Yeremia 2:37
Konteks2:37 Moreover, you will come away from Egypt
with your hands covering your faces in sorrow and shame 1
because the Lord will not allow your reliance on them to be successful
and you will not gain any help from them. 2
Yeremia 21:4-5
Konteks21:4 that the Lord, the God of Israel, says, 3 ‘The forces at your disposal 4 are now outside the walls fighting against King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon and the Babylonians 5 who have you under siege. I will gather those forces back inside the city. 6 21:5 In anger, in fury, and in wrath I myself will fight against you with my mighty power and great strength! 7
Yeremia 33:5
Konteks33:5 ‘The defenders of the city will go out and fight with the Babylonians. 8 But they will only fill those houses and buildings with the dead bodies of the people that I will kill in my anger and my wrath. 9 That will happen because I have decided to turn my back on 10 this city on account of the wicked things they have done. 11
Yeremia 37:10
Konteks37:10 For even if you were to defeat all the Babylonian forces 12 fighting against you so badly that only wounded men were left lying in their tents, they would get up and burn this city down.”’” 13
[2:37] 1 tn Heb “with your hands on your head.” For the picture here see 2 Sam 13:19.
[2:37] 2 tn Heb “The
[21:4] 3 tn Heb “Tell Zedekiah, ‘Thus says the
[21:4] 4 tn Heb “the weapons which are in your hand.” Weapons stands here by substitution for the soldiers who wield them.
[21:4] 5 sn The Babylonians (Heb “the Chaldeans”). The Chaldeans were a group of people in the country south of Babylon from which Nebuchadnezzar came. The Chaldean dynasty his father established became the name by which the Babylonians are regularly referred to in the book of Jeremiah. Jeremiah’s contemporary Ezekiel uses both terms.
[21:4] 6 tn The structure of the Hebrew sentence of this verse is long and complex and has led to a great deal of confusion and misunderstanding. There are two primary points of confusion: 1) the relation of the phrase “outside the walls,” and 2) the antecedent of “them” in the last clause of the verse that reads in Hebrew: “I will gather them back into the midst of the city.” Most take the phrase “outside the walls” with “the Babylonians….” Some take it with “turn back/bring back” to mean “from outside….” However, the preposition “from” is part of the idiom for “outside….” The phrase goes with “fighting” as J. Bright (Jeremiah [AB], 215) notes and as NJPS suggests. The antecedent of “them” has sometimes been taken mistakenly to refer to the Babylonians. It refers rather to “the forces at your disposal” which is literally “the weapons which are in your hands.” This latter phrase is a figure involving substitution (called metonymy) as Bright also correctly notes. The whole sentence reads in Hebrew: “I will bring back the weapons of war which are in your hand with which you are fighting Nebuchadrezzar the King of Babylon and the Chaldeans who are besieging you outside your wall and I will gather them into the midst of the city.” The sentence has been restructured to better reflect the proper relationships and to make the sentence conform more to contemporary English style.
[21:5] 7 tn Heb “with outstretched hand and with strong arm.” These are, of course, figurative of God’s power and might. He does not literally have hands and arms.
[21:5] sn The phrases in this order are unique but a very similar phrase “by strong hand and outstretched arm” are found several times with reference to God’s mighty power unleashed against Egypt at the exodus (cf., Deut 4:34; 5:15; 26:8; Jer 32:21; Ps 136:12). Instead of being directed at Israel’s enemies it will now be directed against her.
[33:5] 8 tn Heb “The Chaldeans.” See the study note on 21:4 for further explanation.
[33:5] 9 sn This refers to the tearing down of buildings within the city to strengthen the wall or to fill gaps in it which had been broken down by the Babylonian battering rams. For a parallel to this during the siege of Sennacherib in the time of Hezekiah see Isa 22:10; 2 Chr 32:5. These torn-down buildings were also used as burial mounds for those who died in the fighting or through starvation and disease during the siege. The siege prohibited them from taking the bodies outside the city for burial and leaving them in their houses or in the streets would have defiled them.
[33:5] 10 tn Heb “Because I have hidden my face from.” The modern equivalent for this gesture of rejection is “to turn the back on.” See Ps 13:1 for comparable usage. The perfect is to be interpreted as a perfect of resolve (cf. IBHS 488-89 §30.5.1d and compare the usage in Ruth 4:3).
[33:5] 11 tn The translation and meaning of vv. 4-5 are somewhat uncertain. The translation and precise meaning of vv. 4-5 are uncertain at a number of points due to some difficult syntactical constructions and some debate about the text and meaning of several words. The text reads more literally, “33:4 For thus says the
[37:10] 12 tn Heb “all the army of the Chaldeans.” For the rendering “Babylonian” in place of Chaldean see the study note on 21:4.
[37:10] 13 tn The length and complexity of this English sentence violates the more simple style that has been used to conform such sentences to contemporary English style. However, there does not seem to be any alternative that would enable a simpler style and still retain the causal and conditional connections that give this sentence the rhetorical force that it has in the original. The condition is, of course, purely hypothetical and the consequence a poetic exaggeration. The intent is to assure Zedekiah that there is absolutely no hope of the city being spared.