Yeremia 23:32

23:32 I, the Lord, affirm ¹  that I am opposed to those prophets who dream up lies and report them. They are misleading my people with their reckless lies. ²  I did not send them. I did not commission them. They are not helping these people at all. ³  I, the Lord, affirm it!” ⁴ 

Yeremia 27:9

27:9 So do not listen to your prophets or to those who claim to predict the future by divination, ⁵  by dreams, by consulting the dead, ⁶  or by practicing magic. They keep telling you, ‘You do not need to be ⁷  subject to the king of Babylon.’

Yeremia 29:8

29:8 “For the Lord God of Israel who rules over all ⁸  says, ‘Do not let the prophets or those among you who claim to be able to predict the future by divination ⁹  deceive you. And do not pay any attention to the dreams that you are encouraging them to dream.

[23:32]  ¹ tn Heb “Oracle of the Lord.”

[23:32]  ² tn Heb “with their lies and their recklessness.” This is an example of hendiadys where two nouns (in this case a concrete and an abstract one) are joined by “and” but one is intended to be the adjectival modifier of the other.

[23:32]  ³ sn In the light of what has been said this is a rhetorical understatement; they are not only “not helping,” they are leading them to their doom (cf. vv. 19-22). This figure of speech is known as litotes.

[23:32]  ⁴ tn Heb “Oracle of the Lord.”

[27:9]  ⁵ sn Various means of divination are alluded to in the OT. For example, Ezek 21:26-27 alludes to throwing down arrows to see which way they fall and consulting the shape of the liver of slaughtered animals. Gen 44:5 alludes to reading the future through pouring liquid in a cup. The means alluded to in this verse were all classified as pagan and prohibited as illegitimate in Deut 18:10-14. The Lord had promised that he would speak to them through prophets like Moses (Deut 18:15, 18). But even prophets could lie. Hence, the Lord told them that the test of a true prophet was whether what he said came true or not (Deut 18:20-22). An example of false prophesying and the vindication of the true as opposed to the false will be given in the chapter that follows this.

[27:9]  ⁶ sn An example of this is seen in 1 Sam 28.

[27:9]  ⁷ tn The verb in this context is best taken as a negative obligatory imperfect. See IBHS 508-9 §31.4g for discussion and examples. See Exod 4:15 as an example of positive obligation.

[29:8]  ⁸ tn Heb “Yahweh of armies, the God of Israel.”

[29:8]  sn See study notes on 2:19 and 7:3 for the explanation of this title.

[29:8]  ⁹ sn See the study notes on 27:9 for this term.