Yeremia 21:4
Konteks21:4 that the Lord, the God of Israel, says, 1 ‘The forces at your disposal 2 are now outside the walls fighting against King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon and the Babylonians 3 who have you under siege. I will gather those forces back inside the city. 4
Yeremia 27:8
Konteks27:8 But suppose a nation or a kingdom will not be subject to King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon. Suppose it will not submit to the yoke of servitude to 5 him. I, the Lord, affirm that 6 I will punish that nation. I will use the king of Babylon to punish it 7 with war, 8 starvation, and disease until I have destroyed it. 9
Yeremia 38:4
Konteks38:4 So these officials said to the king, “This man must be put to death. For he is demoralizing 10 the soldiers who are left in the city as well as all the other people there by these things he is saying. 11 This 12 man is not seeking to help these people but is trying to harm them.” 13
Yeremia 41:10
Konteks41:10 Then Ishmael took captive all the people who were still left alive in Mizpah. This included the royal princesses 14 and all the rest of the people in Mizpah that Nebuzaradan, the captain of the royal guard, had put under the authority of Gedaliah son of Ahikam. Ishmael son of Nethaniah took all these people captive and set out to cross over to the Ammonites.
Yeremia 52:25
Konteks52:25 From the city he took an official who was in charge of the soldiers, seven of the king’s advisers who were discovered in the city, an official army secretary who drafted citizens 15 for military service, and sixty citizens who were discovered in the middle of the city.
[21:4] 1 tn Heb “Tell Zedekiah, ‘Thus says the
[21:4] 2 tn Heb “the weapons which are in your hand.” Weapons stands here by substitution for the soldiers who wield them.
[21:4] 3 sn The Babylonians (Heb “the Chaldeans”). The Chaldeans were a group of people in the country south of Babylon from which Nebuchadnezzar came. The Chaldean dynasty his father established became the name by which the Babylonians are regularly referred to in the book of Jeremiah. Jeremiah’s contemporary Ezekiel uses both terms.
[21:4] 4 tn The structure of the Hebrew sentence of this verse is long and complex and has led to a great deal of confusion and misunderstanding. There are two primary points of confusion: 1) the relation of the phrase “outside the walls,” and 2) the antecedent of “them” in the last clause of the verse that reads in Hebrew: “I will gather them back into the midst of the city.” Most take the phrase “outside the walls” with “the Babylonians….” Some take it with “turn back/bring back” to mean “from outside….” However, the preposition “from” is part of the idiom for “outside….” The phrase goes with “fighting” as J. Bright (Jeremiah [AB], 215) notes and as NJPS suggests. The antecedent of “them” has sometimes been taken mistakenly to refer to the Babylonians. It refers rather to “the forces at your disposal” which is literally “the weapons which are in your hands.” This latter phrase is a figure involving substitution (called metonymy) as Bright also correctly notes. The whole sentence reads in Hebrew: “I will bring back the weapons of war which are in your hand with which you are fighting Nebuchadrezzar the King of Babylon and the Chaldeans who are besieging you outside your wall and I will gather them into the midst of the city.” The sentence has been restructured to better reflect the proper relationships and to make the sentence conform more to contemporary English style.
[27:8] 5 tn Heb “put their necks in the yoke of.” See the study note on v. 2 for the figure.
[27:8] 6 tn Heb “oracle of the
[27:8] 7 tn Heb “The nation and/or the kingdom which will not serve him, Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon, and which will not put its neck in the yoke of the king of Babylon, by sword, starvation, and disease I will punish [or more literally, “visit upon”] that nation, oracle of the
[27:8] 8 tn Heb “with/by the sword.”
[27:8] 9 tc The verb translated “destroy” (תָּמַם, tamam) is usually intransitive in the stem of the verb used here. It is found in a transitive sense elsewhere only in Ps 64:7. BDB 1070 s.v. תָּמַם 7 emends both texts. In this case they recommend תִּתִּי (titi): “until I give them into his hand.” That reading is suggested by the texts of the Syriac and Targumic translations (see BHS fn c). The Greek translation supports reading the verb “destroy” but treats it as though it were intransitive “until they are destroyed by his hand” (reading תֻּמָּם [tummam]). The MT here is accepted as the more difficult reading and support is seen in the transitive use of the verb in Ps 64:7.
[27:8] tn Heb “I will punish that nation until I have destroyed them [i.e., its people] by his hand.” “Hand” here refers to agency. Hence, “I will use him.”
[38:4] 10 tn Heb “weakening the hands of.” For this idiom see BDB 951 s.v. רָפָה Pi. and compare the usage in Isa 13:7; Ezek 21:7 (21:12 HT).
[38:4] 11 tn Heb “by saying these things.”
[38:4] 12 tn The Hebrew particle כִּי (ki) has not been rendered here because it is introducing a parallel causal clause to the preceding one. To render “For” might be misunderstood as a grounds for the preceding statement. To render “And” or “Moreover” sounds a little odd here. If it must be represented, “Moreover” is perhaps the best rendering.
[38:4] 13 tn Or “is not looking out for these people’s best interests but is really trying to do them harm”; Heb “is not seeking the welfare [or “well-being”; Hebrew shalom] of this people but [their] harm [more literally, evil].”
[41:10] 14 tn Heb “the daughters of the king.” Most commentators do not feel that this refers to the actual daughters of Zedekiah since they would have been too politically important to have escaped exile with their father. As noted in the translator’s note on 36:26 this need not refer to the actual daughters of the king but may refer to other royal daughters, i.e., the daughters of other royal princes.
[52:25] 15 tn Heb “men, from the people of the land” (also later in this verse).
