Yeremia 3:6

3:6 When Josiah was king of Judah, the Lord said to me, “Jeremiah, you have no doubt seen what wayward Israel has done. ¹  You have seen how she went up to every high hill and under every green tree to give herself like a prostitute to other gods. ² 

Yeremia 3:14

3:14 “Come back to me, my wayward sons,” says the Lord, “for I am your true master. ³  If you do, ⁴  I will take one of you from each town and two of you from each family group, and I will bring you back to Zion.

Yeremia 11:10

11:10 They have gone back to the evil ways ⁵  of their ancestors of old who refused to obey what I told them. They, too, have paid allegiance to ⁶  other gods and worshiped them. Both the nation of Israel and the nation of Judah ⁷  have violated the covenant I made with their ancestors.

Yeremia 15:1

15:1 Then the Lord said to me, “Even if Moses and Samuel stood before me pleading for ⁸  these people, I would not feel pity for them! ⁹  Get them away from me! Tell them to go away! ¹⁰ 

Yeremia 23:8

23:8 But at that time they will affirm them with “I swear as surely as the Lord lives who delivered the descendants of the former nation of Israel ¹¹  from the land of the north and from all the other lands where he had banished ¹²  them.” ¹³  At that time they will live in their own land.’”

Yeremia 23:36

23:36 You must no longer say that the Lord’s message is burdensome. ¹⁴  For what is ‘burdensome’ ¹⁵  really pertains to what a person himself says. ¹⁶  You are misrepresenting ¹⁷  the words of our God, the living God, the Lord who rules over all. ¹⁸ 

Yeremia 28:4

28:4 I will also bring back to this place Jehoiakim’s son King Jeconiah of Judah and all the exiles who were taken to Babylon.’ Indeed, the Lord affirms, ¹⁹  ‘I will break the yoke of servitude to the king of Babylon.’”

Yeremia 28:6

28:6 The prophet Jeremiah said, “Amen! May the Lord do all this! May the Lord make your prophecy come true! May he bring back to this place from Babylon all the valuable articles taken from the Lord’s temple and the people who were carried into exile.

Yeremia 29:10

29:10 “For the Lord says, ‘Only when the seventy years of Babylonian rule ²⁰  are over will I again take up consideration for you. ²¹  Then I will fulfill my gracious promise to you and restore ²²  you to your homeland. ²³ 

Yeremia 29:14

29:14 I will make myself available to you,’ ²⁴  says the Lord. ²⁵  ‘Then I will reverse your plight ²⁶  and will regather you from all the nations and all the places where I have exiled you,’ says the Lord. ²⁷  ‘I will bring you back to the place from which I exiled you.’

Yeremia 30:3

30:3 For I, the Lord, affirm ²⁸  that the time will come when I will reverse the plight ²⁹  of my people, Israel and Judah,’ says the Lord. ‘I will bring them back to the land I gave their ancestors ³⁰  and they will take possession of it once again.’” ³¹ 

Yeremia 32:37

32:37 ‘I will certainly regather my people from all the countries where I will have exiled ³²  them in my anger, fury, and great wrath. I will bring them back to this place and allow them to live here in safety.

[3:6]  ¹ tn “Have you seen…” The question is rhetorical and expects a positive answer.

[3:6]  ² tn Heb “she played the prostitute there.” This is a metaphor for Israel’s worship; she gave herself to the worship of other gods like a prostitute gives herself to her lovers. There seems no clear way to completely spell out the metaphor in the translation.

[3:14]  ³ tn Or “I am your true husband.”

[3:14]  sn There is a wordplay between the term “true master” and the name of the pagan god Baal. The pronoun “I” is emphatic, creating a contrast between the Lord as Israel’s true master/husband versus Baal as Israel’s illegitimate lover/master. See 2:23-25.

[3:14]  ⁴ tn The words, “If you do” are not in the text but are implicit in the connection of the Hebrew verb with the preceding.

[11:10]  ⁵ tn Or “They have repeated the evil actions of….”

[11:10]  ⁶ tn Heb “have walked/followed after.” See the translator’s note at 2:5 for the idiom.

[11:10]  ⁷ tn Heb “house of Israel and house of Judah.”

[15:1]  ⁸ tn The words “pleading for” have been supplied in the translation to explain the idiom (a metonymy). For parallel usage see BDB 763 s.v. עָמַד Qal.1.a and compare usage in Gen 19:27, Deut 4:10.

[15:1]  sn Moses and Samuel were well-known for their successful intercession on behalf of Israel. See Ps 99:6-8 and see, e.g., Exod 32:11-14, 30-34; 1 Sam 7:5-9. The Lord is here rejecting Jeremiah’s intercession on behalf of the people (14:19-22).

[15:1]  ⁹ tn Heb “my soul would not be toward them.” For the usage of “soul” presupposed here see BDB 660 s.v. נֶפֶשׁ 6 in the light of the complaints and petitions in Jeremiah’s prayer in 14:19, 21.

[15:1]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “Send them away from my presence and let them go away.”

[23:8]  ¹¹ tn Heb “descendants of the house of Israel.”

[23:8]  ¹² tc It is probably preferable to read the third masculine singular plus suffix (הִדִּיחָם, hiddikham) here with the Greek version and the parallel passage in 16:15 rather than the first singular plus suffix in the MT (הִדַּחְתִּים, hiddakhtim). If this is not a case of mere graphic confusion, the MT could have arisen under the influence of the first person in v. 3. Though sudden shifts in person have been common in the book of Jeremiah, that is unlikely in a context reporting an oath.

