Yeremia 1:17

1:17 “But you, Jeremiah, ¹  get yourself ready! ²  Go and tell these people everything I instruct you to say. Do not be terrified of them, or I will give you good reason to be terrified of them. ³ 

Yeremia 6:10

6:10 I answered, ⁴ 

“Who would listen

if I spoke to them and warned them? ⁵ 

Their ears are so closed ⁶ 

that they cannot hear!

Indeed, ⁷  what the Lord says is offensive to them.

They do not like it at all. ⁸ 

Yeremia 11:21

11:21 Then the Lord told me about ⁹  some men from Anathoth ¹⁰  who were threatening to kill me. ¹¹  They had threatened, ¹²  “Stop prophesying in the name of the Lord or we will kill you!” ¹³ 

Yeremia 16:21

16:21 The Lord said, ¹⁴ 

“So I will now let this wicked people know –

I will let them know my mighty power in judgment.

Then they will know that my name is the Lord.” ¹⁵ 

Yeremia 36:3

36:3 Perhaps when the people of Judah hear about all the disaster I intend to bring on them, they will all stop doing the evil things they have been doing. ¹⁶  If they do, I will forgive their sins and the wicked things they have done.” ¹⁷ 

Yeremia 39:14

39:14 sent and had Jeremiah brought from the courtyard of the guardhouse. They turned him over to Gedaliah, ¹⁸  the son of Ahikam and the grandson of Shaphan, to take him home with him. ¹⁹  But Jeremiah stayed among the people. ²⁰ 

[1:17]  ¹ tn The name “Jeremiah” is not in the text. The use of the personal pronoun followed by the proper name is an attempt to reflect the correlative emphasis between Jeremiah’s responsibility noted here and the Lord’s promise noted in the next verse. The emphasis in the Hebrew text is marked by the presence of the subject pronouns at the beginning of each of the two verses.

[1:17]  ² tn Heb “gird up your loins.” For the literal use of this idiom to refer to preparation for action see 2 Kgs 4:29; 9:1. For the idiomatic use to refer to spiritual and emotional preparation as here, see Job 38:3, 40:7, and 1 Pet 1:13 in the NT.

[1:17]  ³ tn Heb “I will make you terrified in front of them.” There is a play on words here involving two different forms of the same Hebrew verb and two different but related prepositional phrases, “from before/of,” a preposition introducing the object of a verb of fearing, and “before, in front of,” a preposition introducing a spatial location.

[6:10]  ⁴ tn These words are not in the text but are supplied in the translation for clarity.

[6:10]  ⁵ tn Or “To whom shall I speak? To whom shall I give warning? Who will listen?” Heb “Unto whom shall I speak and give warning that they may listen?”

[6:10]  ⁶ tn Heb “are uncircumcised.”

[6:10]  ⁷ tn Heb “Behold!”

[6:10]  ⁸ tn Heb “They do not take pleasure in it.”

[11:21]  ⁹ tn Heb “Therefore thus says the Lord.” This phrase is anticipatory of the same phrase at the beginning of v. 22 and is introductory to what the Lord says about them. The translation seeks to show the connection of the “therefore” which is sometimes rather loose (cf. BDB 487 s.v. כֵּן 3.d[b]) with the actual response which is not given until v. 22.

[11:21]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “the men of Anathoth.” However, this does not involve all of the people, only the conspirators. The literal might lead to confusion later since v. 21 mentions that there will not be any of them left alive. However, it is known from Ezra 2:23 that there were survivors.

[11:21]  ¹¹ tc The MT reads the 2nd person masculine singular suffix “your life,” but LXX reflects an alternative reading of the 1st person common singular suffix “my life.”

[11:21]  ¹² tn Heb “who were seeking my life, saying…” The sentence is broken up in conformity with contemporary English style.

[11:21]  ¹³ tn Heb “or you will die by our hand.”

[16:21]  ¹⁴ tn The words “The Lord said” are not in the text. However, it is obvious that he is the speaker. These words are supplied in the translation for clarity.

[16:21]  ¹⁵ tn Or “So I will make known to those nations, I will make known to them at this time my power and my might. Then they will know that my name is the Lord.”

[16:21]  tn There is a decided ambiguity in this text about the identity of the pronoun “them.” Is it his wicked people he has been predicting judgment upon or the nations that have come to recognize the folly of idolatry? The nearer antecedent would argue for that. However, usage of “hand” (translated here “power”) in 6:12; 15:6 and later 21:5 and especially the threatening motif of “at this time” (or “now”) in 10:18 suggest that the “So” goes back logically to vv. 16-18, following a grounds of judgment with the threatened consequence as it has in at least 16 out of 18 occurrences thus far. Moreover it makes decidedly more sense that the Jews will know that his name is the Lord as the result of the present (“at this time”) display of his power in judgment than that the idolaters will at some later (cf. Isa 2:2-4 for possible parallel) time. There has been a decided emphasis that the people of Israel do not “know” him (cf. 2:8; 4:22; 9:3, 6). Now they will, but in a way they did not wish to. There is probably an allusion (and an ironic reversal) here to Exod 3:13-15; 34:5-7. They have presumed upon his graciousness and forgotten that his name not only involves being with them to help but being against them to punish sin. Even if the alternate translation is followed the reference is still to God’s mighty power made known in judging the wicked Judeans. The words “power” and “might” are an example of hendiadys in which two nouns joined by “and” in which one modifies the other.

[36:3]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “will turn each one from his wicked way.”

[36:3]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “their iniquity and their sin.”

[36:3]  sn The offer of withdrawal of punishment for sin is consistent with the principles of Jer 18:7-8 and the temple sermon delivered early in the reign of this king (cf. 26:1-3; 7:5-7).

[39:14]  ¹⁸ sn Gedaliah. This is the first reference to this individual whom Nebuchadnezzar appointed governor over the people who were left to live in Judah (cf. 40:5; 2 Kgs 25:22). His father was the man who spoke up for Jeremiah when he was accused of being a false prophet by some of the priests and prophets (26:24). His grandfather was the royal secretary under Josiah who brought the discovery of the book of the law to Josiah’s attention, read it to him, and was involved in helping Josiah institute his reforms (2 Kgs 22:8-10).

[39:14]  ¹⁹ tn The meaning of the last phrase is uncertain. An alternate translation is “to take him home with him.” The text reads literally “to bring him into the house.” However, it is unclear whether “the house” refers to Jeremiah’s house or to Gedaliah’s. The fact that Nebuzaradan later offers Jeremiah the option of going back to Gedaliah (40:5) suggests that the house is here Gedaliah’s where Jeremiah would be looked out for in accord with Nebuchadnezzar’s command (v. 12).

[39:14]  ²⁰ tn Many translate this last clause as a conclusion or summary remark, “So Jeremiah stayed…” However, it is better to translate it as an adversative because it probably refers to the fact that rather than staying with Gedaliah in the governor’s residence Jeremiah stayed among the people. That is how he wound up being led off as a prisoner to Ramah. See further the study note on 40:1. According to IBHS 550 §33.2.1d the vav (ו) consecutive can have either of these values (see examples 11 and 12 for the adversative or contrastive nuance).