Yeremia 1:13

1:13 The Lord again asked me, “What do you see?” I answered, “I see a pot of boiling water; it is tipped toward us from the north.” ¹ 

Yeremia 10:22

10:22 Listen! News is coming even now. ² 

The rumble of a great army is heard approaching ³  from a land in the north. ⁴ 

It is coming to turn the towns of Judah into rubble,

places where only jackals live.

Yeremia 31:6

31:6 Yes, a time is coming

when watchmen ⁵  will call out on the mountains of Ephraim,

“Come! Let us go to Zion

to worship the Lord our God!”’” ⁶ 

Yeremia 50:37

50:37 Destructive forces will come against her horses and her ⁷  chariots.

Destructive forces will come against all the foreign troops within her; ⁸ 

they will be as frightened as women! ⁹ 

Destructive forces will come against her treasures;

they will be taken away as plunder!

[1:13]  ¹ tn Heb “a blown upon [= heated; boiling] pot and its face from the face of the north [= it is facing away from the north].”

[10:22]  ² tn Heb “The sound of a report, behold, it is coming.”

[10:22]  ³ tn Heb “ coming, even a great quaking.”

[10:22]  ⁴ sn Compare Jer 6:22.

[31:6]  ⁵ sn Watchmen were stationed at vantage points to pass on warning of coming attack (Jer 6:17; Ezek 33:2, 6) or to spread the news of victory (Isa 52:8). Here reference is made to the watchmen who signaled the special times of the year such as the new moon and festival times when Israel was to go to Jerusalem to worship. Reference is not made to these in the Hebrew Bible but there is a good deal of instruction regarding them in the later Babylonian Talmud.

[31:6]  ⁶ sn Not only will Israel and Judah be reunited under one ruler (cf. 23:5-6), but they will share a unified place and practice of worship once again in contrast to Israel using the illicit places of worship, illicit priesthood, and illicit feasts instituted by Jeroboam (1 Kgs 12:26-31) and continued until the downfall of Samaria in 722 b.c.

[50:37]  ⁷ tn Hebrew has “his” in both cases here whereas the rest of the possessive pronouns throughout vv. 35-37 are “her.” There is no explanation for this switch unless the third masculine singular refers as a distributive singular to the soldiers mentioned in the preceding verse (cf. GKC 464 §145.l). This is probably the case here, but to refer to “their horses and their chariots” in the midst of all the “her…” might create more confusion than what it is worth to be that pedantic.

[50:37]  ⁸ tn Or “in the country,” or “in her armies”; Heb “in her midst.”

[50:37]  ⁹ tn Heb “A sword against his horses and his chariots and against all the mixed company [or mixed multitude] in her midst and they will become like women.” The sentence had to be split up because it is too long and the continuation of the second half with its consequential statement would not fit together with the first half very well. Hence the subject and verb have been repeated. The Hebrew word translated “foreign troops” (עֶרֶב, ’erev) is the same word that is used in 25:20 to refer to the foreign peoples living in Egypt and in Exod 12:38 for the foreign people that accompanied Israel out of Egypt. Here the word is translated contextually to refer to foreign mercenaries, an identification that most of the commentaries and many of the modern English versions accept (see, e.g., J. Bright, Jeremiah [AB], 355; NRSV; NIV). The significance of the simile “they will become like women” has been spelled out for the sake of clarity.