Yeremia 2:3

2:3 Israel was set apart to the Lord; they were like the first fruits of a harvest to him. ¹  All who tried to devour them were punished; disaster came upon them,” says the Lord.’”

Yeremia 2:28

2:28 But where are the gods you made for yourselves?

Let them save you when you are in trouble.

The sad fact is that ²  you have as many gods

as you have towns, Judah.

Yeremia 4:9

4:9 “When this happens,” ³  says the Lord,

“the king and his officials will lose their courage.

The priests will be struck with horror,

and the prophets will be speechless in astonishment.”

Yeremia 7:25

7:25 From the time your ancestors departed the land of Egypt until now, ⁴  I sent my servants the prophets to you again and again, ⁵  day after day. ⁶ 

Yeremia 17:6

17:6 They will be like a shrub ⁷  in the desert.

They will not experience good things even when they happen.

It will be as though they were growing in the desert,

in a salt land where no one can live.

Yeremia 21:1

The Lord Will Hand Jerusalem over to Enemies

21:1 The Lord spoke to Jeremiah ⁸  when King Zedekiah ⁹  sent to him Pashhur son of Malkijah and the priest Zephaniah son of Maaseiah. ¹⁰  Zedekiah sent them to Jeremiah to ask, ¹¹ 

Yeremia 22:22

22:22 My judgment will carry off all your leaders like a storm wind! ¹² 

Your allies will go into captivity.

Then you will certainly ¹³  be disgraced and put to shame

because of all the wickedness you have done.

Yeremia 32:1

Jeremiah Buys a Field

32:1 In the tenth year that Zedekiah was ruling over Judah the Lord spoke to Jeremiah. ¹⁴  That was the same as the eighteenth year of Nebuchadnezzar.

Yeremia 32:31

32:31 This will happen because ¹⁵  the people of this city have aroused my anger and my wrath since the time they built it until now. ¹⁶  They have made me so angry that I am determined to remove ¹⁷  it from my sight.

Yeremia 34:1

The Lord Makes an Ominous Promise to Zedekiah

34:1 The Lord spoke to Jeremiah while King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon was attacking Jerusalem ¹⁸  and the towns around it with a large army. This army consisted of troops from his own army and from the kingdoms and peoples of the lands under his dominion. ¹⁹ 

Yeremia 34:7

34:7 He did this while the army of the king of Babylon was attacking Jerusalem and the cities of Lachish and Azekah. He was attacking these cities because they were the only fortified cities of Judah which were still holding out. ²⁰ 

Yeremia 39:10

39:10 But he ²¹  left behind in the land of Judah some of the poor people who owned nothing. He gave them fields and vineyards at that time.

Yeremia 45:1

Baruch is Rebuked but also Comforted

45:1 The prophet Jeremiah spoke to Baruch son of Neriah while he was writing down in a scroll the words that Jeremiah spoke to him. ²²  This happened in the fourth year that Jehoiakim son of Josiah was ruling over Judah. ²³ 

Yeremia 50:31

50:31 “Listen! I am opposed to you, you proud city,” ²⁴ 

says the Lord God who rules over all. ²⁵ 

“Indeed, ²⁶  your day of reckoning ²⁷  has come,

the time when I will punish you. ²⁸ 

Yeremia 51:6

51:6 Get out of Babylonia quickly, you foreign people. ²⁹ 

Flee to save your lives.

Do not let yourselves be killed because of her sins.

For it is time for the Lord to wreak his revenge.

He will pay Babylonia ³⁰  back for what she has done. ³¹ 

Yeremia 52:1

The Fall of Jerusalem

52:1 ³² Zedekiah was twenty-one years old when he became king, and he ruled in Jerusalem ³³  for eleven years. His mother’s name was Hamutal ³⁴  daughter of Jeremiah, from Libnah.

[2:3]  ¹ sn Heb “the first fruits of his harvest.” Many commentators see the figure here as having theological significance for the calling of the Gentiles. It is likely, however, that in this context the metaphor – here rendered as a simile – is intended to bring out the special relationship and inviolability that Israel had with God. As the first fruits were the special possession of the Lord, to be eaten only by the priests and off limits to the common people, so Israel was God’s special possession and was not to be “eaten” by the nations.

[2:28]  ² tn This is an attempt to render the Hebrew particle כִּי (ki, “for, indeed”) contextually.

[4:9]  ³ tn Heb “In that day.”

[7:25]  ⁴ tn Heb “from the day your ancestors…until this very day.” However, “day” here is idiomatic for “the present time.”

[7:25]  ⁵ tn On the Hebrew idiom see the note at 7:13.

