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 7:10

7:10 Then you come and stand in my presence in this temple I have claimed as my own ³  and say, “We are safe!” You think you are so safe that you go on doing all those hateful sins! ⁴ 

Yeremia 16:7

16:7 No one will take any food to those who mourn for the dead to comfort them. No one will give them any wine to drink to console them for the loss of their father or mother.

Yeremia 24:9

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 

Yeremia 27:6

27:6 I have at this time placed all these nations of yours under the power ⁷  of my servant, ⁸  King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon. I have even made all the wild animals subject to him. ⁹ 

Yeremia 27:10

27:10 Do not listen to them, ¹⁰  because their prophecies are lies. ¹¹  Listening to them will only cause you ¹²  to be taken far away from your native land. I will drive you out of your country and you will die in exile. ¹³ 

Yeremia 27:12

27:12 I told King Zedekiah of Judah the same thing. I said, ¹⁴  “Submit ¹⁵  to the yoke of servitude to ¹⁶  the king of Babylon. Be subject to him and his people. Then you will continue to live.

Yeremia 29:11

29:11 For I know what I have planned for you,’ says the Lord. ¹⁷  ‘I have plans to prosper you, not to harm you. I have plans to give you ¹⁸  a future filled with hope. ¹⁹ 

Yeremia 31:28

31:28 In the past I saw to it that they were uprooted and torn down, that they were destroyed and demolished. But now I will see to it that they are built up and firmly planted. ²⁰  I, the Lord, affirm it!” ²¹ 

Yeremia 32:33

32:33 They have turned away from me instead of turning to me. ²²  I tried over and over again ²³  to instruct them, but they did not listen and respond to correction. ²⁴ 

Yeremia 35:13

35:13 The Lord God of Israel who rules over all ²⁵  told him, “Go and speak to the people of Judah and the citizens of Jerusalem. Tell them, ²⁶  ‘I, the Lord, say: ²⁷  “You must learn a lesson from this ²⁸  about obeying what I say! ²⁹ 

Yeremia 37:3

The Lord Responds to Zedekiah’s Hope for Help

37:3 King Zedekiah sent ³⁰  Jehucal ³¹  son of Shelemiah and the priest Zephaniah ³²  son of Maaseiah to the prophet Jeremiah. He told them to say, “Please pray to the Lord our God on our behalf.”

Yeremia 38:12

38:12 Ebed Melech ³³  called down to Jeremiah, “Put these rags and worn-out clothes under your armpits to pad the ropes. ³⁴  Jeremiah did as Ebed Melech instructed. ³⁵ 

Yeremia 39:18

39:18 I will certainly save you. You will not fall victim to violence. ³⁶  You will escape with your life ³⁷  because you trust in me. I, the Lord, affirm it!”’” ³⁸ 

Yeremia 51:6

51:6 Get out of Babylonia quickly, you foreign people. ³⁹ 

Flee to save your lives.

Do not let yourselves be killed because of her sins.

For it is time for the Lord to wreak his revenge.

He will pay Babylonia ⁴⁰  back for what she has done. ⁴¹ 

Yeremia 51:39

51:39 When their appetites are all stirred up, ⁴² 

I will set out a banquet for them.

I will make them drunk

so that they will pass out, ⁴³ 

they will fall asleep forever,

they will never wake up,” ⁴⁴ 

says the Lord. ⁴⁵ 

[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.”

[7:10]  ³ tn Heb “over which my name is called.” For this nuance of this idiom cf. BDB 896 s.v. קָרָא Niph.2.d(4) and see the usage in 2 Sam 12:28.

