Yeremia 49:12-13

49:12 For the Lord says, “If even those who did not deserve to drink from the cup of my wrath must drink from it, do you think you will go unpunished? You will not go unpunished, but must certainly drink from the cup of my wrath. ¹  49:13 For I solemnly swear,” ²  says the Lord, “that Bozrah ³  will become a pile of ruins. It will become an object of horror and ridicule, an example to be used in curses. ⁴  All the towns around it will lie in ruins forever.”

[49:12]  ¹ tn The words “of my wrath” after “cup” in the first line and “from the cup of my wrath” in the last line are not in the text but are implicit in the metaphor. They have been supplied in the translation for clarity.

[49:12]  sn The reference here is to the cup of God’s wrath which is connected with the punishment of war at the hands of the Babylonians referred to already in Jer 25:15-29. Those who do not deserve to drink are the innocent victims of war who get swept away with the guilty. Edom was certainly not one of the innocent victims as is clear from this judgment speech and those referred to in the study note on 49:7.

[49:13]  ² tn Heb “I swear by myself.” See 22:5 and the study note there.

[49:13]  ³ sn Bozrah appears to have been the chief city in Edom, its capital city (see its parallelism with Edom in Isa 34:6; 63:1; Jer 49:22). The reference to “its towns” (translated here “all the towns around it”) could then be a reference to all the towns in Edom. It was located about twenty-five miles southeast of the southern end of the Dead Sea apparently in the district of Teman (see the parallelism in Amos 1:12).

[49:13]  ⁴ tn See the study note on 24:9 for the rendering of this term.