[7:25]  ⁶ tc There is some textual debate about the legitimacy of this expression here. The text reads merely “day” (יוֹם, yom). BHS suggests the word is to be deleted as a dittography of the plural ending of the preceding word. The word is in the Greek and Latin, and the Syriac represents the typical idiom “day after day” as though the noun were repeated. Either יוֹם has dropped out by haplography or a ם (mem) has been left out, i.e., reading יוֹמָם (yomam, “daily”).

[17:6]  ⁷ tn This word occurs only here and in Jer 48:6. It has been identified as a kind of juniper, which is a short shrub with minute leaves that look like scales. For a picture and more discussion see Fauna and Flora of the Bible, 131.

[21:1]  ⁸ tn Heb “The word which came to Jeremiah from the Lord.”

[21:1]  ⁹ sn Zedekiah was the last king of Judah. He ruled from 597 b.c. when he was placed on the throne by Nebuchadnezzar (2 Kgs 24:17) until the fall of Jerusalem in 587/6 b.c. He acquiesced to some of his anti-Babylonian counselors, rebelled against Nebuchadnezzar, and sought help from the Egyptians (Ezek 17:12-15). This brought Nebuchadnezzar against the city in 588 b.c. This is the first of two delegations to Jeremiah. The later one was sent after Nebuchadnezzar withdrew to take care of the Egyptian threat (cf. Jer 37:1-9).

[21:1]  ¹⁰ sn The Pashhur son of Malkijah referred to here is not the same as the Pashhur referred to in 20:1-6 who was the son of Immer. This Pashhur is referred to later in 38:1. The Zephaniah referred to here was the chief of security referred to later in Jer 29:25-26. He appears to have been favorably disposed toward Jeremiah.

[21:1]  ¹¹ tn Heb “sent to him…Maaseiah, saying,….”

[22:22]  ¹² tn Heb “A wind will shepherd away all your shepherds.” The figures have all been interpreted in the translation for the sake of clarity. For the use of the word “wind” as a metaphor or simile for God’s judgment (using the enemy forces) see 4:11-12; 13:24; 18:17. For the use of the word “shepherd” to refer to rulers/leaders 2:8; 10:21; and 23:1-4. For the use of the word “shepherd away” in the sense of carry off/drive away see BDB 945 s.v. רָעָה 2.d and compare Job 20:26. There is an obvious wordplay involved in two different senses of the word “shepherd,” one referring to their leaders and one referring to the loss of those leaders by the wind driving them off. There may even be a further play involving the word “wickedness” which comes from a word having the same consonants. If the oracles in this section are chronologically ordered this threat was fulfilled in 597 b.c. when many of the royal officials and nobles were carried away captive with Jehoiachin (see 2 Kgs 24:15) who is the subject of the next oracle.

[22:22]  ¹³ tn The use of the Hebrew particle כִּי (ki) is intensive here and probably also at the beginning of the last line of v. 21. (See BDB 472 s.v. כִּי 1.e.)

[32:1]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “The word which came to Jeremiah from the Lord in the eleventh year of…” See 7:1; 11:1; 18:1; 21:1; 30:1 for this same formula.

[32:1]  sn The dating formulas indicate that the date was 588/87 b.c. Zedekiah had begun to reign in 598/97 and Nebuchadnezzar had begun to reign in 605/604 b.c. The dating of Nebuchadnezzar’s rule here includes the partial year before he was officially crowned on New Year’s day. See the translator’s note on 25:1 for the method of dating a king’s reign.

[32:31]  ¹⁵ tn The statements in vv. 28-29 regarding the certain destruction of the city are motivated by three parallel causal clauses in vv. 30a, b, 31, the last of which extends through subordinate and coordinate clauses until the end of v. 35. An attempt has been made to bring out this structure by repeating the idea “This/it will happen” in front of each of these causal clauses in the English translation.

[32:31]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “from the day they built it until this day.”

[32:31]  sn The Israelites did not in fact “build” Jerusalem. They captured it from the Jebusites in the time of David. This refers perhaps to the enlarging and fortifying of the city after it came into the hands of the Israelites (2 Sam 5:6-10).

[32:31]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “For this city has been to me for a source of my anger and my wrath from the day they built it until this day so as remove it.” The preposition ְל (lamed) with the infinitive (Heb “so as to remove it”; לַהֲסִירָהּ, lahasirah) expresses degree (cf. R. J. Williams, Hebrew Syntax, 37, §199, and compare usage in 2 Sam 13:2).

[34:1]  ¹⁸ map For location see Map5 B1; Map6 F3; Map7 E2; Map8 F2; Map10 B3; JP1 F4; JP2 F4; JP3 F4; JP4 F4.

