Yeremia 2:37

2:37 Moreover, you will come away from Egypt

with your hands covering your faces in sorrow and shame ¹ 

because the Lord will not allow your reliance on them to be successful

and you will not gain any help from them. ² 

Yeremia 5:24

5:24 They do not say to themselves, ³ 

“Let us revere the Lord our God.

It is he who gives us the autumn rains and the spring rains at the proper time.

It is he who assures us of the regular weeks of harvest.” ⁴ 

Yeremia 7:30

7:30 The Lord says, “I have rejected them because ⁵  the people of Judah have done what I consider evil. ⁶  They have set up their disgusting idols in the temple ⁷  which I have claimed for my own ⁸  and have defiled it.

Yeremia 10:22

10:22 Listen! News is coming even now. ⁹ 

The rumble of a great army is heard approaching ¹⁰  from a land in the north. ¹¹ 

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

places where only jackals live.

Yeremia 15:5

15:5 The Lord cried out, ¹² 

“Who in the world ¹³  will have pity on you, Jerusalem?

Who will grieve over you?

Who will stop long enough ¹⁴ 

to inquire about how you are doing? ¹⁵ 

Yeremia 24:9

24:9 I will bring such disaster on them that all the kingdoms of the earth will be horrified. I will make them an object of reproach, a proverbial example of disaster. I will make them an object of ridicule, an example to be used in curses. ¹⁶  That is how they will be remembered wherever I banish them. ¹⁷ 

Yeremia 25:18

25:18 I made Jerusalem ¹⁸  and the cities of Judah, its kings and its officials drink it. ¹⁹  I did it so Judah would become a ruin. I did it so Judah, its kings, and its officials would become an object ²⁰  of horror and of hissing scorn, an example used in curses. ²¹  Such is already becoming the case! ²² 

Yeremia 31:21

31:21 I will say, ²³  ‘My dear children of Israel, ²⁴  keep in mind

the road you took when you were carried off. ²⁵ 

Mark off in your minds the landmarks.

Make a mental note of telltale signs marking the way back.

Return, my dear children of Israel.

Return to these cities of yours.

Yeremia 37:15

37:15 The officials were very angry ²⁶  at Jeremiah. They had him flogged and put in prison in the house of Jonathan, the royal secretary, which they had converted into a place for confining prisoners. ²⁷ 

Yeremia 39:18

39:18 I will certainly save you. You will not fall victim to violence. ²⁸  You will escape with your life ²⁹  because you trust in me. I, the Lord, affirm it!”’” ³⁰ 

Yeremia 51:12

51:12 Give the signal to attack Babylon’s wall! ³¹ 

Bring more guards! ³² 

Post them all around the city! ³³ 

Put men in ambush! ³⁴ 

For the Lord will do what he has planned.

He will do what he said he would do to the people of Babylon. ³⁵ 

[2:37]  ¹ tn Heb “with your hands on your head.” For the picture here see 2 Sam 13:19.

[2:37]  ² tn Heb “The Lord has rejected those you trust in; you will not prosper by/from them.”

[5:24]  ³ tn Heb “say in their hearts.”

[5:24]  ⁴ tn Heb “who keeps for us the weeks appointed for harvest.”

[7:30]  ⁵ tn The words “I have rejected them” are not in the Hebrew text, which merely says “because.” These words are supplied in the translation to show more clearly the connection to the preceding.

[7:30]  ⁶ tn Heb “have done the evil in my eyes.”

[7:30]  ⁷ sn Compare, e.g., 2 Kgs 21:3, 5, 7; 23:4, 6; Ezek 8:3, 5, 10-12, 16. Manasseh had desecrated the temple by building altars, cult symbols, and idols in it. Josiah had purged the temple of these pagan elements. But it is obvious from both Jeremiah and Ezekiel that they had been replaced shortly after Josiah’s death. They were a primary cause of Judah’s guilt and punishment (see beside this passage, 19:5; 32:34-35).

[7:30]  ⁸ tn Heb “the house which is called by my name.” Cf. 7:10, 11, 14 and see the translator’s note 7:10 for the explanation for this rendering.

[10:22]  ⁹ tn Heb “The sound of a report, behold, it is coming.”

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

[10:22]  ¹¹ sn Compare Jer 6:22.

[15:5]  ¹² tn The words “The Lord cried out” are not in the text. However, they are necessary to show the shift in address between speaking to Jeremiah in vv. 1-4 about the people and addressing Jerusalem in vv. 5-6 and the shift back to the address to Jeremiah in vv. 7-9. The words “oracle of the Lord” are, moreover, found at the beginning of v. 6.

[15:5]  ¹³ tn The words, “in the world” are not in the text but are the translator’s way of trying to indicate that this rhetorical question expects a negative answer.

[15:5]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “turn aside.”

[15:5]  ¹⁵ tn Or “about your well-being”; Heb “about your welfare” (שָׁלוֹם, shalom).

[24:9]  ¹⁶ tn Or “an object of reproach in peoples’ proverbs…an object of ridicule in people’s curses.” The alternate translation treats the two pairs which are introduced without vavs (ו) but are joined by vavs as examples of hendiadys. This is very possible here but the chain does not contain this pairing in 25:18; 29:18.

