Yeremia 25:1

Seventy Years of Servitude for Failure to Give Heed

25:1 In the fourth year that Jehoiakim son of Josiah was king of Judah, the Lord spoke to Jeremiah ¹  concerning all the people of Judah. (That was the same as the first year that Nebuchadnezzar was king of Babylon.) ² 

Yeremia 27:6

27:6 I have at this time placed all these nations of yours under the power ³  of my servant, ⁴  King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon. I have even made all the wild animals subject to him. ⁵ 

Yeremia 27:9

27:9 So do not listen to your prophets or to those who claim to predict the future by divination, ⁶  by dreams, by consulting the dead, ⁷  or by practicing magic. They keep telling you, ‘You do not need to be ⁸  subject to the king of Babylon.’

Yeremia 27:11-13

27:11 Things will go better for the nation that submits to the yoke of servitude to ⁹  the king of Babylon and is subject to him. I will leave that nation ¹⁰  in its native land. Its people can continue to farm it and live in it. I, the Lord, affirm it!”’” ¹¹ 

27:12 I told King Zedekiah of Judah the same thing. I said, ¹²  “Submit ¹³  to the yoke of servitude to ¹⁴  the king of Babylon. Be subject to him and his people. Then you will continue to live. 27:13 There is no reason why you and your people should die in war ¹⁵  or from starvation or disease! ¹⁶  That’s what the Lord says will happen to any nation ¹⁷  that will not be subject to the king of Babylon.

Yeremia 32:36

32:36 “You and your people ¹⁸  are right in saying, ‘War, ¹⁹  starvation, and disease are sure to make this city fall into the hands of the king of Babylon.’ ²⁰  But now I, the Lord God of Israel, have something further to say about this city: ²¹ 

Yeremia 49:28

Judgment Against Kedar and Hazor

49:28 The Lord spoke about Kedar ²²  and the kingdoms of Hazor ²³  that King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon conquered.

“Army of Babylon, ²⁴  go and attack Kedar.

Lay waste those who live in the eastern desert. ²⁵ 

Yeremia 49:30

49:30 The Lord says, ²⁶  “Flee quickly, you who live in Hazor. ²⁷ 

Take up refuge in remote places. ²⁸ 

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

He has formed his strategy on how to defeat you.” ²⁹ 

Yeremia 50:2

50:2 “Announce ³⁰  the news among the nations! Proclaim it!

Signal for people to pay attention! ³¹ 

Declare the news! Do not hide it! Say:

‘Babylon will be captured.

Bel ³²  will be put to shame.

Marduk will be dismayed.

Babylon’s idols will be put to shame.

Her disgusting images ³³  will be dismayed. ³⁴ 

Yeremia 50:13

50:13 After I vent my wrath on it Babylon will be uninhabited. ³⁵ 

It will be totally desolate.

All who pass by will be filled with horror and will hiss out their scorn

because of all the disasters that have happened to it. ³⁶ 

Yeremia 50:24

50:24 I set a trap for you, Babylon;

you were caught before you knew it.

You fought against me.

So you were found and captured. ³⁷ 

Yeremia 50:28

50:28 Listen! Fugitives and refugees are coming from the land of Babylon.

They are coming to Zion to declare there

how the Lord our God is getting revenge,

getting revenge for what they have done to his temple. ³⁸ 

Yeremia 51:7

51:7 Babylonia had been a gold cup in the Lord’s hand.

She had made the whole world drunk.

The nations had drunk from the wine of her wrath. ³⁹ 

So they have all gone mad. ⁴⁰ 

Yeremia 51:9

51:9 Foreigners living there will say, ⁴¹ 

‘We tried to heal her, but she could not be healed.

Let’s leave Babylonia ⁴²  and each go back to his own country.

For judgment on her will be vast in its proportions.

It will be like it is piled up to heaven, stacked up into the clouds.’ ⁴³ 

Yeremia 51:24

51:24 “But I will repay Babylon

and all who live in Babylonia

for all the wicked things they did in Zion

right before the eyes of you Judeans,” ⁴⁴ 

says the Lord. ⁴⁵ 

Yeremia 51:48

51:48 Then heaven and earth and all that is in them

will sing for joy over Babylon.

For destroyers from the north will attack it,”

says the Lord. ⁴⁶ 

Yeremia 51:53

51:53 Even if Babylon climbs high into the sky ⁴⁷ 

and fortifies her elevated stronghold, ⁴⁸ 

I will send destroyers against her,” ⁴⁹ 

says the Lord. ⁵⁰ 

Yeremia 51:64

51:64 Then say, ‘In the same way Babylon will sink and never rise again because of the judgments ⁵¹  I am ready to bring upon her; they will grow faint.’”

