Yeremia 3:25

3:25 Let us acknowledge ¹  our shame.

Let us bear the disgrace that we deserve. ² 

For we have sinned against the Lord our God,

both we and our ancestors.

From earliest times to this very day

we have not obeyed the Lord our God.’

Yeremia 31:19

31:19 For after we turned away from you we repented.

After we came to our senses ³  we beat our breasts in sorrow. ⁴ 

We are ashamed and humiliated

because of the disgraceful things we did previously.’ ⁵ 

Yeremia 32:30

32:30 This will happen because the people of Israel and Judah have repeatedly done what displeases me ⁶  from their earliest history until now ⁷  and because they ⁸  have repeatedly made me angry by the things they have done. ⁹  I, the Lord, affirm it! ¹⁰ 

[3:25]  ¹ tn Heb “Let us lie down in….”

[3:25]  ² tn Heb “Let us be covered with disgrace.”

[31:19]  ³ tn For this meaning of the verb see HAL 374 s.v. יָדַע Nif 5 or W. L. Holladay, Concise Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon, 129. REB translates “Now that I am submissive” relating the verb to a second root meaning “be submissive.” (See HALOT 375 s.v. II יָדַע and J. Barr, Comparative Philology and the Text of the Old Testament, 19-21, for evidence for this verb. Other passages cited with this nuance are Judg 8:16; Prov 10:9; Job 20:20.)

[31:19]  ⁴ tn Heb “I struck my thigh.” This was a gesture of grief and anguish (cf. Ezek 21:12 [21:17 HT]). The modern equivalent is “to beat the breast.”

[31:19]  ⁵ tn Heb “because I bear the reproach of my youth.” For the plural referents see the note at the beginning of v. 18.

[31:19]  sn The expression the disgraceful things we did in our earlier history refers to the disgrace that accompanied the sins that Israel did in her earlier years before she learned the painful lesson of submission to the Lord through the discipline of exile. For earlier references to the sins of her youth (i.e., in her earlier years as a nation) see 3:24-25; 22:21 and see also 32:29. At the time that these verses were written, neither northern Israel or Judah had expressed the kind of contrition voiced in vv. 18-19. As one commentator notes, the words here are both prophetic and instructive.

[32:30]  ⁶ 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]  ⁷ 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]  ⁸ 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]  ⁹ 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]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “Oracle of the Lord.”