Yeremia 3:17

3:17 At that time the city of Jerusalem ¹  will be called the Lord’s throne. All nations will gather there in Jerusalem to honor the Lord’s name. ²  They will no longer follow the stubborn inclinations of their own evil hearts. ³ 

Yeremia 4:2

4:2 You must be truthful, honest and upright

when you take an oath saying, ‘As surely as the Lord lives!’ ⁴ 

If you do, ⁵  the nations will pray to be as blessed by him as you are

and will make him the object of their boasting.” ⁶ 

Yeremia 5:31

5:31 The prophets prophesy lies.

The priests exercise power by their own authority. ⁷ 

And my people love to have it this way.

But they will not be able to help you when the time of judgment comes! ⁸ 

Yeremia 8:3

8:3 However, I will leave some of these wicked people alive and banish them to other places. But wherever these people who survive may go, they will wish they had died rather than lived,” ⁹  says the Lord who rules over all. ¹⁰ 

Yeremia 9:18

9:18 I said, “Indeed, ¹¹  let them come quickly and sing a song of mourning for us.

Let them wail loudly until tears stream from our own eyes

and our eyelids overflow with water.

Yeremia 29:22

29:22 And all the exiles of Judah who are in Babylon will use them as examples when they put a curse on anyone. They will say, “May the Lord treat you like Zedekiah and Ahab whom the king of Babylon roasted to death in the fire!” ¹² 

Yeremia 31:15

31:15 The Lord says,

“A sound is heard in Ramah, ¹³ 

a sound of crying in bitter grief.

It is the sound of Rachel weeping for her children

and refusing to be comforted, because her children are gone.” ¹⁴ 

Yeremia 44:27

44:27 I will indeed ¹⁵  see to it that disaster, not prosperity, happens to them. ¹⁶  All the people of Judah who are in the land of Egypt will die in war or from starvation until not one of them is left.

Yeremia 50:13

50:13 After I vent my wrath on it Babylon will be uninhabited. ¹⁷ 

It will be totally desolate.

All who pass by will be filled with horror and will hiss out their scorn

because of all the disasters that have happened to it. ¹⁸ 

Yeremia 50:38

50:38 A drought will come upon her land;

her rivers and canals will be dried up. ¹⁹ 

All of this will happen because her land is filled with idols. ²⁰ 

Her people act like madmen because of ²¹  those idols they fear. ²² 

Yeremia 52:3

52:3 What follows is a record of what happened to Jerusalem and Judah because of the Lord’s anger when he drove them out of his sight. ²³  Zedekiah rebelled against the king of Babylon.

[3:17]  ¹ map For location see Map5 B1; Map6 F3; Map7 E2; Map8 F2; Map10 B3; JP1 F4; JP2 F4; JP3 F4; JP4 F4.

[3:17]  ² tn Heb “will gather to the name of the Lord.”

[3:17]  ³ tn Heb “the stubbornness of their evil hearts.”

[4:2]  ⁴ tn Heb “If you [= you must, see the translator’s note on the word “do” later in this verse] swear/take an oath, ‘As the Lord lives,’ in truth, justice, and righteousness…”

[4:2]  ⁵ tn 4:1-2a consists of a number of “if” clauses, two of which are formally introduced by the Hebrew particle אִם (’im) while the others are introduced by the conjunction “and,” followed by a conjunction (“and” = “then”) with a perfect in 4:2b which introduces the consequence. The translation “You must…. If you do,” was chosen to avoid a long and complicated sentence.

[4:2]  ⁶ tn Heb “bless themselves in him and make their boasts in him.”

[5:31]  ⁷ tn Heb “they shall rule at their hands.” Since the word “hand” can be used figuratively for authority or mean “side” and the pronoun “them” can refer to the priests themselves or the prophets, the following translations have also been suggested: “the priests rule under their [the prophets’] directions,” or “the priests rule in league with them [the prophets].” From the rest of the book it would appear that the prophets did not exercise authority over the priests nor did they exercise the same authority over the people that the priests did. Hence it probably mean “by their own hand/power/authority.”

[5:31]  ⁸ tn Heb “But what will you do at its end?” The rhetorical question implies a negative answer: “Nothing!”

[8:3]  ⁹ tn Heb “Death will be chosen rather than life by the remnant who are left from this wicked family in all the places where I have banished them.” The sentence is broken up and restructured to avoid possible confusion because of the complexity of the English to some modern readers. There appears to be an extra “those who are left” that was inadvertently copied from the preceding line. It is missing from one Hebrew ms and from the Greek and Syriac versions and is probably not a part of the original text.

[8:3]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “Yahweh of armies.”

[8:3]  sn For the significance of this title see the notes at 2:19 and 7:3.