The prophecies of Jeremiah end here. ⁵² 

[25:1]  ¹ tn Heb “The word was to Jeremiah.” It is implicit from the context that it was the Lord’s word. The verbal expression is more in keeping with contemporary English style.

[25:1]  ² sn The year referred to would be 605 b.c. Jehoiakim had been placed on the throne of Judah as a puppet king by Pharaoh Necho after the defeat of Josiah at Megiddo in 609 b.c. (2 Kgs 23:34-35). According to Jer 46:2 Nebuchadnezzar defeated Necho at Carchemish in that same year. After defeating Necho, Nebuchadnezzar had hurried back to Babylon where he was made king. After being made king he then returned to Judah and attacked Jerusalem (Dan 1:1. The date given there is the third year of Jehoiakim but scholars are generally agreed that the dating there is based on a different system than the one here. It did not count the part of the year before New Year’s day as an official part of the king’s official rule. Hence, the third year there is the fourth year here.) The identity of the foe from the north referred to in general terms (4:6; 6:1; 15:12) now becomes clear.

[27:6]  ³ tn Heb “have given…into the hand of.”

[27:6]  ⁴ sn See the study note on 25:9 for the significance of the application of this term to Nebuchadnezzar.

[27:6]  ⁵ tn Heb “I have given…to him to serve him.” The verb “give” in this syntactical situation is functioning like the Hiphil stem, i.e., as a causative. See Dan 1:9 for parallel usage. For the usage of “serve” meaning “be subject to” compare 2 Sam 22:44 and BDB 713 s.v. עָבַד 3.

[27:6]  sn This statement is rhetorical, emphasizing the totality of Nebuchadnezzar’s dominion. Neither here nor in Dan 2:38 is it to be understood literally.

[27:9]  ⁶ 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]  ⁷ sn An example of this is seen in 1 Sam 28.

[27:9]  ⁸ 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.

[27:11]  ⁹ tn Heb “put their necks in the yoke of.” See the study note on v. 2 for the figure.

[27:11]  ¹⁰ tn The words “Things will go better for” are not in the text. They are supplied contextually as a means of breaking up the awkward syntax of the original which reads “The nation which brings its neck under the yoke of the king of Babylon and subjects itself to him, I will leave it…”

[27:11]  ¹¹ tn Heb “oracle of the Lord.”

[27:12]  ¹² tn Heb “I spoke to Zedekiah…according to all these words, saying.”

[27:12]  ¹³ sn The verbs in this verse are all plural. They are addressed to Zedekiah and his royal advisers (compare 22:2).

[27:12]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “put their necks in the yoke of.” See the study note on v. 2 for the figure.

[27:13]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “with/by the sword.”

[27:13]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “Why should you and your people die…?” The rhetorical question expects the answer made explicit in the translation, “There is no reason!”

[27:13]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “…disease according to what the Lord spoke concerning the nation that…”

[32:36]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “you.” However, the pronoun is plural and is addressed to more than just Jeremiah (v. 26). It includes Jeremiah and those who have accepted his prophecy of doom.

[32:36]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “sword.”

[32:36]  ²⁰ sn Compare Jer 32:24, 28. In 32:24 this is Jeremiah’s statement just before he expresses his perplexity about the Lord’s command to buy the field of his cousin in spite of the certainty of the city’s demise. In 32:28 it is the Lord’s affirmation that the city will indeed fall. Here, the Lord picks up Jeremiah’s assessment only to add a further prophesy (vv. 37-41) of what is just as sure to happen (v. 42). This is the real answer to Jeremiah’s perplexity. Verses 28-35 are an assurance that the city will indeed be captured and a reiteration again of the reason for its demise. The structure of the two introductions in v. 28 and v. 36 are parallel and flow out of the statement that the Lord is God of all mankind and nothing is too hard for him (neither destruction nor restoration [cf. 1:10]).

[32:36]  ²¹ tn Heb “And now therefore thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, concerning this city which you [masc. pl.] are saying has been given [prophetic perfect = will be given] into the hand of the king of Babylon through sword, starvation, and disease.” The translation attempts to render the broader structure mentioned in the study note and to break the sentence down in a way that conforms more to contemporary English style and that will lead into the speech which does not begin until the next verse. As in v. 28 the third person introduction has been changed to first person for smoother narrative style in a first person speech (i.e., vv. 27-44 are all the Lord’s answer to Jeremiah’s prayer). The words “right in” added to “are saying” are intended to reflect the connection between v. 28 and the statement here (which is a repetition of v. 24). I.e., God does not deny that Jeremiah’s assessment is correct; he affirms it but has something further to say in answer to Jeremiah’s prayer.

