Yeremia 2:20

The Lord Expresses His Exasperation at Judah’s Persistent Idolatry

2:20 “Indeed, ¹  long ago you threw off my authority

and refused to be subject to me. ² 

You said, ‘I will not serve you.’ ³ 

Instead, you gave yourself to other gods on every high hill

and under every green tree,

like a prostitute sprawls out before her lovers. ⁴ 

Yeremia 3:12

The Lord Calls on Israel and Judah to Repent

3:12 “Go and shout this message to my people in the countries in the north. ⁵  Tell them,

‘Come back to me, wayward Israel,’ says the Lord.

‘I will not continue to look on you with displeasure. ⁶ 

For I am merciful,’ says the Lord.

‘I will not be angry with you forever.

Yeremia 5:15

5:15 The Lord says, ⁷  “Listen, ⁸  nation of Israel! ⁹ 

I am about to bring a nation from far away to attack you.

It will be a nation that was founded long ago

and has lasted for a long time.

It will be a nation whose language you will not know.

Its people will speak words that you will not be able to understand.

Yeremia 5:22

5:22 “You should fear me!” says the Lord.

“You should tremble in awe before me! ¹⁰ 

I made the sand to be a boundary for the sea,

a permanent barrier that it can never cross.

Its waves may roll, but they can never prevail.

They may roar, but they can never cross beyond that boundary.” ¹¹ 

Yeremia 6:16

6:16 The Lord said to his people: ¹² 

“You are standing at the crossroads. So consider your path. ¹³ 

Ask where the old, reliable paths ¹⁴  are.

Ask where the path is that leads to blessing ¹⁵  and follow it.

If you do, you will find rest for your souls.”

But they said, “We will not follow it!”

Yeremia 17:4

17:4 You will lose your hold on the land ¹⁶ 

which I gave to you as a permanent possession.

I will make you serve your enemies in a land that you know nothing about.

For you have made my anger burn like a fire that will never be put out.” ¹⁷ 

Yeremia 17:25

17:25 If you do this, ¹⁸  then the kings and princes who follow in David’s succession ¹⁹  and ride in chariots or on horses will continue to enter through these gates, as well as their officials and the people of Judah and the citizens of Jerusalem. ²⁰  This city will always be filled with people. ²¹ 

Yeremia 20:11

20:11 But the Lord is with me to help me like an awe-inspiring warrior. ²² 

Therefore those who persecute me will fail and will not prevail over me.

They will be thoroughly disgraced because they did not succeed.

Their disgrace will never be forgotten.

Yeremia 25:12

25:12 “‘But when the seventy years are over, I will punish the king of Babylon and his nation ²³  for their sins. I will make the land of Babylon ²⁴  an everlasting ruin. ²⁵  I, the Lord, affirm it! ²⁶ 

Yeremia 31:40

31:40 The whole valley where dead bodies and sacrificial ashes are thrown ²⁷  and all the terraced fields ²⁸  out to the Kidron Valley ²⁹  on the east as far north ³⁰  as the Horse Gate ³¹  will be included within this city that is sacred to the Lord. ³²  The city will never again be torn down or destroyed.”

Yeremia 35:6

35:6 But they answered, “We do not drink wine because our ancestor Jonadab son of Rechab commanded us not to. He told us, ‘You and your children must never drink wine.

Yeremia 51:62

51:62 Then say, ‘O Lord, you have announced that you will destroy this place so that no people or animals live in it any longer. Certainly it will lie desolate forever!’

[2:20]  ¹ tn Or “For.” The Hebrew particle (כִּי, ki) here introduces the evidence that they had no respect for him.

[2:20]  ² tn Heb “you broke your yoke…tore off your yoke ropes.” The metaphor is that of a recalcitrant ox or heifer which has broken free from its master.

[2:20]  ³ tc The MT of this verse has two examples of the old second feminine singular perfect, שָׁבַרְתִּי (shavarti) and נִתַּקְתִּי (nittaqti), which the Masoretes mistook for first singulars leading to the proposal to read אֶעֱבוֹר (’e’evor, “I will not transgress”) for אֶעֱבֹד (’e’evod, “I will not serve”). The latter understanding of the forms is accepted in KJV but rejected by almost all modern English versions as being less appropriate to the context than the reading accepted in the translation given here.

[2:20]  ⁴ tn Heb “you sprawled as a prostitute on….” The translation reflects the meaning of the metaphor.

[3:12]  ⁵ tn Heb “Go and proclaim these words to the north.” The translation assumes that the message is directed toward the exiles of northern Israel who have been scattered in the provinces of Assyria to the north.

[3:12]  ⁶ tn Heb “I will not cause my face to fall on you.”

[5:15]  ⁷ tn Heb “oracle of the Lord.”

[5:15]  ⁸ tn Heb “Behold!”

[5:15]  ⁹ tn Heb “house of Israel.”

[5:22]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “Should you not fear me? Should you not tremble in awe before me?” The rhetorical questions expect the answer explicit in the translation.

[5:22]  ¹¹ tn Heb “it.” The referent is made explicit to avoid any possible confusion.

[6:16]  ¹² tn The words, “to his people” are not in the text but are implicit in the interchange of pronouns in the Hebrew of vv. 16-17. They are supplied in the translation here for clarity.

[6:16]  ¹³ tn Heb “Stand at the crossroads and look.”

