Yeremia 7:7

7:7 If you stop doing these things, ¹  I will allow you to continue to live in this land ²  which I gave to your ancestors as a lasting possession. ³ 

Yeremia 7:25

7:25 From the time your ancestors departed the land of Egypt until now, ⁴  I sent my servants the prophets to you again and again, ⁵  day after day. ⁶ 

Yeremia 25:31

25:31 The sounds of battle ⁷  will resound to the ends of the earth.

For the Lord will bring charges against the nations. ⁸ 

He will pass judgment on all humankind

and will hand the wicked over to be killed in war.’ ⁹ 

The Lord so affirms it! ¹⁰ 

Yeremia 27:7

27:7 All nations must serve him and his son and grandson ¹¹  until the time comes for his own nation to fall. ¹²  Then many nations and great kings will in turn subjugate Babylon. ¹³ 

Yeremia 50:3

50:3 For a nation from the north ¹⁴  will attack Babylon.

It will lay her land waste.

People and animals will flee out of it.

No one will inhabit it.’

[7:7]  ¹ tn The translation uses imperatives in vv. 5-6 followed by the phrase, “If you do all this,” to avoid the long and complex sentence structure of the Hebrew sentence which has a series of conditional clauses in vv. 5-6 followed by a main clause in v. 7.

[7:7]  ² tn Heb “live in this place, in this land.”

[7:7]  ³ tn Heb “gave to your fathers [with reference to] from ancient times even unto forever.”

[7:25]  ⁴ tn Heb “from the day your ancestors…until this very day.” However, “day” here is idiomatic for “the present time.”

[7:25]  ⁵ tn On the Hebrew idiom see the note at 7:13.

[7:25]  ⁶ tc There is some textual debate about the legitimacy of this expression here. The text reads merely “day” (יוֹם, yom). BHS suggests the word is to be deleted as a dittography of the plural ending of the preceding word. The word is in the Greek and Latin, and the Syriac represents the typical idiom “day after day” as though the noun were repeated. Either יוֹם has dropped out by haplography or a ם (mem) has been left out, i.e., reading יוֹמָם (yomam, “daily”).

[25:31]  ⁷ tn For the use of this word see Amos 2:2; Hos 10:14; Ps 74:23. See also the usage in Isa 66:6 which is very similar to the metaphorical usage here.

[25:31]  ⁸ tn Heb “the Lord has a lawsuit against the nations.” For usage of the term see Hos 4:1; Mic 6:2, and compare the usage of the related verb in Jer 2:9; 12:1.

[25:31]  ⁹ tn Heb “give the wicked over to the sword.”

[25:31]  sn There is undoubtedly a deliberate allusion here to the reference to the “wars” (Heb “sword”) that the Lord had said he would send raging through the nations (vv. 16, 27) and the “war” (Heb “sword”) that he is proclaiming against them (v. 29).

[25:31]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “Oracle of the Lord.”

[27:7]  ¹¹ sn This is a figure that emphasizes that they will serve for a long time but not for an unlimited duration. The kingdom of Babylon lasted a relatively short time by ancient standards. It lasted from 605 b.c. when Nebuchadnezzar defeated Necho at Carchemish until the fall of Babylon in 538 b.c. There were only four rulers. Nebuchadnezzar was succeeded by his son, Evil Merodach (cf. 52:31), and two other rulers who were not descended from him.

[27:7]  ¹² tn Heb “until the time of his land, even his, comes.” The independent pronoun is placed here for emphasis on the possessive pronoun. The word “time” is used by substitution for the things that are done in it (compare in the NT John 2:4; 7:30; 8:20 “his hour had not yet come”).

[27:7]  sn See Jer 25:12-14, 16.

[27:7]  ¹³ tn Heb “him.” This is a good example of the figure of substitution where the person is put for his descendants or the nation or subject he rules. (See Gen 28:13-14 for another good example and Acts 22:7 in the NT.)

[50:3]  ¹⁴ sn A nation from the north refers to Medo-Persia which at the time of the conquest of Babylon in 539 b.c. had conquered all the nations to the north, the northwest, and the northeast of Babylon forming a vast empire to the north and east of Babylon. Contingents of these many nations were included in her army and reference is made to them in 50:9 and 51:27-28. There is also some irony involved here because the “enemy from the north” referred to so often in Jeremiah (cf. 1:14; 4:6; 6:1) has been identified with Babylon (cf. 25:9). Here in a kind of talionic justice Judah’s nemesis from the north will be attacked and devastated by an enemy from the north.