[7:10]  ⁴ tn Or “‘We are safe!’ – safe, you think, to go on doing all those hateful things.” Verses 9-10 are all one long sentence in the Hebrew text. It has been broken up for English stylistic reasons. Somewhat literally it reads “Will you steal…then come and stand…and say, ‘We are safe’ so as to/in order to do…” The Hebrew of v. 9 has a series of infinitives which emphasize the bare action of the verb without the idea of time or agent. The effect is to place a kind of staccato like emphasis on the multitude of their sins all of which are violations of one of the Ten Commandments. The final clause in v. 8 expresses purpose or result (probably result) through another infinitive. This long sentence is introduced by a marker (ה interrogative in Hebrew) introducing a rhetorical question in which God expresses his incredulity that they could do these sins, come into the temple and claim the safety of his protection, and then go right back out and commit the same sins. J. Bright (Jeremiah [AB], 52) catches the force nicely: “What? You think you can steal, murder…and then come and stand…and say, ‘We are safe…’ just so that you can go right on…”

[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.

[27:6]  ⁷ tn Heb “have given…into the hand of.”

[27:6]  ⁸ sn See the study note on 25:9 for the significance of the application of this term to Nebuchadnezzar.

[27:6]  ⁹ tn Heb “I have given…to him to serve him.” The verb “give” in this syntactical situation is functioning like the Hiphil stem, i.e., as a causative. See Dan 1:9 for parallel usage. For the usage of “serve” meaning “be subject to” compare 2 Sam 22:44 and BDB 713 s.v. עָבַד 3.

[27:6]  sn This statement is rhetorical, emphasizing the totality of Nebuchadnezzar’s dominion. Neither here nor in Dan 2:38 is it to be understood literally.

[27:10]  ¹⁰ tn The words “Don’t listen to them” have been repeated from v. 9a to pick up the causal connection between v. 9a and v. 10 that is formally introduced by a causal particle in v. 10 in the original text.

[27:10]  ¹¹ tn Heb “they are prophesying a lie.”

[27:10]  ¹² tn Heb “lies will result in your being taken far…” (לְמַעַן [lÿma’an] + infinitive). This is a rather clear case of the particle לְמַעַן introducing result (contra BDB 775 s.v. מַעַן note 1. There is no irony in this statement; it is a bold prediction).

[27:10]  ¹³ tn The words “out of your country” are not in the text but are implicit in the meaning of the verb. The words “in exile” are also not in the text but are implicit in the context. These words have been supplied in the translation for clarity.

[27:12]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “I spoke to Zedekiah…according to all these words, saying.”

[27:12]  ¹⁵ sn The verbs in this verse are all plural. They are addressed to Zedekiah and his royal advisers (compare 22:2).

[27:12]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “put their necks in the yoke of.” See the study note on v. 2 for the figure.

[29:11]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “Oracle of the Lord.”

[29:11]  ¹⁸ 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]  ¹⁹ 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.

[31:28]  ²⁰ tn Heb “Just as I watched over them to uproot and to tear down, to destroy and demolish, so I will watch over them to build and to plant.” The words here repeat those of 1:10 and 1:12.

[31:28]  ²¹ tn Heb “Oracle of the Lord.”

[32:33]  ²² tn Heb “they have turned [their] backs to me, not [their] faces.” Compare the same idiom in 2:27.

[32:33]  ²³ tn For the idiom involved here see the translator’s note on 7:13. The verb that introduces this clause is a Piel infinitive absolute which is functioning in place of the finite verb (see, e.g., GKC 346 §113.ff and compare usage in Jer 8:15; 14:19. This grammatical point means that the versions cited in BHS fn a may not be reading a different text after all, but may merely be interpreting the form as syntactically equivalent to a finite verb as the present translation has done.).

[32:33]  sn This refers to God teaching them through the prophets whom he has sent as indicated by the repeated use of this idiom elsewhere in 7:13, 25; 11:7; 25:3, 4; 26:5, 19.

[32:33]  ²⁴ tn Heb “But they were not listening so as to accept correction.”

[35:13]  ²⁵ tn Heb “Yahweh of armies, the God of Israel.” For this title see 7:3 and the study note on 2:19.

[35:13]  ²⁶ tn Heb “35:12 And the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah, saying, ‘Thus says Yahweh of armies the God of Israel, “Go and say…‘Will you not learn…’”’” The use of the indirect introduction has been chosen here as in 34:1-2 to try to cut down on the confusion created by embedding quotations within quotations.

[35:13]  ²⁷ tn Heb “Oracle of the Lord.”

