Yeremia 7:9

7:9 You steal. ¹  You murder. You commit adultery. You lie when you swear on oath. You sacrifice to the god Baal. You pay allegiance to ²  other gods whom you have not previously known.

Yeremia 31:29-30

The Lord Will Make a New Covenant with Israel and Judah

31:29 “When that time comes, people will no longer say, ‘The parents have eaten sour grapes, but the children’s teeth have grown numb.’ ³  31:30 Rather, each person will die for his own sins. The teeth of the person who eats the sour grapes will themselves grow numb. ⁴ 

Yeremia 47:7

47:7 But how can it rest ⁵ 

when I, the Lord, have ⁶  given it orders?

I have ordered it to attack

the people of Ashkelon and the seacoast. ⁷ 

Yeremia 48:27

48:27 For did not you people of Moab laugh at the people of Israel?

Did you think that they were nothing but thieves, ⁸ 

that you shook your head in contempt ⁹ 

every time you talked about them? ¹⁰ 

[7:9]  ¹ tn Heb “Will you steal…then say, ‘We are safe’?” Verses 9-10 are one long sentence in the Hebrew text.

[7:9]  ² tn Heb “You go/follow after.” See the translator’s note at 2:5 for an explanation of the idiom involved here.

[31:29]  ³ tn This word only occurs here and in the parallel passage in Ezek 18:2 in the Qal stem and in Eccl 10:10 in the Piel stem. In the latter passage it refers to the bluntness of an ax that has not been sharpened. Here the idea is of the “bluntness” of the teeth, not from having ground them down due to the bitter taste of sour grapes but to the fact that they have lost their “edge,” “bite,” or “sharpness” because they are numb from the sour taste. For this meaning for the word see W. L. Holladay, Jeremiah (Hermeneia), 2:197.

[31:29]  sn This is a proverbial statement that is also found in Ezek 18:2. It served to articulate the complaint that the present generation was suffering for the accrued sins of their ancestors (cf. Lam 5:7) and that the Lord was hence unjust (Ezek 18:25, 29). However, Jeremiah had repeatedly warned his own generation that they were as guilty or even more so than their ancestors. The ancestors were indeed guilty of sin but the present generation had compounded the problem by their stubborn refusal to turn back to God despite repeated warnings from the prophets and hence God would withhold judgment no longer (cf. especially Jer 16:10-13 and compare Jer 7:24-34; 9:12-16 (9:11-15 HT); 11:1-13).

[31:30]  ⁴ sn The Lord answers their charge by stating that each person is responsible for his own sin and will himself bear the consequences. Ezek 18 has a more extended treatment of this and shows that this extends not just to the link between parents and children but between former behavior and future behavior of the same individual. To a certain extent the principle articulated here is anticipatory of the statement in v. 34 which refers to the forgiveness of former sins.

[47:7]  ⁵ 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]  ⁶ tn Heb “When the Lord has.” The first person is again adopted because the Lord has been speaking.

[47:7]  ⁷ 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.”

[48:27]  ⁸ tn Heb “were they caught among thieves?”

[48:27]  ⁹ tn Heb “that you shook yourself.” But see the same verb in 18:16 in the active voice with the object “head” in a very similar context of contempt or derision.

[48:27]  ¹⁰ tc The reading here presupposes the emendation of דְבָרֶיךָ (dÿvarekha, “your words”) to דַבֶּרְךָ (dabberkha, “your speaking”), suggested by BHS (cf. fn c) on the basis of one of the Greek versions (Symmachus). For the idiom cf. BDB 191 s.v. דַּי 2.c.α.