[24:9]  sn For an example of how the “example used in curses” worked, see Jer 29:22. Sodom and Gomorrah evidently function much that same way (see 23:14; 49:18; 50:40; Deut 29:23; Zeph 2:9).

[24:9]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “I will make them for a terror for disaster to all the kingdoms of the earth, for a reproach and for a proverb, for a taunt and a curse in all the places which I banish them there.” The complex Hebrew sentence has been broken down into equivalent shorter sentences to conform more with contemporary English style.

[25:18]  ¹⁸ map For location see Map5 B1; Map6 F3; Map7 E2; Map8 F2; Map10 B3; JP1 F4; JP2 F4; JP3 F4; JP4 F4.

[25:18]  ¹⁹ tn The words “I made” and “drink it” are not in the text. The text from v. 18 to v. 26 contains a list of the nations that Jeremiah “made drink it.” The words are supplied in the translation here and at the beginning of v. 19 for the sake of clarity. See also the note on v. 26.

[25:18]  ²⁰ tn Heb “in order to make them a ruin, an object of…” The sentence is broken up and the antecedents are made specific for the sake of clarity and English style.

[25:18]  ²¹ tn See the study note on 24:9 for explanation.

[25:18]  ²² tn Heb “as it is today.” This phrase would obviously be more appropriate after all these things had happened as is the case in 44:6, 23 where the verbs referring to these conditions are past. Some see this phrase as a marginal gloss added after the tragedies of 597 b.c. or 586 b.c. However, it may refer here to the beginning stages where Judah has already suffered the loss of Josiah, of its freedom, of some of its temple treasures, and of some of its leaders (Dan 1:1-3. The different date for Jehoiakim there is due to the different method of counting the king’s first year; the third year there is the same as the fourth year in 25:1).

[31:21]  ²³ tn The words “I will say” are not in the text. They are supplied in the translation to mark the transition from the address about Israel in a response to Rachel’s weeping (vv. 15-20) to a direct address to Israel which is essentially the answer to Israel’s prayer of penitence (cf. G. L. Keown, P. J. Scalise, T. G. Smothers, Jeremiah 26-52 [WBC], 121.)

[31:21]  sn The Lord here invites Israel to stop dilly-dallying and prepare themselves to return because he is prepared to do something new and miraculous.

[31:21]  ²⁴ tn Heb “Virgin Israel.” For the significance see the study note on 31:3.

[31:21]  ²⁵ tn Heb “Set your mind to the highway, the way which you went.” The phrase “the way you went” has been translated “the road you took when you were carried off” to help the reader see the reference to the exile implicit in the context. The verb “which you went” is another example of the old second feminine singular which the Masoretes typically revocalize (Kethib הָלָכְתִּי [halakhti]; Qere הָלָכְתְּ [halakht]). The vocative has been supplied in the translation at the beginning to help make the transition from third person reference to Ephraim/Israel in the preceding to second person in the following and to identify the referent of the imperatives. Likewise, this line has been moved to the front to show that the reference to setting up sign posts and landmarks is not literal but figurative, referring to making a mental note of the way they took when carried off so that they can easily find their way back. Lines three and four in the Hebrew text read, “Set up sign posts for yourself; set up guideposts/landmarks for yourself.” The word translated “telltale signs marking the way” occurs only here. Though its etymology and precise meaning are unknown, all the lexicons agree in translating it as “sign post” or something similar based on the parallelism.

[37:15]  ²⁶ sn The officials mentioned here are not the same as those mentioned in Jer 36:12, most of whom were favorably disposed toward Jeremiah, or at least regarded what he said with enough trepidation to try to protect Jeremiah and preserve the scroll containing his messages (36:16, 19, 24). All those officials had been taken into exile with Jeconiah in 597 b.c. (2 Kgs 24:14).

[37:15]  ²⁷ tn Heb “for they had made it into the house of confinement.” The causal particle does not fit the English sentence very well and “house of confinement” needs some explanation. Some translate this word “prison” but that creates redundancy with the earlier word translated “prison” (בֵּית הָאֵסוּר, bet ha’esur, “house of the band/binding”] which is more closely related to the concept of prison [cf. אָסִיר, ’asir, “prisoner”]). It is clear from the next verse that Jeremiah was confined in a cell in the dungeon of this place.

[39:18]  ²⁸ sn Heb “you will not fall by the sword.” In the context this would include death in battle and execution as a prisoner of war.

[39:18]  ²⁹ tn Heb “your life will be to you for spoil.” For the meaning of this idiom see the study note on 21:9 and compare the usage in 21:9; 38:2; 45:4.

[39:18]  ³⁰ tn Heb “Oracle of the Lord.”

[51:12]  ³¹ tn Heb “Raise a banner against the walls of Babylon.”

[51:12]  ³² tn Heb “Strengthen the watch.”

[51:12]  ³³ tn Heb “Station the guards.”

[51:12]  ³⁴ tn Heb “Prepare ambushes.”

[51:12]  sn The commands are here addressed to the kings of the Medes to fully blockade the city by posting watchmen and setting men in ambush to prevent people from escaping from the city (cf. 2 Kgs 25:4).

[51:12]  ³⁵ tn Heb “For the Lord has both planned and done what he said concerning the people living in Babylon,” i.e., “he has carried out what he planned.” Here is an obvious case where the perfects are to be interpreted as prophetic; the commands imply that the attack is still future.