[49:28]  ²² sn Kedar appears to refer to an Arabic tribe of nomads descended from Ishmael (Gen 25:13). They are associated here with the people who live in the eastern desert (Heb “the children of the east”; בְּנֵי־קֶדֶם, bÿne-qedem). In Isa 21:16 they are associated with the Temanites and the Dedanites, Arabic tribes in the north Arabian desert. They were sheep breeders (Isa 60:7) who lived in tents (Ps 120:5) and unwalled villages (Isa 42:11). According to Assyrian records they clashed with Assyria from the time of Shalmaneser in 850 until the time of Esarhaddon and Ashurbanipal in the late seventh century. According to the Babylonian Chronicles, Nebuchadnezzar defeated them in 599 b.c.

[49:28]  ²³ sn Hazor. Nothing is know about this Hazor other than what is said here in vv. 28, 30, 33. They appear to also be nomadic tent dwellers who had a loose association with the Kedarites.

[49:28]  ²⁴ tn The words “Army of Babylon” are not in the Hebrew text but are implicit from the context. They are supplied in the translation for clarity.

[49:28]  ²⁵ sn Heb “the children of the east.” Nothing much is known about them other than their association with the Midianites and Amalekites in their attack on Israel in the time of Gideon (Judg 6:3, 33) and the fact that God would let tribes from the eastern desert capture Moab and Ammon in the future (Ezek 25:4, 10). Midian and Amalek were consider to be located in the region in north Arabia east of Ezion Geber. That would put them in the same general locality as the region of Kedar. The parallelism here suggests that they are the same as the people of Kedar. The words here are apparently addressed to the armies of Nebuchadnezzar.

[49:30]  ²⁶ tn Heb “Oracle of the Lord.”

[49:30]  ²⁷ map For location see Map1 D2; Map2 D3; Map3 A2; Map4 C1.

[49:30]  ²⁸ 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]  ²⁹ tn Heb “has counseled a counsel against you, has planned a plan against you.”

[50:2]  ³⁰ tn The verbs are masculine plural. Jeremiah is calling on other unnamed messengers to spread the news.

[50:2]  ³¹ tn Heb “Raise a signal flag.”

[50:2]  ³² sn Bel was originally the name or title applied to the Sumerian storm god. During the height of Babylon’s power it became a title that was applied to Marduk who was Babylon’s chief deity. As a title it means “Lord.” Here it is a poetical parallel reference to Marduk mentioned in the next line.

[50:2]  ³³ tn The Hebrew word used here (גִּלּוּלִים, gillulim) is always used as a disdainful reference to idols. It is generally thought to have originally referred to “dung pellets” (cf. KBL 183 s.v. גִלּוּלִים). It is only one of several terms used in this way, such as “worthless things” (אַלִילִים, ’alilim), “vanities,” or “empty winds” (הֲבָלִים, havalim).

[50:2]  ³⁴ tn The verbs here are all in the tense that views the actions as though they were already done (the Hebrew prophetic perfect). The verbs in the next verse are a mixture of prophetic perfects and imperfects which announce future actions.

[50:2]  sn This refers to the fact that the idols that the Babylonians worshiped will not be able to protect them, but will instead be carried off into exile with the Babylonians themselves (cf. Isa 46:1-2).

[50:13]  ³⁵ tn Heb “From [or Because of] the wrath of the Lord it will be uninhabited.” The causal connection is spelled out more clearly and actively and the first person has been used because the speaker is the Lord. The referent “it” has been spelled out clearly from the later occurrence in the verse, “all who pass by Babylon.”

[50:13]  ³⁶ sn Compare Jer 49:17 and the study note there and see also the study notes on 18:16 and 19:8.

[50:24]  ³⁷ tn Heb “You were found [or found out] and captured because you fought against the Lord.” The same causal connection is maintained by the order of the translation but it puts more emphasis on the cause and connects it also more closely with the first half of the verse. The first person is used because the Lord is speaking of himself first in the first person “I set” and then in the third. The first person has been maintained throughout. Though it would be awkward, perhaps one could retain the reference to the Lord by translating, “I, the Lord.”

