Yeremia 2:4

The Lord Reminds Them of the Unfaithfulness of Their Ancestors

2:4 Now listen to what the Lord has to say, you descendants ¹  of Jacob,

all you family groups from the nation ²  of Israel.

Yeremia 3:3-10

3:3 That is why the rains have been withheld,

and the spring rains have not come.

Yet in spite of this you are obstinate as a prostitute. ³ 

You refuse to be ashamed of what you have done.

3:4 Even now you say to me, ‘You are my father! ⁴ 

You have been my faithful companion ever since I was young.

3:5 You will not always be angry with me, will you?

You will not be mad at me forever, will you?’ ⁵ 

That is what you say,

but you continually do all the evil that you can.” ⁶ 

3:6 When Josiah was king of Judah, the Lord said to me, “Jeremiah, you have no doubt seen what wayward Israel has done. ⁷  You have seen how she went up to every high hill and under every green tree to give herself like a prostitute to other gods. ⁸  3:7 Yet even after she had done all that, I thought that she might come back to me. ⁹  But she did not. Her sister, unfaithful Judah, saw what she did. ¹⁰  3:8 She also saw ¹¹  that I gave wayward Israel her divorce papers and sent her away because of her adulterous worship of other gods. ¹²  Even after her unfaithful sister Judah had seen this, ¹³  she still was not afraid, and she too went and gave herself like a prostitute to other gods. ¹⁴  3:9 Because she took her prostitution so lightly, she defiled the land ¹⁵  through her adulterous worship of gods made of wood and stone. ¹⁶  3:10 In spite of all this, ¹⁷  Israel’s sister, unfaithful Judah, has not turned back to me with any sincerity; she has only pretended to do so,” ¹⁸  says the Lord.

Yeremia 23:13-14

23:13 The Lord says, ¹⁹  “I saw the prophets of Samaria ²⁰ 

doing something that was disgusting. ²¹ 

They prophesied in the name of the god Baal

and led my people Israel astray. ²² 

23:14 But I see the prophets of Jerusalem ²³ 

doing something just as shocking.

They are unfaithful to me

and continually prophesy lies. ²⁴ 

So they give encouragement to people who are doing evil,

with the result that they do not stop their evildoing. ²⁵ 

I consider all of them as bad as the people of Sodom,

and the citizens of Jerusalem as bad as the people of Gomorrah. ²⁶ 

Yeremia 32:30-35

32:30 This will happen because the people of Israel and Judah have repeatedly done what displeases me ²⁷  from their earliest history until now ²⁸  and because they ²⁹  have repeatedly made me angry by the things they have done. ³⁰  I, the Lord, affirm it! ³¹  32:31 This will happen because ³²  the people of this city have aroused my anger and my wrath since the time they built it until now. ³³  They have made me so angry that I am determined to remove ³⁴  it from my sight. 32:32 I am determined to do so because the people of Israel and Judah have made me angry with all their wickedness – they, their kings, their officials, their priests, their prophets, and especially the people of Judah and the citizens of Jerusalem ³⁵  have done this wickedness. ³⁶  32:33 They have turned away from me instead of turning to me. ³⁷  I tried over and over again ³⁸  to instruct them, but they did not listen and respond to correction. ³⁹  32:34 They set up their disgusting idols in the temple which I have claimed for my own ⁴⁰  and defiled it. 32:35 They built places of worship for the god Baal in the Valley of Ben Hinnom so that they could sacrifice their sons and daughters to the god Molech. ⁴¹  Such a disgusting practice was not something I commanded them to do! It never even entered my mind to command them to do such a thing! So Judah is certainly liable for punishment.’ ⁴² 

[2:4]  ¹ tn Heb “house.”

[2:4]  ² tn Heb “house.”

[3:3]  ³ tn Heb “you have the forehead of a prostitute.”

[3:4]  ⁴ tn Heb “Have you not just now called out to me, ‘[you are] my father!’?” The rhetorical question expects a positive answer.

[3:5]  ⁵ tn Heb “Will he keep angry forever? Will he maintain [it] to the end?” The questions are rhetorical and expect a negative answer. The change to direct address in the English translation is intended to ease the problem of the rapid transition, common in Hebrew style (but not in English), from second person direct address in the preceding lines to third person indirect address in these two lines. See GKC 462 §144.p.

[3:5]  ⁶ tn Heb “You do the evil and you are able.” This is an example of hendiadys, meaning “You do all the evil that you are able to do.”

[3:6]  ⁷ tn “Have you seen…” The question is rhetorical and expects a positive answer.

[3:6]  ⁸ tn Heb “she played the prostitute there.” This is a metaphor for Israel’s worship; she gave herself to the worship of other gods like a prostitute gives herself to her lovers. There seems no clear way to completely spell out the metaphor in the translation.

