Yeremia 23:12

23:12 So the paths they follow will be dark and slippery.

They will stumble and fall headlong.

For I will bring disaster on them.

A day of reckoning is coming for them.” ¹ 

The Lord affirms it! ² 

Yeremia 25:31

25:31 The sounds of battle ³  will resound to the ends of the earth.

For the Lord will bring charges against the nations. ⁴ 

He will pass judgment on all humankind

and will hand the wicked over to be killed in war.’ ⁵ 

The Lord so affirms it! ⁶ 

Yeremia 29:3

29:3 He sent it with Elasah son of Shaphan ⁷  and Gemariah son of Hilkiah. ⁸  King Zedekiah of Judah had sent these men to Babylon to King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon. ⁹  The letter said:

Yeremia 37:5

37:5 At that time the Babylonian forces ¹⁰  had temporarily given up their siege against Jerusalem. ¹¹  They had had it under siege, but withdrew when they heard that the army of Pharaoh had set out from Egypt. ¹² )

Yeremia 49:30

49:30 The Lord says, ¹³  “Flee quickly, you who live in Hazor. ¹⁴ 

Take up refuge in remote places. ¹⁵ 

For King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon has laid out plans to attack you.

He has formed his strategy on how to defeat you.” ¹⁶ 

Yeremia 50:14

50:14 “Take up your battle positions all around Babylon,

all you soldiers who are armed with bows. ¹⁷ 

Shoot ¹⁸  all your arrows at her! Do not hold any back! ¹⁹ 

For she has sinned against the Lord.

Yeremia 50:40

50:40 I will destroy Babylonia just like I did

Sodom and Gomorrah and the neighboring towns.

No one will live there. ²⁰ 

No human being will settle in it,”

says the Lord. ²¹ 

Yeremia 51:47

51:47 “So the time will certainly come ²² 

when I will punish the idols of Babylon.

Her whole land will be put to shame.

All her mortally wounded will collapse in her midst. ²³ 

Yeremia 52:21

52:21 Each of the pillars was about 27 feet ²⁴  high, about 18 feet ²⁵  in circumference, three inches ²⁶  thick, and hollow.

[23:12]  ¹ tn For the last two lines see 11:23 and the notes there.

[23:12]  ² tn Heb “Oracle of the Lord.”

[25:31]  ³ tn For the use of this word see Amos 2:2; Hos 10:14; Ps 74:23. See also the usage in Isa 66:6 which is very similar to the metaphorical usage here.

[25:31]  ⁴ tn Heb “the Lord has a lawsuit against the nations.” For usage of the term see Hos 4:1; Mic 6:2, and compare the usage of the related verb in Jer 2:9; 12:1.

[25:31]  ⁵ tn Heb “give the wicked over to the sword.”

[25:31]  sn There is undoubtedly a deliberate allusion here to the reference to the “wars” (Heb “sword”) that the Lord had said he would send raging through the nations (vv. 16, 27) and the “war” (Heb “sword”) that he is proclaiming against them (v. 29).

[25:31]  ⁶ tn Heb “Oracle of the Lord.”

[29:3]  ⁷ sn Elasah son of Shaphan may have been the brother of Ahikam, who supported Jeremiah when the priests and the prophets in Jerusalem sought to kill Jeremiah for preaching that the temple and the city would be destroyed (cf. 26:24).

[29:3]  ⁸ sn This individual is not the same as the Gemariah mentioned in 36:10, 11, 12, 25 who was one of the officials who sought to have the first scroll of Jeremiah’s prophecies preserved. He may, however, have been a son or grandson of the High Priest who discovered the book of the law during the reign of Josiah (cf., e.g., 2 Kgs 22:8, 10) which was so instrumental in Josiah’s reforms.

[29:3]  ⁹ sn It is unclear whether this incident preceded or followed those in the preceding chapter. It is known from 52:59 that Zedekiah himself had made a trip to Babylon in the same year mentioned in 28:1 and that Jeremiah had used that occasion to address a prophecy of disaster to Babylon. It is not impossible that Jeremiah sent two such disparate messages at the same time (see Jer 25:8-11, 12-14, 17-18, 26).

[37:5]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “the Chaldeans.” See the study note on 21:4 for the rendering “Babylonian.” The word “forces” is supplied in the translation here for the sake of clarity.

