Yeremia 6:12

6:12 Their houses will be turned over to others

as will their fields and their wives.

For I will unleash my power ¹ 

against those who live in this land,”

says the Lord.

Yeremia 13:14

13:14 And I will smash them like wine bottles against one another, children and parents alike. ²  I will not show any pity, mercy, or compassion. Nothing will keep me from destroying them,’ ³  says the Lord.”

Yeremia 15:7

15:7 The Lord continued, ⁴ 

“In every town in the land I will purge them

like straw blown away by the wind. ⁵ 

I will destroy my people.

I will kill off their children.

I will do so because they did not change their behavior. ⁶ 

Yeremia 23:17

23:17 They continually say ⁷  to those who reject what the Lord has said, ⁸ 

‘Things will go well for you!’ ⁹ 

They say to all those who follow the stubborn inclinations of their own hearts,

‘Nothing bad will happen to you!’

Yeremia 34:11

34:11 But later ¹⁰  they had changed their minds. They had taken back their male and female slaves that they had freed and forced them to be slaves again. ¹¹ 

Yeremia 41:6

41:6 Ishmael son of Nethaniah went out from Mizpah to meet them. He was pretending to cry ¹²  as he walked along. When he met them, he said to them, “Come with me to meet Gedaliah son of Ahikam.” ¹³ 

[6:12]  ¹ tn Heb “I will reach out my hand.” This figure involves both comparing God to a person (anthropomorphism) and substitution (metonymy) where hand is put for the actions or exertions of the hand. A common use of “hand” is for the exertion of power or strength (cf. BDB 290 s.v. יָד 2 and 289-90 s.v. יָד 1.e(2); cf. Deut 34:12; Ps 78:42; Jer 16:21).

[13:14]  ² tn Or “children along with their parents”; Heb “fathers and children together.”

[13:14]  ³ tn Heb “I will not show…so as not to destroy them.”

[15:7]  ⁴ tn The words “The Lord continued” are not in the text. They have been supplied in the translation to show the shift back to talking about the people instead of addressing them. The obvious speaker is the Lord; the likely listener is Jeremiah as in vv. 1-4.

[15:7]  ⁵ tn Heb “I have winnowed them with a winnowing fork in the gates of the land.” The word “gates” is here being used figuratively for the cities, the part for the whole. See 14:2 and the notes there.

[15:7]  sn Like straw blown away by the wind. A figurative use of the process of winnowing is referred to here. Winnowing was the process whereby a mixture of grain and straw was thrown up into the wind to separate the grain from the straw and the husks. The best description of the major steps in threshing and winnowing grain in the Bible is seen in another figurative passage in Isa 41:15-16.

[15:7]  ⁶ tn Or “did not repent of their wicked ways”; Heb “They did not turn back from their ways.” There is no casual particle here (either כִּי [ki], which is more formally casual, or וְ [vÿ], which sometimes introduces casual circumstantial clauses). The causal idea is furnished by the connection of ideas. If the verbs throughout this section are treated as pasts and this section seen as a lament, then the clause could be sequential: “but they still did not turn…”

[23:17]  ⁷ tn The translation reflects an emphatic construction where the infinitive absolute follows a participle (cf. GKC 343 §113.r).

[23:17]  ⁸ tc The translation follows the Greek version. The Hebrew text reads, “who reject me, ‘The Lord has spoken, “Things…”’” The Greek version is to be preferred here because of (1) the parallelism of the lines “reject what the Lord has said” // “follow the stubborn inclinations of their own hearts;” (2) the preceding context which speaks of “visions of their own imaginations not of what the Lord has given them;” (3) the following context which denies that they have ever had access to the Lord’s secrets; (4) the general contexts earlier regarding false prophecy where rejection of the Lord’s word is in view (6:14 [see there v. 10]; 8:11 [see there v. 9]); (5) the meter of the poetic lines (the Hebrew meter is 3/5/4/3; the meter presupposed by the translation is 5/3/4/3 with the 3’s being their words). The difference is one of vocalization of the same consonants. The vocalization of the MT is יְהוָה מְנַאֲצַי דִּבֶּר [mÿna’atsay dibber yÿhvah]; the Hebrew Vorlage behind the Greek would be vocalized as מְנַאֲצֵי דְּבַר יְהוָה (mÿna’atsey dÿvar yÿhvah).

[23:17]  ⁹ tn Heb “You will have peace.” But see the note on 14:13. See also 6:14 and 8:11.

[34:11]  ¹⁰ sn Most commentators are agreed that the incident referred to here occurred during the period of relief from the siege provided by the Babylonians going off to fight against the Egyptians who were apparently coming to Zedekiah’s aid (compare vv. 21-22 with 37:5, 7). The freeing of the slaves had occurred earlier, under the crisis of the siege while the people were more responsive to the Lord due to the threat of destruction (cf. v. 15).

[34:11]  ¹¹ tn Heb “they had brought them into subjection for male and female slaves.” However, the qualification of “male and female” is already clear from the preceding and is unnecessary to the English sentence.

[41:6]  ¹² tn Heb “he was weeping/crying.” The translation is intended to better reflect the situation.

[41:6]  ¹³ tn Heb “Come to Gedaliah the son of Ahikam.” The words that are supplied in the translation are implicit to the situation and are added for clarity.