[6:16]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “the ancient path,” i.e., the path the Lord set out in ancient times (cf. Deut 32:7).

[6:16]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “the way of/to the good.”

[17:4]  ¹⁶ tc Or “Through your own fault you will lose the land…” As W. McKane (Jeremiah [ICC], 1:386) notes the ancient versions do not appear to be reading וּבְךָ (uvÿkha) as in the MT but possibly לְבַדְּךָ (lÿvaddÿkha; see BHS fn). The translation follows the suggestion in BHS fn that יָדְךָ (yadÿkha, literally “your hand”) be read for MT וּבְךָ. This has the advantage of fitting the idiom of this verb with “hand” in Deut 15:2 (see also v. 3 there). The Hebrew text thus reads “You will release your hand from your heritage.”

[17:4]  ¹⁷ tc A few Hebrew mss and two Greek mss read “a fire is kindled in my anger” (reading קָדְחָה, qodkha) as in 15:14 in place of “you have kindled a fire in my anger” (reading קָדַחְתֶּם, qadakhtem) in the majority of Hebrew mss and versions. The variant may be explained on the basis of harmonization with the parallel passage.

[17:4]  tn Heb “you have started a fire in my anger which will burn forever.”

[17:25]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “If you will carefully obey me by not bringing…and by sanctifying…by not doing…, then kings will….” The structure of prohibitions and commands followed by a brief “if” clause has been used to break up a long condition and consequence relationship which is contrary to contemporary English style.

[17:25]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “who sit [or are to sit] on David’s throne.”

[17:25]  ²⁰ tn Heb “There will come through the gates of this city the kings and princes…riding in chariots and on horses, they and their officials…” The structure of the original text is broken up here because of the long compound subject which would make the English sentence too long. The term “princes” is often omitted as a supposed double writing of the word that follows it and looks somewhat like it (the Hebrew reads here וְשָׂרִים יֹשְׁבִים, vÿsarim yoshÿvim) or the same word which occurs later in the verse and is translated “officials” (the word can refer to either). It is argued that “princes” are never said to sit on the throne of David (translated here “follow in the succession of David”). However, the word is in all texts and versions and the concept of sitting on the throne of someone is descriptive of both past, present, and future and is even used with the participle in a proleptic sense of “the one who is to sit on the throne” (cf. Exod 11:5; 12:29).

[17:25]  ²¹ tn Heb “will be inhabited forever.”

[20:11]  ²² sn This line has some interesting ties with Jer 15:20-21 where Jeremiah is assured by God that he is indeed with him as he promised him when he called him (1:8, 19) and will deliver him from the clutches of wicked and violent people. The word translated here “awe-inspiring” is the same as the word “violent people” there. Jeremiah is confident that his “awe-inspiring” warrior will overcome “violent people.” The statement of confidence here is, by the way, a common element in the psalms of petition in the Psalter. The common elements of that type of psalm are all here: invocation (v. 7), lament (vv. 7-10), confession of trust/confidence in being heard (v. 11), petition (v. 12), thanksgiving or praise (v. 13). For some examples of this type of psalm see Pss 3, 7, 26.

[25:12]  ²³ tn Heb “that nation.”

[25:12]  ²⁴ tn Heb “the land of the Chaldeans.” See the study note on 21:4 for the use of the term “Chaldeans.”

[25:12]  ²⁵ tn Heb “I will visit upon the king of Babylon and upon that nation, oracle of the Lord, their iniquity even upon the land of the Chaldeans and I will make it everlasting ruins.” The sentence has been restructured to avoid ambiguity and to conform the style more to contemporary English.

[25:12]  sn Compare Isa 13:19-22 and Jer 50:39-40.

[25:12]  ²⁶ tn Heb “Oracle of the Lord.”

[31:40]  ²⁷ sn It is generally agreed that this refers to the Hinnom Valley which was on the southwestern and southern side of the city. It was here where the people of Jerusalem had burned their children as sacrifices and where the Lord had said that there would be so many dead bodies when he punished them that they would be unable to bury all of them (cf. Jer 7:31-32). Reference here may be to those dead bodies and to the ashes of the cremated victims. This defiled place would be included within the holy city.

[31:40]  ²⁸ tc The translation here follows the Qere and a number of Hebrew mss in reading שְׁדֵמוֹת (shÿdemot) for the otherwise unknown word שְׁרֵמוֹת (shÿremot) exhibiting the common confusion of ר (resh) and ד (dalet). The fields of Kidron are mentioned also in 2 Kgs 23:4 as the place where Josiah burned the cult objects of Baal.

[31:40]  ²⁹ sn The Kidron Valley is the valley that joins the Hinnom Valley in the southeastern corner of the city and runs northward on the east side of the city.

[31:40]  ³⁰ tn The words “on the east” and “north” are not in the text but are supplied in the translation to give orientation.

[31:40]  ³¹ sn The Horse Gate is mentioned in Neh 3:28 and is generally considered to have been located midway along the eastern wall just south of the temple area.

[31:40]  ³² tn The words “will be included within this city that is” are not in the text. The text merely says that “The whole valley…will be sacred to the Lord.” These words have been supplied in the translation because they are really implicit in the description of the whole area as being included within the new city plan, not just the Hinnom and terraced fields as far as the Kidron Valley.

[31:40]  sn The area that is here delimited is larger than any of the known boundaries of Jerusalem during the OT period. Again, this refers to the increase in population of the restored community (cf. 31:27).