[34:1]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “The word which came to Jeremiah from the Lord while Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon and all his army and all the kingdoms of the earth under the dominion of his hand and all the peoples were fighting against Jerusalem and against all its towns, saying.” The sentence is obviously too long and the qualifiers obviously too ill-defined to translate literally. This same introductory formula has occurred in 7:1; 11:1; 18:1; 21:1; 30:1; 32:1 but without such a long introductory phrase. It is generally agreed that the phrase “all the peoples” should be seen as a parallel term to “all the kingdoms” under the qualifying “under the dominion of his hand/ control” and what is referred to are contingent forces supplied by these vassal kingdoms and peoples under the terms of their vassal treaties with Nebuchadnezzar. Some of the nature of the make-up of these forces may be seen from a reference to Babylonian, Aramean, Moabite, and Ammonite raiders in the earlier attacks on Jerusalem during the reign of Jehoiakim (2 Kgs 24:2).

[34:1]  sn It is difficult to assign dates to passages which have no dating formulas but there is sufficient detail in this passage to show that this incident occurred sometime early in the siege of Jerusalem while Jeremiah was still free to come and go (see v. 2 and compare 37:4 and see the second study note on 32:2). The Babylonian forces blockaded Jerusalem and attacked the outlying cities, reducing them one by one until Jerusalem had no further help. According to v. 7 Azekah and Lachish in the western foothills still held out and there is evidence from some of the correspondence from Lachish at this period that help was being sought from Egypt.

[34:7]  ²⁰ tn Heb “And the army of the king of Babylon was fighting against Jerusalem and against all the cities of Judah which were left, [namely] against Lachish and Azekah for they alone were left of the cities of Judah as fortified cities.” The intent of this sentence is to serve as a circumstantial sentence to v. 6 (= “while the army…”). That thought is picked up by “he did this while….” The long complex sentence in v. 7 has been broken down and qualifying material placed in the proper places to convey the same information in shorter English sentences in conformity with contemporary English style.

[39:10]  ²¹ tn Heb “Nebuzaradan, the captain of the royal guard.” However, the subject is clear from the preceding and contemporary English style would normally avoid repeating the proper name and title.

[45:1]  ²² sn It is unclear whether this refers to the first scroll (36:4) or the second (36:32). Perhaps from the reactions of Baruch this refers to the second scroll which was written after he had seen how the leaders had responded to the first (36:19). Baruch was from a well-placed family; his grandfather, Mahseiah (32:12) had been governor of Jerusalem under Josiah (2 Chr 34:8) and his brother was a high-ranking official in Zedekiah’s court (Jer 51:59). He himself appears to have had some personal aspirations that he could see were being or going to be jeopardized (v. 5). The passage is both a rebuke to Baruch and an encouragement that his life will be spared wherever he goes. This latter promise is perhaps the reason that the passage is placed where it is, i.e., after the seemingly universal threat of destruction of all who have gone to Egypt in Jer 44.

[45:1]  ²³ tn Heb “[This is] the word/message which Jeremiah the prophet spoke to Baruch son of Neriah when he wrote these words on a scroll from the mouth of Jeremiah in the fourth year of Jehoiakim son of Josiah king of Judah, saying.”

[50:31]  ²⁴ tn Heb “Behold, I am against you, proud one.” The word “city” is not in the text but it is generally agreed that the word is being used as a personification of the city which had “proudly defied” the Lord (v. 29). The word “city” is supplied in the translation for clarity.

[50:31]  ²⁵ tn Heb “oracle of the Lord Yahweh of armies.” For the rendering of this title and an explanation of its significance see the study note on 2:19.

[50:31]  ²⁶ tn The particle כִּי (ki) is probably asseverative here (so J. A. Thompson, Jeremiah [NICOT], 739, n. 13, and cf. BDB 472 s.v. כִּי 1.e for other examples). This has been a common use of this particle in the book of Jeremiah.

[50:31]  ²⁷ tn The words “of reckoning” are not in the text but are implicit from the context. They are supplied in the translation for clarity.

[50:31]  ²⁸ sn Compare v. 27.

[51:6]  ²⁹ tn The words “you foreign people” are not in the text and many think the referent is the exiles of Judah. While this is clearly the case in v. 45 the referent seems broader here where the context speaks of every man going to his own country (v. 9).

[51:6]  ³⁰ tn Heb “her.”

[51:6]  ³¹ tn Heb “paying to her a recompense [i.e., a payment in kind].”

[52:1]  ³² sn This final chapter does not mention Jeremiah, but its description of the downfall of Jerusalem and exile of the people validates the prophet’s ministry.

[52:1]  ³³ map For location see Map5 B1; Map6 F3; Map7 E2; Map8 F2; Map10 B3; JP1 F4; JP2 F4; JP3 F4; JP4 F4.

[52:1]  ³⁴ tn Some textual witnesses support the Kethib (consonantal text) in reading “Hamital.”