[9:18]  ¹¹ tn The words “And I said, ‘Indeed” are not in the text. They have been supplied in the translation to try and help clarify who the speaker is who identifies with the lament of the people.

[29:22]  ¹² sn Being roasted to death in the fire appears to have been a common method of execution in Babylon. See Dan 3:6, 19-21. The famous law code of the Babylonian king Hammurabi also mandated this method of execution for various crimes a thousand years earlier. There is a satirical play on words involving their fate, “roasted them to death” (קָלָם, qalam), and the fact that that fate would become a common topic of curse (קְלָלָה, qÿlalah) pronounced on others in Babylon.

[31:15]  ¹³ sn Ramah is a town in Benjamin approximately five miles (8 km) north of Jerusalem. It was on the road between Bethel and Bethlehem. Traditionally, Rachel’s tomb was located near there at a place called Zelzah (1 Sam 10:2). Rachel was the mother of Joseph and Benjamin and was very concerned about having children because she was barren (Gen 30:1-2) and went to great lengths to have them (Gen 30:3, 14-15, 22-24). She was the grandmother of Ephraim and Manasseh which were two of the major tribes in northern Israel. Here Rachel is viewed metaphorically as weeping for her “children,” the descendants of Ephraim and Manasseh, who had been carried away into captivity in 722 b.c.

[31:15]  ¹⁴ tn Or “gone into exile” (cf. v. 16), though some English versions take this as meaning “dead” (e.g., NCV, CEV, NLT), presumably in light of Matt 2:18.

[44:27]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “Behold I.” For the use of this particle see the translator’s note on 1:6. Here it announces the reality of a fact.

[44:27]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “Behold, I am watching over them for evil/disaster/harm not for good/prosperity/ blessing.” See a parallel usage in 31:28.

[50:13]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “From [or Because of] the wrath of the Lord it will be uninhabited.” The causal connection is spelled out more clearly and actively and the first person has been used because the speaker is the Lord. The referent “it” has been spelled out clearly from the later occurrence in the verse, “all who pass by Babylon.”

[50:13]  ¹⁸ sn Compare Jer 49:17 and the study note there and see also the study notes on 18:16 and 19:8.

[50:38]  ¹⁹ tc Heb “a drought against her waters and they will dry up.” Several of the commentaries and modern English versions accept the emendation proposed by BHS and read here “sword” (חֶרֶב [kherev] in place of חֹרֶב [khorev], the change of only one vowel) in keeping with the rest of the context. According to BHS this reading is supported by the Lucianic and Hexaplaric recensions of the LXX (the Greek version) and the Syriac version. In this case the drying up of the waters (of the canals) is attributed to neglect brought about by war conditions. However, it is just as likely that these versions are influenced by the repetition of the word “sword” as the Hebrew and the other versions are influenced by the concept of “drying up” of the waters to read “drought.” Hence the present translation, along with the majority of modern English versions, retains the Hebrew “drought.”

[50:38]  ²⁰ tn Heb “for it is a land of idols.” The “for,” however, goes back to the whole context not just to the preceding prediction (cf. BDB 473-74 s.v. כִּי 1.c and compare usage in Isa 21:6 listed there).

[50:38]  ²¹ tc Or “Her people boast in.” This translation is based on the reading of the majority of Hebrew mss which read יִתְהֹלָלוּ (yitholalu; cf. usage in Jer 46:9 and see also 25:16; 51:7). Two Hebrew mss and the versions read יִתְהַלָּלוּ (yithallalu; cf. usage in Jer 4:2; 9:23, 24 and Ps 97:7 where a parallel expression is found with “idols”). The reading is again basically the difference in one Hebrew vowel. All of the modern commentaries consulted and all the modern English versions except NEB, REB follow the Hebrew text here rather than the versions.

[50:38]  ²² tn Heb “by the terrors.” However, as HALOT 40 s.v. אֵימָה indicates these are “images that cause terror” (a substitution of the effect for the cause). The translation of this line follows the interpretation of the majority of modern English versions and all the commentaries consulted. NIV, NCV, and God’s Word reflect a different syntax, understanding the subject to be the idols just mentioned rather than “her people” which is supplied here for the sake of clarity (the Hebrew text merely says “they.”) Following that lead, one could render “but those idols will go mad with terror.” This makes excellent sense in the context which often refers to effects (vv. 36b, d, 37c, 38b) of the war that is coming. However, that interpretation does not fit as well with the following “therefore/so,” which basically introduces a judgment or consequence after an accusation of sin.

[52:3]  ²³ tn Heb “Surely (or “for”) because of the anger of the Lord this happened in Jerusalem and Judah until he drove them out from upon his face.” For the phrase “drive out of his sight,” see 7:15.