Yeremia 4:23

4:23 “I looked at the land and saw ¹  that it was an empty wasteland. ² 

I looked up at the sky, and its light had vanished.

Yeremia 23:40

23:40 I will bring on you lasting shame and lasting disgrace which will never be forgotten!’”

Yeremia 38:13

38:13 So they pulled Jeremiah up from the cistern with ropes. Jeremiah, however, still remained confined ³  to the courtyard of the guardhouse.

Yeremia 40:13

Ishmael Murders Gedaliah and Carries the Judeans at Mizpah off as Captives

40:13 Johanan and all the officers of the troops that had been hiding in the open country came to Gedaliah at Mizpah.

Yeremia 42:14

42:14 You must not say, ‘No, we will not stay. Instead we will go and live in the land of Egypt where we will not face war, ⁴  or hear the enemy’s trumpet calls, ⁵  or starve for lack of food.’ ⁶ 

Yeremia 47:7

47:7 But how can it rest ⁷ 

when I, the Lord, have ⁸  given it orders?

I have ordered it to attack

the people of Ashkelon and the seacoast. ⁹ 

Yeremia 48:5

48:5 Indeed they will climb the slopes of Luhith,

weeping continually as they go. ¹⁰ 

For on the road down to Horonaim

they will hear the cries of distress over the destruction. ¹¹ 

Yeremia 52:9

52:9 They captured him and brought him up to the king of Babylon at Riblah ¹²  in the territory of Hamath and he passed sentence on him there.

[4:23]  ¹ tn Heb “I looked at the land and behold...” This indicates the visionary character of Jeremiah’s description of the future condition of the land of Israel.

[4:23]  ² tn Heb “formless and empty.” This is a case of hendiadys (two nouns joined by “and” both describe the same thing): one noun retains its full nominal force, the other functions as an adjective. The words תֹהוּ וָבֹהוּ (tohu vavohu) allude to Gen 1:2, hyperbolically picturing a reversal of creation and return to the original precreation chaos.

[38:13]  ³ tn Heb “Jeremiah remained/stayed in the courtyard of the guardhouse.” The translation is meant to better reflect the situation; i.e., Jeremiah was released from the cistern but still had to stay in the courtyard of the guardhouse.

[42:14]  ⁴ tn Heb “see [or experience] war.”

[42:14]  ⁵ tn Heb “hear the sound of the trumpet.” The trumpet was used to gather the troops and to sound the alarm for battle.

[42:14]  ⁶ tn Jer 42:13-14 are a long complex condition (protasis) whose consequence (apodosis) does not begin until v. 15. The Hebrew text of vv. 13-14 reads: 42:13 “But if you say [or continue to say (the form is a participle)], ‘We will not stay in this land’ with the result that you do not obey [or “more literally, do not hearken to the voice of] the Lord your God, 42:14 saying, ‘No, but to the land of Egypt we will go where we…and there we will live,’ 42:15 now therefore hear the word of the Lord…” The sentence has been broken up and restructured to better conform with contemporary English style but an attempt has been made to maintain the contingencies and the qualifiers that are in the longer Hebrew original.

[47:7]  ⁷ tn The reading here follows the Greek, Syriac, and Latin versions. The Hebrew text reads “how can you rest” as a continuation of the second person in v. 6.

[47:7]  ⁸ tn Heb “When the Lord has.” The first person is again adopted because the Lord has been speaking.

[47:7]  ⁹ tn Heb “Against Ashkelon and the sea coast, there he has appointed it.” For the switch to the first person see the preceding translator’s note. “There” is poetical and redundant and the idea of “attacking” is implicit in “against.”

[48:5]  ¹⁰ tn Or “Indeed her fugitives will…” It is unclear what the subject of the verbs are in this verse. The verb in the first two lines “climb” (יַעֲלֶה, ya’aleh) is third masculine singular and the verb in the second two lines “will hear” (שָׁמֵעוּ, shame’u) is third common plural. The causal particles at the beginning of the two halves of the verse suggest some connection with the preceding, so the translation assumes that the children are still the subject. In this case the singular verb would be a case of the distributive singular already referred to in the translator’s note on 46:15. The parallel passage in Isa 15:5 refers to the “fugitives” (בְּרִיחֶהָ, bÿrikheha) with the same singular verb as here and that may be the implied subject here.

[48:5]  sn The location of Luhith and Horonaim are uncertain, though, from their connection with Zoar in Isa 15:5, they appear to be located in southern Moab. Zoar was at the southern tip of the Dead Sea.

[48:5]  ¹¹ tn Heb “the distresses of the cry of destruction.” Many commentaries want to leave out the word “distresses” because it is missing from the Greek version and the parallel passage in Isa 15:5. However, it is in all the Hebrew mss and in the other early versions, and it is hard to see why it would be added here if it were not original.

[52:9]  ¹² sn Riblah was a strategic town on the Orontes River in Syria. It was at a crossing of the major roads between Egypt and Mesopotamia. Pharaoh Necho had earlier received Jehoahaz there and put him in chains (2 Kgs 23:33) prior to taking him captive to Egypt. Nebuchadnezzar had set up his base camp for conducting his campaigns against the Palestinian states there and was now sitting in judgment on prisoners brought to him.