[3:7]  ⁹ tn Or “I said to her, ‘Come back to me!’” The verb אָמַר (’amar) usually means “to say,” but here it means “to think,” of an assumption that turns out to be wrong (so HALOT 66.4 s.v. אמר); cf. Gen 44:28; Jer 3:19; Pss 82:6; 139:11; Job 29:18; Ruth 4:4; Lam 3:18.

[3:7]  sn Open theists suggest that passages such as this indicate God has limited foreknowledge; however, more traditional theologians view this passage as an extended metaphor in which God presents himself as a deserted husband, hoping against hope that his adulterous wife might return to him. The point of the metaphor is not to make an assertion about God’s foreknowledge, but to develop the theme of God’s heartbreak due to Israel’s unrepentance.

[3:7]  ¹⁰ tn The words “what she did” are not in the text but are implicit from the context and are supplied in the translation for clarification.

[3:8]  ¹¹ tc Heb “she [‘her sister, unfaithful Judah’ from the preceding verse] saw” with one Hebrew ms, some Greek mss, and the Syriac version. The MT reads “I saw” which may be a case of attraction to the verb at the beginning of the previous verse.

[3:8]  ¹² tn Heb “because she committed adultery.” The translation is intended to spell out the significance of the metaphor.

[3:8]  ¹³ tn The words “Even after her unfaithful sister, Judah, had seen this” are not in the Hebrew text but are implicit in the connection and are supplied for clarification.

[3:8]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “she played the prostitute there.” This is a metaphor for Israel’s worship; she gave herself to the worship of other gods like a prostitute gives herself to her lovers. There seems no clear way to completely spell out the metaphor in the translation.

[3:9]  ¹⁵ tc The translation reads the form as a causative (Hiphil, תַּהֲנֵף, tahanef) with some of the versions in place of the simple stative (Qal, תֶּחֱנַף, tekhenaf) in the MT.

[3:9]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “because of the lightness of her prostitution, she defiled the land and committed adultery with stone and wood.”

[3:10]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “And even in all this.”

[3:10]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “ has not turned back to me with all her heart but only in falsehood.”

[23:13]  ¹⁹ tn The words “The Lord says” are not in the text, but it is clear from the content that he is the speaker. These words are supplied in the translation for clarity.

[23:13]  ²⁰ map For location see Map2 B1; Map4 D3; Map5 E2; Map6 A4; Map7 C1.

[23:13]  ²¹ tn According to BDB 1074 s.v. תִּפְלָּה this word means “unseemly, unsavory.” The related adjective is used in Job 6:6 of the tastelessness of something that is unseasoned.

[23:13]  ²² tn Heb “by Baal.”

[23:13]  sn Prophesying in the name of the god Baal was a clear violation of Mosaic law and punishable by death (see Deut 13:1-5). For an example of the apostasy encouraged by prophets of Baal in the northern kingdom of Israel see 1 Kgs 18:16-40.

[23:14]  ²³ map For location see Map5 B1; Map6 F3; Map7 E2; Map8 F2; Map10 B3; JP1 F4; JP2 F4; JP3 F4; JP4 F4.

[23:14]  ²⁴ tn Or “they commit adultery and deal falsely.” The word “shocking” only occurs here and in 5:30 where it is found in the context of prophesying lies. This almost assures that the reference to “walking in lies” (Heb “in the lie”) is referring to false prophesy. Moreover the references to the prophets in 5:13 and in 14:13-15 are all in the context of false prophesy as are the following references in this chapter in 23:24, 26, 32 and in 28:15. This appears to be the theme of this section. This also makes it likely that the reference to adultery is not literal adultery, though two of the false prophets in Babylon were guilty of this (29:23). The reference to “encouraging those who do evil” that follows also makes more sense if they were preaching messages of comfort rather than messages of doom. The verbs here are infinitive absolutes in place of the finite verb, probably used to place greater emphasis on the action (cf. Hos 4:2 in a comparable judgment speech.)

[23:14]  ²⁵ tn Heb “So they strengthen the hands of those doing evil so that they do not turn back from their evil.” For the use of the figure “strengthen the hands” meaning “encourage” see Judg 9:24; Ezek 13:22 (and cf. BDB 304 s.v. חָזַק Piel.2). The vav consecutive on the front of the form gives the logical consequence equivalent to “so” in the translation.

[23:14]  ²⁶ tn Heb “All of them are to me like Sodom and its [Jerusalem’s] inhabitants like Gomorrah.”

[23:14]  sn The rhetoric of this passage is very forceful. Like Amos who focuses attention on the sins of the surrounding nations to bring out more forcefully the heinousness of Israel’s sin, God focuses attention on the sins of the prophets of Samaria to bring out the even worse sin of the prophets of Jerusalem. (The oracle is directed at them, not at the prophets of Samaria. See the announcement of judgment that follows.) The Lord has already followed that tack with Judah in Jeremiah 2 (cf. 2:11). Moreover, he here compares the prophets and the evil-doing citizens of Jerusalem, whom they were encouraging through their false prophesy, to the people of Sodom and Gomorrah who were proverbial for their wickedness (Deut 32:32; Isa 1:10).

