Yeremia 4:15

4:15 For messengers are coming, heralding disaster,

from the city of Dan and from the hills of Ephraim. ¹ 

Yeremia 11:4

11:4 Those are the terms that I charged your ancestors ²  to keep ³  when I brought them out of Egypt, that place which was like an iron-smelting furnace. ⁴  I said at that time, ⁵  “Obey me and carry out the terms of the agreement ⁶  exactly as I commanded you. If you do, ⁷  you will be my people and I will be your God. ⁸ 

Yeremia 11:19

11:19 Before this I had been like a docile lamb ready to be led to the slaughter.

I did not know they were making plans to kill me. ⁹ 

I did not know they were saying, ¹⁰ 

“Let’s destroy the tree along with its fruit! ¹¹ 

Let’s remove Jeremiah ¹²  from the world of the living

so people will not even be reminded of him any more.” ¹³ 

Yeremia 27:16

27:16 I also told the priests and all the people, “The Lord says, ‘Do not listen to what your prophets are saying. They are prophesying to you that ¹⁴  the valuable articles taken from the Lord’s temple will be brought back from Babylon very soon. ¹⁵  But they are prophesying a lie to you.

Yeremia 28:6

28:6 The prophet Jeremiah said, “Amen! May the Lord do all this! May the Lord make your prophecy come true! May he bring back to this place from Babylon all the valuable articles taken from the Lord’s temple and the people who were carried into exile.

Yeremia 29:29

29:29 Zephaniah the priest read that letter to the prophet Jeremiah. ¹⁶ 

Yeremia 32:37

32:37 ‘I will certainly regather my people from all the countries where I will have exiled ¹⁷  them in my anger, fury, and great wrath. I will bring them back to this place and allow them to live here in safety.

Yeremia 35:4

35:4 I took them to the Lord’s temple. I took them into the room where the disciples of the prophet Hanan son of Igdaliah stayed. ¹⁸  That room was next to the one where the temple officers stayed and above the room where Maaseiah son of Shallum, one of the doorkeepers ¹⁹  of the temple, stayed.

Yeremia 36:14

36:14 All the officials sent Jehudi, who was the son of Nethaniah and the grandson of Cushi, to Baruch. They ordered him to tell Baruch, “Come here and bring with you ²⁰  the scroll you read in the hearing of the people.” ²¹  So Baruch son of Neriah went to them, carrying the scroll in his hand. ²² 

Yeremia 38:11

38:11 So Ebed Melech took the men with him and went to a room under the treasure room in the palace. ²³  He got some worn-out clothes and old rags ²⁴  from there and let them down by ropes to Jeremiah in the cistern.

Yeremia 41:16

41:16 Johanan son of Kareah and all the army officers who were with him led off all the people who had been left alive at Mizpah. They had rescued them from Ishmael son of Nethaniah after he killed Gedaliah son of Ahikam. They led off the men, women, children, soldiers, and court officials whom they had brought away from Gibeon.

Yeremia 50:22

50:22 The noise of battle can be heard in the land of Babylonia. ²⁵ 

There is the sound of great destruction.

[4:15]  ¹ tn Heb “For a voice declaring from Dan and making heard disaster from the hills of Ephraim.”

[11:4]  ² tn Heb “fathers” (also in vv. 5, 7, 10).

[11:4]  ³ tn Heb “does not listen…this covenant which I commanded your fathers.” The sentence is broken up this way in conformity with contemporary English style.

[11:4]  ⁴ tn Heb “out of the land of Egypt, out of the iron-smelting furnace.”

[11:4]  ⁵ tn In place of the words “I said at that time” the Hebrew text has “saying.” The sentence is again being restructured in English to avoid the long, confusing style of the Hebrew original.

[11:4]  ⁶ tn Heb “Obey me and carry them out.” The “them” refers back to the terms of the covenant which they were charged to keep according to the preceding. The referent is made specific to avoid ambiguity.

[11:4]  ⁷ tn The words, “If you do” are not in the text. They have been supplied in the translation to break up a long sentence consisting of an imperative followed by a consequential sentence.

[11:4]  ⁸ sn Obey me and carry out the terms of the agreement…and I will be your God. This refers to the Mosaic law which was instituted at Sinai and renewed on the Plains of Moab before Israel entered into the land. The words “the terms of the covenant” are explicitly used for the Ten Commandments in Exod 34:28 and for the additional legislation given in Deut 28:69; 29:8. The formulation here is reminiscent of Deut 29:9-14 (29:10-15 HT). The book of Deuteronomy is similar in its structure and function to an ancient Near Eastern treaty. In these the great king reminded his vassal of past benefits that he had given to him, charged him with obligations (the terms or stipulations of the covenant) chief among which was absolute loyalty and sole allegiance, promised him future benefits for obeying the stipulations (the blessings), and placed him under a curse for disobeying them. Any disobedience was met with stern warnings of punishment in the form of destruction and exile. Those who had witnessed the covenant were called in to confirm the continuing goodness of the great king and the disloyalty of the vassal. The vassal was then charged with a list of particular infringements of the stipulations and warned to change his actions or suffer the consequences. This is the background for Jer 11:1-9. Jeremiah is here functioning as a messenger from the Lord, Israel’s great king, and charging both the fathers and the children with breach of covenant.

