Yeremia 44:2

44:2 “The Lord God of Israel who rules over all ¹  says, ‘You have seen all the disaster I brought on Jerusalem ²  and all the towns of Judah. Indeed, they now lie in ruins and are deserted. ³ 

Yeremia 44:6

44:6 So my anger and my wrath were poured out and burned like a fire through the towns of Judah and the streets of Jerusalem. That is why they have become the desolate ruins that they are today.’

Yeremia 44:12

44:12 I will see to it that all the Judean remnant that was determined to go ⁴  and live in the land of Egypt will be destroyed. Here in the land of Egypt they will fall in battle ⁵  or perish from starvation. People of every class ⁶  will die in war or from starvation. They will become an object of horror and ridicule, an example of those who have been cursed and that people use in pronouncing a curse. ⁷ 

Yeremia 18:16

18:16 So their land will become an object of horror. ⁸ 

People will forever hiss out their scorn over it.

All who pass that way will be filled with horror

and will shake their heads in derision. ⁹ 

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. ¹⁰  That is how they will be remembered wherever I banish them. ¹¹ 

Yeremia 25:11

25:11 This whole area ¹²  will become a desolate wasteland. These nations will be subject to the king of Babylon for seventy years.’ ¹³ 

Yeremia 25:18

25:18 I made Jerusalem ¹⁴  and the cities of Judah, its kings and its officials drink it. ¹⁵  I did it so Judah would become a ruin. I did it so Judah, its kings, and its officials would become an object ¹⁶  of horror and of hissing scorn, an example used in curses. ¹⁷  Such is already becoming the case! ¹⁸ 

Yeremia 25:38

25:38 The Lord is like a lion who has left his lair. ¹⁹ 

So their lands will certainly ²⁰  be laid waste

by the warfare of the oppressive nation ²¹ 

and by the fierce anger of the Lord.”

Yeremia 26:6

26:6 If you do not obey me, ²²  then I will do to this temple what I did to Shiloh. ²³  And I will make this city an example to be used in curses by people from all the nations on the earth.’”

Yeremia 29:19

29:19 For they have not paid attention to what I said to them through my servants the prophets whom I sent to them over and over again,’ ²⁴  says the Lord. ²⁵  ‘And you exiles ²⁶  have not paid any attention to them either,’ says the Lord. ²⁷ 

[44:2]  ¹ tn Heb “Yahweh of armies, the God of Israel.” Compare 7:3 and see the study note on 2:19 for explanation and translation of this title.

[44:2]  ² map For location see Map5 B1; Map6 F3; Map7 E2; Map8 F2; Map10 B3; JP1 F4; JP2 F4; JP3 F4; JP4 F4.

[44:2]  ³ tn Heb “Behold, they are in ruins this day and there is no one living in them.”

[44:12]  ⁴ tn Heb “they set their face to go.” Compare 44:11 and 42:14 and see the translator’s note at 42:15.

[44:12]  ⁵ tn Heb “fall by the sword.”

[44:12]  ⁶ tn Or “All of them without distinction,” or “All of them from the least important to the most important”; Heb “From the least to the greatest.” See the translator’s note on 42:1 for the meaning of this idiom.

[44:12]  ⁷ tn See the study note on 24:9 and the usage in 29:22 for the meaning and significance of this last phrase.

[44:12]  sn See Jer 42:18 for parallel usage.

[18:16]  ⁸ tn There may be a deliberate double meaning involved here. The word translated here “an object of horror” refers both to destruction (cf. 2:15; 4:17) and the horror or dismay that accompanies it (cf. 5:30; 8:21). The fact that there is no conjunction or preposition in front of the noun “hissing” that follows this suggests that the reaction is in view here, not the cause.

[18:16]  ⁹ tn Heb “an object of lasting hissing. All who pass that way will be appalled and shake their head.”

[18:16]  sn The actions of “shaking of the head” and “hissing” were obviously gestures of scorn and derision. See Lam 2:15-16.

[24:9]  ¹⁰ 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]  ¹¹ 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.

[25:11]  ¹² tn Heb “All this land.”

