Jeremiah 11:3

11:3 Tell them that the Lord, the God of Israel, says, ‘Anyone who does not keep the terms of the covenant will be under a curse. ¹ 

Jeremiah 14:21

14:21 For the honor of your name, ²  do not treat Jerusalem ³  with contempt.

Do not treat with disdain the place where your glorious throne sits. ⁴ 

Be mindful of your covenant with us. Do not break it! ⁵ 

Jeremiah 31:31

31:31 “Indeed, a time is coming,” says the Lord, ⁶  “when I will make a new covenant ⁷  with the people of Israel and Judah. ⁸ 

Jeremiah 32:40

32:40 I will make a lasting covenant ⁹  with them that I will never stop doing good to them. ¹⁰  I will fill their hearts and minds with respect for me so that ¹¹  they will never again turn ¹²  away from me.

Jeremiah 33:21

33:21 could my covenant with my servant David and my covenant with the Levites ever be broken. So David will by all means always have a descendant to occupy his throne as king and the Levites will by all means always have priests who will minister before me. ¹³ 

Jeremiah 33:25

33:25 But I, the Lord, make the following promise: ¹⁴  I have made a covenant governing the coming of day and night. I have established the fixed laws governing heaven and earth.

Jeremiah 34:13

34:13 “The Lord God of Israel has a message for you. ¹⁵  ‘I made a covenant with your ancestors ¹⁶  when I brought them out of Egypt where they had been slaves. ¹⁷  It stipulated, ¹⁸ 

Jeremiah 50:5

50:5 They will ask the way to Zion;

they will turn their faces toward it.

They will come ¹⁹  and bind themselves to the Lord

in a lasting covenant that will never be forgotten. ²⁰ 

¹ tn Heb “Cursed is the person who does not listen to the terms of this covenant.” “This covenant” is further qualified in the following verse by a relative clause. The form of the sentence and the qualification “my” before covenant were chosen for better English idiom and to break up a long sentence which really extends to the middle of v. 5.

² tn Heb “For the sake of your name.”

³ map For location see Map5-B1; Map6-F3; Map7-E2; Map8-F2; Map10-B3; JP1-F4; JP2-F4; JP3-F4; JP4-F4.

⁴ tn English versions quite commonly supply “us” as an object for the verb in the first line. This is probably wrong. The Hebrew text reads: “Do not treat with contempt for the sake of your name; do not treat with disdain your glorious throne.” This is case of poetic parallelism where the object is left hanging until the second line. For an example of this see Prov 13:1 in the original and consult E. W. Bullinger, Figures of Speech, 103-4. There has also been some disagreement whether “your glorious throne” refers to the temple (as in 17:12) or Jerusalem (as in 3:17). From the beginning of the prayer in v. 19 where a similar kind of verb has been used with respect to Zion/Jerusalem it would appear that the contextual referent is Jerusalem. The absence of an object from the first line makes it possible to retain part of the metaphor in the translation and still convey some meaning.

⁵ tn Heb “Remember, do not break your covenant with us.”

⁶ tn Heb “Oracle of the Lord.”

⁷ tn Or “a renewed covenant” (also in vv. 22-23).

⁸ tn Heb “the house of Israel and the house of Judah.”

⁹ tn Heb “an everlasting covenant.” For the rationale for the rendering “agreement” and the nature of the biblical covenants see the study note on 11:2.

¹⁰ tn Or “stop being gracious to them” or “stop blessing them with good”; Heb “turn back from them to do good to them.”

¹¹ tn Or “I will make them want to fear and respect me so much that”; Heb “I will put the fear of me in their hearts.” However, as has been noted several times, “heart” in Hebrew is more the center of the volition (and intellect) than the center of emotions as it is in English. Both translations are intended to reflect the difference in psychology.

¹² tn The words “never again” are not in the text but are implicit from the context and are supplied not only by this translation but by a number of others.

¹³ tn The very complex and elliptical syntax of the original Hebrew of vv. 20-21 has been broken down to better conform with contemporary English style. The text reads somewhat literally (after the addition of a couple of phrases which have been left out by ellipsis): “Thus says the Lord, ‘If you can break my covenant with the day and my covenant with the night so that there is not to be daytime and night in their proper time then also my covenant can be broken with my servant David so that there is not to him a son reigning upon his throne [and also my covenant can be broken] with the Levites [so there are not] priests who minister to me.” The two phrases in brackets are elliptical, the first serving double duty for the prepositional phrase “with the Levites” as well as “with David” and the second serving double duty with the noun “priests” which parallels “a son.” The noun “priests” is not serving here as appositional because that phrase is always “the priests, the Levites,” never “the Levites, the priests.”

¹⁴ tn Heb “Thus says the Lord.” See the translator’s note at the beginning of v. 20 for the style adopted here. Here the promise is in v. 26 following the contrary to fact condition in v. 25. The Hebrew text of vv. 25-26 reads: “Thus says the Lord, “If I have not established my covenant with day and night [and] the laws/statutes of heaven and earth, also I could reject the seed of Jacob and David my servant from taking from his seed as rulers over the seed of Abraham…” The syntax of the original is a little awkward because it involves the verbs “establish” and “reject” governing two objects, the first governing two similar objects “my covenant” and “the regulations” and the second governing two dissimilar objects “the seed of Jacob” and “my servant David from taking [so as not to take].” The translation has sought to remove these awkward syntactical constructions and also break down the long complex original sentence in such a way as to retain its original intent, i.e., the guarantee of the continuance of the seed of Jacob and of the rule of a line of David’s descendants over them based on the fixed order of God’s creation decrees.

¹⁵ tn Heb “Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, ‘…’” The style adopted here has been used to avoid a longer, more complex English sentence.

¹⁶ tn Heb “fathers” (also in vv. 14, 15).

¹⁷ tn Heb “out of the house of bondage.”

¹⁸ tn Heb “made a covenant, saying.” This was only one of several stipulations of the covenant. The form used here has been chosen as an indirect way of relating the specific stipulation that is being focused upon to the general covenant that is referred to in v. 13.

¹⁹ tc The translation here assumes that the Hebrew בֹּאוּ (bo’u; a Qal imperative masculine plural) should be read בָּאוּ (ba’u; a Qal perfect third plural). This reading is presupposed by the Greek version of Aquila, the Latin version, and the Targum (see BHS note a, which mistakenly assumes that the form must be imperfect).

²⁰ sn See Jer 32:40 and the study note there for the nature of this lasting agreement.