Yeremia 6:21

6:21 So, this is what the Lord says:

‘I will assuredly ¹  make these people stumble to their doom. ² 

Parents and children will stumble and fall to their destruction. ³ 

Friends and neighbors will die.’

Yeremia 32:36

32:36 “You and your people ⁴  are right in saying, ‘War, ⁵  starvation, and disease are sure to make this city fall into the hands of the king of Babylon.’ ⁶  But now I, the Lord God of Israel, have something further to say about this city: ⁷ 

Yeremia 42:10

42:10 ‘If you will just stay ⁸  in this land, I will build you up. I will not tear you down. I will firmly plant you. ⁹  I will not uproot you. For I am filled with sorrow because of the disaster that I have brought on you.

Yeremia 51:39

51:39 When their appetites are all stirred up, ¹⁰ 

I will set out a banquet for them.

I will make them drunk

so that they will pass out, ¹¹ 

they will fall asleep forever,

they will never wake up,” ¹² 

says the Lord. ¹³ 

[6:21]  ¹ tn This is an attempt to render the Hebrew particle rendered “behold” joined to the first person pronoun.

[6:21]  ² tn Heb “I will put stumbling blocks in front of these people.” In this context the stumbling blocks are the invading armies.

[6:21]  ³ tn The words “and fall to their destruction” are implicit in the metaphor and are supplied in the translation for clarity.

[32:36]  ⁴ tn Heb “you.” However, the pronoun is plural and is addressed to more than just Jeremiah (v. 26). It includes Jeremiah and those who have accepted his prophecy of doom.

[32:36]  ⁵ tn Heb “sword.”

[32:36]  ⁶ sn Compare Jer 32:24, 28. In 32:24 this is Jeremiah’s statement just before he expresses his perplexity about the Lord’s command to buy the field of his cousin in spite of the certainty of the city’s demise. In 32:28 it is the Lord’s affirmation that the city will indeed fall. Here, the Lord picks up Jeremiah’s assessment only to add a further prophesy (vv. 37-41) of what is just as sure to happen (v. 42). This is the real answer to Jeremiah’s perplexity. Verses 28-35 are an assurance that the city will indeed be captured and a reiteration again of the reason for its demise. The structure of the two introductions in v. 28 and v. 36 are parallel and flow out of the statement that the Lord is God of all mankind and nothing is too hard for him (neither destruction nor restoration [cf. 1:10]).

[32:36]  ⁷ tn Heb “And now therefore thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, concerning this city which you [masc. pl.] are saying has been given [prophetic perfect = will be given] into the hand of the king of Babylon through sword, starvation, and disease.” The translation attempts to render the broader structure mentioned in the study note and to break the sentence down in a way that conforms more to contemporary English style and that will lead into the speech which does not begin until the next verse. As in v. 28 the third person introduction has been changed to first person for smoother narrative style in a first person speech (i.e., vv. 27-44 are all the Lord’s answer to Jeremiah’s prayer). The words “right in” added to “are saying” are intended to reflect the connection between v. 28 and the statement here (which is a repetition of v. 24). I.e., God does not deny that Jeremiah’s assessment is correct; he affirms it but has something further to say in answer to Jeremiah’s prayer.

[42:10]  ⁸ tn The word “just” is intended to reflect the infinitive absolute before the finite verb emphasizing here the condition rather than the verb root (see Joüon 2:423 §123.g, and compare the usage in Exod 15:26). The form looks like the infinitive absolute of the verb שׁוּב (shuv), but all the versions interpret it as though it is from יָשַׁב (yashav) which is the root of the verb that follows it. Either this is a textual error of the loss of a י (yod) or this is one of the cases that GKC 69 §19.i list as the possible loss of a weak consonant at the beginning of a word.

[42:10]  ⁹ tn Or “I will firmly plant you in the land,” or “I will establish you.” This is part of the metaphor that has been used of God (re)establishing Israel in the land. See 24:6; 31:28; 32:41.

[51:39]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “When they are hot.”

[51:39]  ¹¹ tc The translation follows the suggestion of KBL 707 s.v. עָלַז and a number of modern commentaries (e.g., Bright, J. A. Thompson, and W. L. Holladay) in reading יְעֻלְּפוּ (ye’ullÿfu) for יַעֲלֹזוּ (ya’alozu) in the sense of “swoon away” or “grow faint” (see KBL 710 s.v. עָלַף Pual). That appears to be the verb that the LXX (the Greek version) was reading when they translated καρωθῶσιν (karwqwsin, “they will be stupefied”). For parallel usage KBL cites Isa 51:20. This fits the context much better than “they will exult” in the Hebrew text.

[51:39]  ¹² sn The central figure here is the figure of the cup of the Lord’s wrath (cf. 25:15-29, especially v. 26). Here the Babylonians have been made to drink so deeply of it that they fall into a drunken sleep from which they will never wake up (i.e., they die, death being compared to sleep [cf. Ps 13:3 (13:4 HT); 76:5 (76:6 HT); 90:5]). Compare the usage in Jer 51:57 for this same figure.

[51:39]  ¹³ tn Heb “Oracle of the Lord.”