[37:5]  ¹¹ map For location see Map5 B1; Map6 F3; Map7 E2; Map8 F2; Map10 B3; JP1 F4; JP2 F4; JP3 F4; JP4 F4.

[37:5]  ¹² tn Heb “And the army of Pharaoh had set out from Egypt and the Chaldeans who were besieging Jerusalem heard a report about them and they went up from besieging them.” The sentence has been restructured and reworded to give greater emphasis to the most pertinent fact, i.e., that the siege had been temporarily lifted. The word “temporarily” is not in the text but is implicit from the rest of the context. It is supplied in the translation here to better show that the information in vv. 4-5 is all parenthetical, providing a background for the oracle that will follow. For the meaning “given up their siege against” (Heb “had taken themselves away from against”) see BDB 749 s.v. עָלָה Niph.1.c(2); 759 s.v. עַל IV.2.b.

[37:5]  sn The Pharaoh referred to here is Pharaoh Hophra who is named in Jer 44:30. He ruled from 589-570 b.c. Shortly after he began to rule, Zedekiah had been enticed by some of the officials in his court to appeal to him for aid. This act of rebellion quickly brought Nebuchadnezzar’s wrath and he invaded Judah, blockading Jerusalem and reducing the fortified cities of Judah one by one. According to Jer 39:1 the siege began in Zedekiah’s ninth year (589/88 b.c.) and lasted until his eleventh year when Jerusalem fell (587/86 b.c.). The army of Pharaoh likely came sometime during 588 b.c.

[49:30]  ¹³ tn Heb “Oracle of the Lord.”

[49:30]  ¹⁴ map For location see Map1 D2; Map2 D3; Map3 A2; Map4 C1.

[49:30]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “Make deep to dwell.” See Jer 49:8 and the translator’s note there. The use of this same phrase here argues against the alternative there of going down from a height and going back home.

[49:30]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “has counseled a counsel against you, has planned a plan against you.”

[50:14]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “all you who draw the bow.”

[50:14]  ¹⁸ tc The verb here should probably be read as a Qal imperative יְרוּ (yÿru) from יָרָה (yarah) with a few Hebrew mss rather than a Qal imperative יְדוּ (yidu) from יָדָה (yadah) with the majority of Hebrew mss. The verb יָדָה (yadah) does not otherwise occur in the Qal and only elsewhere in the Piel with a meaning “cast” (cf. KBL 363 s.v. I יָדָה). The verb יָרָה (yarah) is common in both the Qal and the Hiphil with the meaning of shooting arrows (cf. BDB 435 s.v. יָרָה Qal.3 and Hiph.2). The confusion between ד (dalet) and ר (resh) is very common.

[50:14]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “Shoot at her! Don’t save any arrows!”

[50:40]  ²⁰ tn Heb “‘Like [when] God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah and the neighboring towns,’ oracle of the Lord, ‘no man will live there.’” The Lord is speaking so the first person has been substituted for “God.” The sentence has again been broken up to better conform with contemporary English style.

[50:40]  sn Compare Jer 49:18 where the same prophecy is applied to Edom.

[50:40]  ²¹ tn Heb “Oracle of the Lord.”

[51:47]  ²² tn Heb “That being so, look, days are approaching.” לָכֵן (lakhen) often introduces the effect of an action. That may be the case here, the turmoil outlined in v. 46 serving as the catalyst for the culminating divine judgment described in v. 47. Another possibility is that לָכֵן here has an asseverative force (“certainly”), as in Isa 26:14 and perhaps Jer 5:2 (see the note there). In this case the word almost has the force of “for, since,” because it presents a cause for an accompanying effect. See Judg 8:7 and the discussion of Isa 26:14 in BDB 486-87 s.v. כֵּן 3.d.

[51:47]  ²³ tn Or “all her slain will fall in her midst.” In other words, her people will be overtaken by judgment and be unable to escape. The dead will lie in heaps in the very heart of the city and land.

[52:21]  ²⁴ tn Heb “eighteen cubits.” A “cubit” was a unit of measure, approximately equivalent to a foot and a half.

[52:21]  ²⁵ tn Heb “twelve cubits.” A “cubit” was a unit of measure, approximately equivalent to a foot and a half.

[52:21]  ²⁶ tn Heb “four fingers.”