Yeremia 2:25

2:25 Do not chase after other gods until your shoes wear out

and your throats become dry. ¹ 

But you say, ‘It is useless for you to try and stop me

because I love those foreign gods ²  and want to pursue them!’

Yesaya 40:19

40:19 A craftsman casts ³  an idol;

a metalsmith overlays it with gold

and forges silver chains for it.

Yesaya 56:10

56:10 All their watchmen ⁴  are blind,

they are unaware. ⁵ 

All of them are like mute dogs,

unable to bark.

They pant, ⁶  lie down,

and love to snooze.

Yeremia 5:19

5:19 “So then, Jeremiah, ⁷  when your people ⁸  ask, ‘Why has the Lord our God done all this to us?’ tell them, ‘It is because you rejected me and served foreign gods in your own land. So ⁹  you must serve foreigners ¹⁰  in a land that does not belong to you.’

[2:25]  ¹ tn Heb “Refrain your feet from being bare and your throat from being dry/thirsty.”

[2:25]  ² tn Heb “It is useless! No!” For this idiom, see Jer 18:12; NEB “No; I am desperate.”

[40:19]  ³ tn Heb “pours out”; KJV “melteth.”

[56:10]  ⁴ sn The “watchmen” are probably spiritual leaders, most likely prophets and priests, responsible for giving the people moral direction.

[56:10]  ⁵ tn Heb “they do not know”; KJV “they are all ignorant”; NIV “they all lack knowledge.”

[56:10]  ⁶ tn The Hebrew text has הֹזִים (hozim), which appears to be derived from an otherwise unattested verbal root הָזָה (hazah). On the basis of alleged cognates, BDB 223 s.v. הָזָה offers the definition “dream, rave” while HALOT 243 s.v. הזה lists “pant.” In this case the dog metaphor of the preceding lines continues. The reference to dogs at the beginning of v. 11 favors the extension of the metaphor. The Qumran scroll 1QIsa^a has חזים (“seers”) here. In this case the “watchmen” are directly identified as prophets and depicted as lazy.

[5:19]  ⁷ tn The word, “Jeremiah,” is not in the text but the second person address in the second half of the verse is obviously to him. The word is supplied in the translation here for clarity.

[5:19]  ⁸ tn The MT reads the second masculine plural; this is probably a case of attraction to the second masculine plural pronoun in the preceding line. An alternative would be to understand a shift from speaking first to the people in the first half of the verse and then speaking to Jeremiah in the second half where the verb is second masculine singular. E.g., “When you [people] say, “Why…?” then you, Jeremiah, tell them…”

[5:19]  ⁹ tn Heb “As you left me and…, so you will….” The translation was chosen so as to break up a rather long and complex sentence.

[5:19]  ¹⁰ sn This is probably a case of deliberate ambiguity (double entendre). The adjective “foreigners” is used for both foreign people (so Jer 30:8; 51:51) and foreign gods (so Jer 2:25; 3:13). See also Jer 16:13 for the idea of having to serve other gods in the lands of exile.