[11:19]  ⁹ tn Heb “against me.” The words “to kill me” are implicit from the context and are supplied in the translation for clarity.

[11:19]  ¹⁰ tn The words “I did not know that they were saying” are not in the text. The quote is without formal introduction in the original. These words are supplied in the translation for clarity.

[11:19]  ¹¹ tn This word and its pronoun (לַחְמוֹ, lakhmo, “its bread”) is often emended to read “in/with its sap” = “in its prime” (either לֵחוֹ [lekho] or לֵחְמוֹ [lekhÿmo]); the latter would be more likely and the מוֹ (mo) could be explained as a rare use of the old poetic third plural suffix for the third singular; cf. GKC 258 §91.l for general use and Ps 11:7 and Job 27:23 for third singular use. Though this fits the context nicely the emendation is probably unnecessary since the word “bread” is sometimes used of other foodstuff than grain or its products (cf. BDB 537 s.v. לֶחֶם 2.a).

[11:19]  sn The word fruit refers contextually here to the prophecies that Jeremiah was giving, not (as some suppose) his progeny. Jeremiah was not married and had no children.

[11:19]  ¹² tn Heb “cut it [or him] off.” The metaphor of the tree may be continued, though the verb “cut off” is used also of killing people. The rendering clarifies the meaning of the metaphor.

[11:19]  ¹³ tn Heb “so that his name will not be remembered any more.”

[27:16]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “don’t listen to the words of the prophets who are prophesying to you….” The sentence has been broken up for the sake of English style and one level of embedded quotes has been eliminated to ease complexity.

[27:16]  ¹⁵ sn This refers to the valuable articles of the temple treasury which were carried off by Nebuchadnezzar four years earlier when he carried off Jeconiah, his family, some of his nobles, and some of the cream of Judean society (2 Kgs 24:10-16, especially v. 13 and see also vv. 19-20 in the verses following).

[29:29]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “in the ears of Jeremiah the prophet.”

[32:37]  ¹⁷ tn The verb here should be interpreted as a future perfect; though some of the people have already been exiled (in 605 and 597 b.c.), some have not yet been exiled at the time this prophesy is given (see study note on v. 1 for the date). However, contemporary English style does not regularly use the future perfect, choosing instead to use the simple future or the simple perfect as the present translation has done here.

[35:4]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “the sons of Hanan son of Igdaliah, the man of God.” The reference to “sons” and to “man of God” fits the usage of these terms elsewhere to refer to prophets and their disciples (see BDB 43-44 s.v. אֱלֹהִים 3(b) and compare usage in 2 Kgs 4:40 for the former and BDB 121 s.v. בֵּן 7.a and compare the usage in 2 Kgs 4:38 for the latter).

[35:4]  ¹⁹ sn According to Jer 52:24; 2 Kgs 25:18 there were three officers who carried out this duty. It was their duty to guard the entrance of the temple to keep people out that did not belong there, such as those who were foreigners or ritually unclean (see 2 Kgs 12:9 and compare Ps 118:19-20).

[36:14]  ²⁰ tn Heb “in your hand.”

[36:14]  ²¹ tn The original has another example of a prepositioned object (called casus pendens in the grammars; cf. GKC 458 §143.b) which is intended to focus attention on “the scroll.” The Hebrew sentence reads: “The scroll which you read from it in the ears of the people take it and come.” Any attempt to carry over this emphasis into the English translation would be awkward. Likewise, the order of the two imperatives has been reversed as more natural in English.

[36:14]  ²² tn Heb “So Baruch son of Neriah took the scroll in his hand and went to them.” The clause order has been rearranged in the translation for stylistic reasons.

[38:11]  ²³ tn Heb “went into the palace in under the treasury.” Several of the commentaries (e.g., J. Bright, Jeremiah [AB], 227; J. A. Thompson, Jeremiah [NICOT], 639, n. 6) emend the prepositional phrase “in under” (אֶל־תַּחַת, ’el-takhat) to the noun “wardrobe” plus the preposition “to” (אֶל־מֶלְתַחַת, ’el-meltakhat). This is a plausible emendation which would involve dropping out מֶל (mel) due to its similarity with the אֶל (’el) which precedes it. However, there is no textual or versional evidence for such a reading and the compound preposition is not in itself objectionable (cf. BDB 1066 s.v. תַּחַת III.1.a). The Greek version reads “the part underground” (representing a Hebrew Vorlage of אֶל תַּחַת הָאָרֶץ, ’el takhat ha’arets) in place of אֶל תַּחַת הָאוֹצָר (’el takhat ha’otsar). The translation follows the Hebrew text but adds the word “room” for the sake of English style.

[38:11]  ²⁴ tn Heb “worn-out clothes and worn-out rags.”

[50:22]  ²⁵ tn The words “of Babylonia” are not in the text but are implicit from the context. They have been supplied in the translation to clarify the referent.

[50:22]  sn The verbs in vv. 22-25 are all descriptive of the present, but all of this is really to take place in the future. Hebrew poetry has a way of rendering future actions as though they were already accomplished. The poetry of this section makes it difficult, however, to render the verbs as future, as has been done regularly in the present translation.