⁴ tn Heb “come and pray to me.” This is an example of verbal hendiadys where two verb formally joined by “and” convey a main concept with the second verb functioning as an adverbial qualifier.

[29:12]  ⁵ tn Or “You will call out to me and come to me in prayer and I will hear your prayers.” The verbs are vav consecutive perfects and can be taken either as unconditional futures or as contingent futures. See GKC 337 §112.kk and 494 §159.g and compare the usage in Gen 44:22 for the use of the vav consecutive perfects in contingent futures. The conditional clause in the middle of 29:13 and the deuteronomic theology reflected in both Deut 30:1-5 and 1 Kgs 8:46-48 suggest that the verbs are continent futures here. For the same demand for wholehearted seeking in these contexts which presuppose exile see especially Deut 30:2, 1 Kgs 8:48.

[29:13]  ⁶ tn Or “If you wholeheartedly seek me”; Heb “You will seek me and find [me] because you will seek me with all your heart.” The translation attempts to reflect the theological nuances of “seeking” and “finding” and the psychological significance of “heart” which refers more to intellectual and volitional concerns in the OT than to emotional ones.

[29:14]  ⁷ tn Heb “I will let myself be found by you.” For this nuance of the verb see BDB 594 s.v. מָצָא Niph.1.f and compare the usage in Isa 65:1; 2 Chr 15:2. The Greek version already noted that nuance when it translated the phrase “I will manifest myself to you.”

[29:14]  ⁸ tn Heb “Oracle of the Lord.”

[29:14]  ⁹ tn Heb “restore your fortune.” Alternately, “I will bring you back from exile.” This idiom occurs twenty-six times in the OT and in several cases it is clearly not referring to return from exile but restoration of fortunes (e.g., Job 42:10; Hos 6:11–7:1; Jer 33:11). It is often followed as here by “regather” or “bring back” (e.g., Jer 30:3; Ezek 29:14) so it is often misunderstood as “bringing back the exiles.” The versions (LXX, Vulg., Tg., Pesh.) often translate the idiom as “to go away into captivity,” deriving the noun from שְׁבִי (shÿvi, “captivity”). However, the use of this expression in Old Aramaic documents of Sefire parallels the biblical idiom: “the gods restored the fortunes of the house of my father again” (J. A. Fitzmyer, The Aramaic Inscriptions of Sefire [BibOr], 100-101, 119-20). The idiom means “to turn someone's fortune, bring about change” or “to reestablish as it was” (HALOT 1386 s.v. 3.c). In Ezek 16:53 it is paralleled by the expression “to restore the situation which prevailed earlier.” This amounts to restitutio in integrum, which is applicable to the circumstances surrounding the return of the exiles.

[29:14]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “Oracle of the Lord.”

[29:15]  ¹¹ tn The words “of good news” are not in the text but are implicit from the context. They are supplied in the translation for clarity.

[29:16]  ¹² tn Heb “But thus says the Lord about.” The words “just listen to what” are supplied in the translation to help show the connection with the preceding.

[29:16]  sn Jeremiah answers their claims that the Lord has raised up prophets to encourage them that their stay will be short by referring to the Lord’s promise that the Lord’s plans are not for restoration but for further destruction.

[29:16]  ¹³ tn The words “of Jerusalem” are not in the text but are supplied in the translation to identify the referent and avoid the possible confusion that “this city” refers to Babylon.

[46:27]  ¹⁴ sn Jer 46:27-28 are virtually the same as 30:10-11. The verses are more closely related to that context than to this. But the presence of a note of future hope for the Egyptians may have led to a note of encouragement also to the Judeans who were under threat of judgment at the same time (cf. the study notes on 46:2, 13 and 25:1-2 for the possible relative dating of these prophecies).

[46:27]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “And/But you do not be afraid, my servant Jacob.” Here and elsewhere in the verse the terms Jacob and Israel are poetic for the people of Israel descended from the patriarch Jacob. The terms have been supplied throughout with plural referents for greater clarity.

[46:27]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “For I will rescue you from far away, your descendants from the land of their captivity.”

[46:28]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “Oracle of the Lord.” Again the first person is adopted because the Lord is speaking and the indirect quotation is used to avoid an embedded quotation with quotation marks on either side.

[46:28]  ¹⁸ tn The translation “entirely unpunished” is intended to reflect the emphatic construction of the infinitive absolute before the finite verb.