[50:28]  ³⁸ tn Heb “Hark! Fugitives and refugees from the land of Babylon to declare in Zion the vengeance of the Lord our God, vengeance for his temple.” For the meaning “Hark!” for the noun קוֹל (qol) see BDB 877 s.v. קוֹל 1.f and compare the usage in Jer 10:22. The syntax is elliptical because there is no main verb. The present translation has supplied the verb “come” as many other English versions have done. The translation also expands the genitival expression “vengeance for his temple” to explain what all the commentaries agree is involved.

[50:28]  sn This verse appears to be a parenthetical exclamation of the prophet in the midst of his report of what the Lord said through him. He throws himself into the future and sees the fall of Babylon and hears the people reporting in Zion how God has destroyed Babylon to get revenge for the Babylonians destroying his temple. Jeremiah prophesied from 627 b.c. (see the study note on 1:2) until sometime after 586 b.c. after Jerusalem fell and he was taken to Egypt. The fall of Babylon occurred in 538 b.c. some fifty years later. However, Jeremiah had prophesied as early as the first year of Nebuchadnezzar’s reign (605 b.c.; Jer 25:1) that many nations and great kings would come and subject Babylon, the instrument of God’s wrath – his sword against the nations – to bondage (Jer 25:12-14).

[51:7]  ³⁹ tn The words “of her wrath” are not in the Hebrew text but are supplied in the translation to help those readers who are not familiar with the figure of the “cup of the Lord’s wrath.”

[51:7]  sn The figure of the cup of the Lord’s wrath invoked in Jer 25:15-29 is invoked again here and Babylon is identified as the agent through which the wrath of the Lord is visited on the other nations. See the study note on 25:15 for explanation and further references.

[51:7]  ⁴⁰ tn Heb “upon the grounds of such conditions the nations have gone mad.”

[51:9]  ⁴¹ tn The words “Foreigners living there will say” are not in the text but are implicit from the third line. These words are generally assumed by the commentaries and are explicitly added in TEV and NCV which are attempting to clarify the text for the average reader.

[51:9]  ⁴² tn Heb “Leave/abandon her.” However, it is smoother in the English translation to make this verb equivalent to the cohortative that follows.

[51:9]  ⁴³ tn This is an admittedly very paraphrastic translation that tries to make the figurative nuance of the Hebrew original understandable for the average reader. The Hebrew text reads: “For her judgment [or punishment (cf. BDB 1078 s.v. מִשְׁפָּט 1.f) = ‘execution of judgment’] touches the heavens, and is lifted up as far as the clouds.” The figure of hyperbole or exaggeration is being used here to indicate the vastness of Babylon’s punishment which is the reason to escape (vv. 6, 9c). For this figure see Deut 1:28 in comparison with Num 13:28 and see also Deut 9:1. In both of the passages in Deut it refers to an exaggeration about the height of the walls of fortified cities. The figure also may be a play on Gen 11:4 where the nations gather in Babylon to build a tower that reaches to the skies. The present translation has interpreted the perfects here as prophetic because it has not happened yet or they would not be encouraging one another to leave and escape. For the idea here compare 50:16.

[51:24]  ⁴⁴ tn Or “Media, you are my war club…I will use you to smash…leaders. So before your very eyes I will repay…for all the wicked things they did in Zion.” For explanation see the translator’s note on v. 20. The position of the phrase “before your eyes” at the end of the verse after “which they did in Zion” and the change in person from second masculine singular in vv. 20b-23 (“I used you to smite”) to second masculine plural in “before your eyes” argue that a change in referent/addressee occurs in this verse. To maintain that the referent in vv. 20-23 is Media/Cyrus requires that this position and change in person be ignored; “before your eyes” then is attached to “I will repay.” The present translation follows J. A. Thompson (Jeremiah [NICOT], 757) and F. B. Huey (Jeremiah, Lamentations [NAC], 423) in seeing the referent as the Judeans who had witnessed the destruction of Zion/Jerusalem. The word “Judean” has been supplied for the sake of identifying the referent for the modern reader.

[51:24]  ⁴⁵ tn Heb “Oracle of the Lord.”

[51:48]  ⁴⁶ tn Heb “Oracle of the Lord.”

[51:53]  ⁴⁷ tn Or “ascends [into] heaven.” Note the use of the phrase in Deut 30:12; 2 Kgs 2:11; and Amos 9:2.

[51:53]  ⁴⁸ tn Heb “and even if she fortifies her strong elevated place.”

[51:53]  ⁴⁹ tn Heb “from me destroyers will go against her.”

[51:53]  ⁵⁰ tn Heb “Oracle of the Lord.”

[51:64]  ⁵¹ tn Or “disaster”; or “calamity.”

[51:64]  ⁵² sn The final chapter of the book of Jeremiah does not mention Jeremiah or record any of his prophecies.