Yeremia 2:25

2:25 Do not chase after other gods until your shoes wear out

and your throats become dry. ¹ 

But you say, ‘It is useless for you to try and stop me

because I love those foreign gods ²  and want to pursue them!’

Yeremia 14:3

14:3 The leading men of the cities send their servants for water.

They go to the cisterns, ³  but they do not find any water there.

They return with their containers ⁴  empty.

Disappointed and dismayed, they bury their faces in their hands. ⁵ 

Yeremia 31:16

31:16 The Lord says to her, ⁶ 

“Stop crying! Do not shed any more tears! ⁷ 

For your heartfelt repentance ⁸  will be rewarded.

Your children will return from the land of the enemy.

I, the Lord, affirm it! ⁹ 

Yeremia 48:33

48:33 Joy and gladness will disappear

from the fruitful land of Moab. ¹⁰ 

I will stop the flow of wine from the winepresses.

No one will stomp on the grapes there and shout for joy. ¹¹ 

The shouts there will be shouts of soldiers,

not the shouts of those making wine. ¹² 

[2:25]  ¹ tn Heb “Refrain your feet from being bare and your throat from being dry/thirsty.”

[2:25]  ² tn Heb “It is useless! No!” For this idiom, see Jer 18:12; NEB “No; I am desperate.”

[14:3]  ³ tn Though the concept of “cisterns” is probably not familiar to some readers, it would be a mistake to translate this word as “well.” Wells have continual sources of water. Cisterns were pits dug in the ground and lined with plaster to hold rain water. The drought had exhausted all the water in the cisterns.

[14:3]  ⁴ tn The word “containers” is a generic word in Hebrew = “vessels.” It would probably in this case involve water “jars” or “jugs.” But since in contemporary English one would normally associate those terms with smaller vessels, “containers” may be safer.

[14:3]  ⁵ tn Heb “they cover their heads.” Some of the English versions have gone wrong here because of the “normal” use of the words translated here “disappointed” and “dismayed.” They are regularly translated “ashamed” and “disgraced, humiliated, dismayed” elsewhere (see e.g., Jer 22:22); they are somewhat synonymous terms which are often parallel or combined. The key here, however, is the expression “they cover their heads” which is used in 2 Sam 15:30 for the expression of grief. Moreover, the word translated here “disappointed” (בּוֹשׁ, bosh) is used that way several times. See for example Jer 12:13 and consult examples in BDB 101 s.v. בּוֹשׁ Qal.2. A very similar context with the same figure is found in Jer 2:36-37.

[31:16]  ⁶ tn The words “to her” are not in the text but are implicit from the context. They are supplied in the translation for clarity.

[31:16]  ⁷ tn Heb “Refrain your voice from crying and your eyes from tears.”

[31:16]  ⁸ tn Heb “your work.” Contextually her “work” refers to her weeping and refusing to be comforted, that is, signs of genuine repentance (v. 15).

[31:16]  ⁹ tn Heb “Oracle of the Lord.”

[48:33]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “from the garden land, even from the land of Moab.” Comparison with the parallel passage in Isa 16:10 and the translation of the Greek text here (which has only “the land of Moab”) suggest that the second phrase is appositional to the first.

[48:33]  ¹¹ tn Heb “no one will tread [the grapes] with shout of joy.”

[48:33]  ¹² tn Heb “shouts will not be shouts.” The text has been expanded contextually to explain that the shouts of those treading grapes in winepresses will come to an end (v. 33a-d) and be replaced by the shouts of the soldiers who trample down the vineyards (v. 32e-f). Compare 25:30 and 51:41 for the idea.