[35:13]  ²⁸ tn The words “from this” are not in the text but are implicit from the context. They have been supplied in the translation for the sake of clarity.

[35:13]  ²⁹ tn Heb “Will you not learn a lesson…?” The rhetorical question here has the force of an imperative, made explicit in the translation.

[37:3]  ³⁰ sn This is the second of two delegations that Zedekiah sent to Jeremiah to ask him to pray for a miraculous deliverance. Both of them are against the background of the siege of Jerusalem which was instigated by Zedekiah’s rebelling against Nebuchadnezzar and sending to Egypt for help (cf. Ezek 17:15). The earlier delegation (21:1-2) was sent before Nebuchadnezzar had clamped down on Jerusalem because the Judean forces at that time were still fighting against the Babylonian forces in the open field (see 21:4 and the translator’s note there). Here the siege has been lifted because the Babylonian troops had heard a report that the Egyptian army was on the way into Palestine to give the Judeans the promised aid (vv. 5, 7). The request is briefer here than in 21:2 but the intent is no doubt the same (see also the study note on 21:2).

[37:3]  ³¹ sn Jehucal was one of the officials who later sought to have Jeremiah put to death for what they considered treason (38:1-4).

[37:3]  ³² sn The priest Zephaniah son of Maaseiah was a member of the earlier delegation (21:2) and the chief of security in the temple to whom the Babylonian false prophet wrote a letter complaining that Jeremiah should be locked up for his treasonous prophecies (29:25-26). See the study notes on 21:2 and 29:25 for further details.

[38:12]  ³³ tn Heb “Ebed Melech the Ethiopian.” The words “the Ethiopian” are unnecessary and are not repeated in the translation because he has already been identified as such in vv. 7, 10.

[38:12]  ³⁴ tn Heb “under the joints of your arms under the ropes.” The two uses of “under” have different orientations and are best reflected by “between your armpits and the ropes” or “under your armpits to pad the ropes.”

[38:12]  ³⁵ tn Or “Jeremiah did so.” The alternate translation is what the text reads literally.

[39:18]  ³⁶ sn Heb “you will not fall by the sword.” In the context this would include death in battle and execution as a prisoner of war.

[39:18]  ³⁷ tn Heb “your life will be to you for spoil.” For the meaning of this idiom see the study note on 21:9 and compare the usage in 21:9; 38:2; 45:4.

[39:18]  ³⁸ tn Heb “Oracle of the Lord.”

[51:6]  ³⁹ tn The words “you foreign people” are not in the text and many think the referent is the exiles of Judah. While this is clearly the case in v. 45 the referent seems broader here where the context speaks of every man going to his own country (v. 9).

[51:6]  ⁴⁰ tn Heb “her.”

[51:6]  ⁴¹ tn Heb “paying to her a recompense [i.e., a payment in kind].”

[51:39]  ⁴² tn Heb “When they are hot.”

[51:39]  ⁴³ tc The translation follows the suggestion of KBL 707 s.v. עָלַז and a number of modern commentaries (e.g., Bright, J. A. Thompson, and W. L. Holladay) in reading יְעֻלְּפוּ (ye’ullÿfu) for יַעֲלֹזוּ (ya’alozu) in the sense of “swoon away” or “grow faint” (see KBL 710 s.v. עָלַף Pual). That appears to be the verb that the LXX (the Greek version) was reading when they translated καρωθῶσιν (karwqwsin, “they will be stupefied”). For parallel usage KBL cites Isa 51:20. This fits the context much better than “they will exult” in the Hebrew text.

[51:39]  ⁴⁴ sn The central figure here is the figure of the cup of the Lord’s wrath (cf. 25:15-29, especially v. 26). Here the Babylonians have been made to drink so deeply of it that they fall into a drunken sleep from which they will never wake up (i.e., they die, death being compared to sleep [cf. Ps 13:3 (13:4 HT); 76:5 (76:6 HT); 90:5]). Compare the usage in Jer 51:57 for this same figure.

[51:39]  ⁴⁵ tn Heb “Oracle of the Lord.”