Yeremia 9:8
Konteks9:8 Their tongues are like deadly arrows. 1
They are always telling lies. 2
Friendly words for their neighbors come from their mouths.
But their minds are thinking up ways to trap them. 3
Yeremia 51:29
Konteks51:29 The earth will tremble and writhe in agony. 4
For the Lord will carry out his plan.
He plans to make the land of Babylonia 5
a wasteland where no one lives. 6
[9:8] 1 tc This reading follows the Masoretic consonants (the Kethib, a Qal active participle from שָׁחַט, shakhat). The Masoretes preferred to read “a sharpened arrow” (the Qere, a Qal passive participle from the same root or a homonym, meaning “hammered, beaten”). See HALOT 1354 s.v. II שָׁחַט for discussion. The exact meaning of the word makes little difference to the meaning of the metaphor itself.
[9:8] 2 tn Heb “They speak deceit.”
[9:8] 3 tn Heb “With his mouth a person speaks peace to his neighbor, but in his heart he sets an ambush for him.”
[51:29] 4 sn The figure here is common in the poetic tradition of the
[51:29] 5 tn Heb “For the plans of the
[51:29] 6 tn The verbs in this verse and v. 30 are all in the past tense in Hebrew, in the tense that views the action as already as good as done (the Hebrew prophetic perfect). The verb in v. 31a, however, is imperfect, viewing the action as future; the perfects that follow are all dependent on that future. Verse 33 looks forward to a time when Babylon will be harvested and trampled like grain on the threshing floor and the imperatives imply a time in the future. Hence the present translation has rendered all the verbs in vv. 29-30 as future.