[25:11]  ¹³ sn It should be noted that the text says that the nations will be subject to the king of Babylon for seventy years, not that they will lie desolate for seventy years. Though several proposals have been made for dating this period, many ignore this fact. This most likely refers to the period beginning with Nebuchadnezzar’s defeat of Pharaoh Necho at Carchemish in 605 b.c. and the beginning of his rule over Babylon. At this time Babylon became the dominant force in the area and continued to be so until the fall of Babylon in 538 b.c. More particularly Judah became a vassal state (cf. Jer 46:2; 2 Kgs 24:1) in 605 b.c. and was allowed to return to her homeland in 538 when Cyrus issued his edict allowing all the nations exiled by Babylon to return to their homelands. (See 2 Chr 36:21 and Ezra 1:2-4; the application there is made to Judah but the decree of Cyrus was broader.)

[25:18]  ¹⁴ map For location see Map5 B1; Map6 F3; Map7 E2; Map8 F2; Map10 B3; JP1 F4; JP2 F4; JP3 F4; JP4 F4.

[25:18]  ¹⁵ tn The words “I made” and “drink it” are not in the text. The text from v. 18 to v. 26 contains a list of the nations that Jeremiah “made drink it.” The words are supplied in the translation here and at the beginning of v. 19 for the sake of clarity. See also the note on v. 26.

[25:18]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “in order to make them a ruin, an object of…” The sentence is broken up and the antecedents are made specific for the sake of clarity and English style.

[25:18]  ¹⁷ tn See the study note on 24:9 for explanation.

[25:18]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “as it is today.” This phrase would obviously be more appropriate after all these things had happened as is the case in 44:6, 23 where the verbs referring to these conditions are past. Some see this phrase as a marginal gloss added after the tragedies of 597 b.c. or 586 b.c. However, it may refer here to the beginning stages where Judah has already suffered the loss of Josiah, of its freedom, of some of its temple treasures, and of some of its leaders (Dan 1:1-3. The different date for Jehoiakim there is due to the different method of counting the king’s first year; the third year there is the same as the fourth year in 25:1).

[25:38]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “Like a lion he has left his lair.”

[25:38]  sn The text returns to the metaphor alluded to in v. 30. The bracketing of speeches with repeated words or motifs is a common rhetorical device in ancient literature.

[25:38]  ²⁰ tn This is a way of rendering the Hebrew particle כִּי (ki) which is probably here for emphasis rather than indicating cause (see BDB 473 s.v. כִּי 1.e and compare usage in Jer 22:22).

[25:38]  ²¹ tc Heb “by the sword of the oppressors.” The reading here follows a number of Hebrew mss and the Greek version. The majority of Hebrew mss read “the anger of the oppressor.” The reading “the sword of the oppressors” is supported also by the parallel use of this phrase in Jer 46:16; 50:16. The error in the MT may be explained by confusion with the following line which has the same beginning combination (מִפְּנֵי חֲרוֹן [mippÿne kharon] confused for מִפְּנֵי חֶרֶב [mippÿne kherev]). This reading is also supported by the Targum, the Aramaic paraphrase of the OT. According to BDB 413 s.v. יָנָה Qal the feminine singular participle (הַיּוֹנָה, hayyonah) is functioning as a collective in this idiom (see GKC 394 §122.s for this phenomenon).

[25:38]  sn The connection between “war” (Heb “the sword”) and the wrath or anger of the Lord has already been made in vv. 16, 27 and the sword has been referred to also in vv. 29, 31. The sword is of course a reference to the onslaughts of the Babylonian armies (see later Jer 51:20-23).

[26:6]  ²² tn 26:4-6 are all one long sentence containing a long condition with subordinate clauses (vv. 4-5) and a compound consequence in v. 6: Heb “If you will not obey me by walking in my law…by paying attention to the words of the prophets which…and you did not pay heed, then I will make…and I will make…” The sentence has been broken down in conformity to contemporary English style but an attempt has been made to reflect all the subordinations in the English translation.

[26:6]  ²³ sn See the study note on Jer 7:13.

[29:19]  ²⁴ tn See the translator’s note on 7:13 for an explanation of this idiom.

[29:19]  ²⁵ tn Heb “Oracle of the Lord.”

[29:19]  ²⁶ tn The word “exiles” is not in the text. It is supplied in the translation to clarify the referent of “you.”

[29:19]  ²⁷ tn Heb “Oracle of the Lord.”