[32:30]  ²⁷ tn Heb “that which is evil in my eyes.” For this idiom see BDB 744 s.v. עַיִן 3.c and compare usage in 18:10.

[32:30]  ²⁸ tn Heb “from their youth.”

[32:30]  sn Compare Jer 3:24-25; 11:21. The nation is being personified and reference is made to her history from the time she left Egypt onward (cf. 2:2).

[32:30]  ²⁹ tn Heb “the people of Israel.” However, since “people of Israel” has been used in the preceding line for the northern kingdom as opposed to the kingdom of Judah, it might lead to confusion to translate literally. Moreover, the pronoun “they” accomplishes the same purpose.

[32:30]  ³⁰ tn Heb “by the work of their hands.” See the translator’s note on 25:6 and the parallelism in 25:14 for this rendering rather than referring it to the making of idols as in 1:16; 10:3.

[32:30]  ³¹ tn Heb “Oracle of the Lord.”

[32:31]  ³² tn The statements in vv. 28-29 regarding the certain destruction of the city are motivated by three parallel causal clauses in vv. 30a, b, 31, the last of which extends through subordinate and coordinate clauses until the end of v. 35. An attempt has been made to bring out this structure by repeating the idea “This/it will happen” in front of each of these causal clauses in the English translation.

[32:31]  ³³ tn Heb “from the day they built it until this day.”

[32:31]  sn The Israelites did not in fact “build” Jerusalem. They captured it from the Jebusites in the time of David. This refers perhaps to the enlarging and fortifying of the city after it came into the hands of the Israelites (2 Sam 5:6-10).

[32:31]  ³⁴ tn Heb “For this city has been to me for a source of my anger and my wrath from the day they built it until this day so as remove it.” The preposition ְל (lamed) with the infinitive (Heb “so as to remove it”; לַהֲסִירָהּ, lahasirah) expresses degree (cf. R. J. Williams, Hebrew Syntax, 37, §199, and compare usage in 2 Sam 13:2).

[32:32]  ³⁵ map For location see Map5 B1; Map6 F3; Map7 E2; Map8 F2; Map10 B3; JP1 F4; JP2 F4; JP3 F4; JP4 F4.

[32:32]  ³⁶ tn Heb “remove it from my sight 32:33 because of all the wickedness of the children of Israel and the children of Judah which they have done to make me angry, they, their kings, their officials, their priests, and their prophets, and the men of Judah, and the inhabitants of Jerusalem.” The sentence has been broken up in conformity with contemporary English style and an attempt has been made to preserve the causal connections.

[32:33]  ³⁷ tn Heb “they have turned [their] backs to me, not [their] faces.” Compare the same idiom in 2:27.

[32:33]  ³⁸ 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]  ³⁹ tn Heb “But they were not listening so as to accept correction.”

[32:34]  ⁴⁰ tn Heb “the house which is called by my name.” Cf. 7:10, 11, 14 and see the translator’s note on 7:10 for the explanation for this rendering.

[32:35]  ⁴¹ sn Compare Jer 7:30-31; 19:5 and the study notes on 7:30. The god Molech is especially associated with the practice of child sacrifice (Lev 18:21; 20:2-5; 2 Kgs 23:10). In 1 Kgs 11:7 this god is identified as the god of the Ammonites who is also called Milcom in 1 Kgs 11:5; 2 Kgs 23:13. Child sacrifice, however, was not confined to this god; it was also made to the god Baal (Jer 19:5) and to other idols that the Israelites had set up (Ezek 16:20-21). This practice was, however, strictly prohibited in Israel (Lev 18:21; 20:2-5; Deut 12:31; 18:10). It was this practice as well as other pagan rites that Manasseh had instituted in Judah that ultimately led to Judah’s demise (2 Kgs 24:3-4). Though Josiah tried to root these pagan practices (2 Kgs 23:4-14) out of Judah he could not do so. The people had only made a pretense of following his reforms; their hearts were still far from God (Jer 3:10; 12:2).

[32:35]  ⁴² tn Heb “They built high places to Baal which are in the Valley of Ben Hinnom to cause their sons and daughters to pass through [the fire] to Molech [a thing] which I did not command them and [which] did not go up into my heart [= “mind” in modern psychology] to do this abomination so as to make Judah liable for punishment.” For the use of the Hiphil of חָטָא (khata’) to refer to the liability for punishment see BDB s.v. חָטָא Hiph.3 and compare the usage in Deut 24:8. Coming at the end as this does, this nuance is much more likely than “cause Judah to sin” which is the normal translation assigned to the verb here. The particle לְמַעַן (lÿma’an) that precedes it is here once again introducing a result and not a purpose (compare other clear examples in 27:10, 15). The sentence has been broken down in conformity to contemporary English style and an attempt has been made to make clear that what is detestable and not commanded is not merely child sacrifice to Molech but child sacrifice in general.