[23:8]  ¹³ tn This passage is the same as 16:14-15 with a few minor variations in Hebrew wording. The notes on that passage should be consulted for the rendering here. This passage has the Niphal of the verb “to say” rather than the impersonal use of the Qal. It adds the idea of “bringing out” to the idea of “bringing up out” and (Heb “who brought up and who brought out,” probably a case of hendiadys) before “the people [here “seed” rather than “children”] of Israel [here “house of Israel”] from the land of the north.” These are minor variations and do not affect the sense in any way. So the passage is rendered in much the same way.

[23:8]  sn This passage looks forward to a new and greater Exodus, one that so outstrips the earlier one that the earlier will not serve as the model of deliverance any longer. This same ideal was the subject of Isaiah’s earlier prophecies in Isa 11:11-12, 15-16; 43:16-21; 49:8-13; 51: 1-11.

[23:36]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “burden of the Lord.”

[23:36]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “the burden.”

[23:36]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “The burden is [or will be] to a man his word.” There is a good deal of ambiguity regarding how this line is to be rendered. For the major options and the issues involved W. L. Holladay, Jeremiah (Hermeneia), 1:651-52 should be consulted. Most of them are excluded by the observation that מַשָּׂא probably does not mean “oracle” anywhere in this passage (see note on v. 33 regarding the use of this word). Hence it does not mean “every man’s word becomes his oracle” as in NIV or “for that ‘burden’ [= oracle] is what he entrusts to the man of his word” (W. McKane, Jeremiah [ICC], 1:600-601). The latter is also ruled out by the fact that the antecedent of “his” on “his word” is clearly the word “man” in front of it. This would be the only case where the phrase “man of his word” occurs. There is also no textual reason for repointing the noun with the article as the noun with the interrogative to read “For how can his word become a burden to anyone?” There are, of course, other options but this is sufficient to show that the translation has been chosen after looking at other alternatives.

[23:36]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “turning.” See BDB 245 s.v. הָפַךְ Qal.1.c and Lev 13:55; Jer 13:33 “changing, altering.”

[23:36]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “Yahweh of armies.”

[23:36]  sn See the study note on 2:19 for the explanation of the significance of this title.

[28:4]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “Oracle of the Lord.”

[28:4]  sn Notice again that the “false” prophet uses the same formula and claims the same source for his message as the true prophet has (cf. 27:22).

[29:10]  ²⁰ sn See the study note on Jer 25:11 for the reckoning of the seventy years.

[29:10]  ²¹ tn See the translator’s note on Jer 27:22 for this term.

[29:10]  ²² tn Verse 10 is all one long sentence in the Hebrew original: “According to the fullness of Babylon seventy years I will take thought of you and I will establish my gracious word to you by bringing you back to this place.” The sentence has been broken up to conform better to contemporary English style.

[29:10]  ²³ tn Heb “this place.” The text has probably been influenced by the parallel passage in 27:22. The term appears fifteen times in Jeremiah and is invariably a reference to Jerusalem or Judah.

[29:10]  sn See Jer 27:22 for this promise.

[29:14]  ²⁴ tn Heb “I will let myself be found by you.” For this nuance of the verb see BDB 594 s.v. מָצָא Niph.1.f and compare the usage in Isa 65:1; 2 Chr 15:2. The Greek version already noted that nuance when it translated the phrase “I will manifest myself to you.”

[29:14]  ²⁵ tn Heb “Oracle of the Lord.”

[29:14]  ²⁶ tn Heb “restore your fortune.” Alternately, “I will bring you back from exile.” This idiom occurs twenty-six times in the OT and in several cases it is clearly not referring to return from exile but restoration of fortunes (e.g., Job 42:10; Hos 6:11–7:1; Jer 33:11). It is often followed as here by “regather” or “bring back” (e.g., Jer 30:3; Ezek 29:14) so it is often misunderstood as “bringing back the exiles.” The versions (LXX, Vulg., Tg., Pesh.) often translate the idiom as “to go away into captivity,” deriving the noun from שְׁבִי (shÿvi, “captivity”). However, the use of this expression in Old Aramaic documents of Sefire parallels the biblical idiom: “the gods restored the fortunes of the house of my father again” (J. A. Fitzmyer, The Aramaic Inscriptions of Sefire [BibOr], 100-101, 119-20). The idiom means “to turn someone's fortune, bring about change” or “to reestablish as it was” (HALOT 1386 s.v. 3.c). In Ezek 16:53 it is paralleled by the expression “to restore the situation which prevailed earlier.” This amounts to restitutio in integrum, which is applicable to the circumstances surrounding the return of the exiles.

[29:14]  ²⁷ tn Heb “Oracle of the Lord.”

[30:3]  ²⁸ tn Heb “Oracle of the Lord.”

[30:3]  ²⁹ tn Heb “restore the fortune.” For the translation and meaning of this idiom see the note at 29:14.

[30:3]  ³⁰ tn Heb “fathers.”

[30:3]  ³¹ sn As the nations of Israel and Judah were united in their sin and suffered the same fate – that of exile and dispersion – (cf. Jer 3:8; 5:11; 11:10, 17) so they will ultimately be regathered from the nations and rejoined under one king, a descendant of David, and regain possession of their ancestral lands. The prophets of both the eighth and seventh century looked forward to this ideal (see, e.g., Hos 1:11 (2:2 HT); Isa 11:11-13; Jer 23:5-6; 30:3; 33:7; Ezek 37:15-22). This has already been anticipated in Jer 3:18.

[32:37]  ³² tn The verb here should be interpreted as a future perfect; though some of the people have already been exiled (in 605 and 597 b.c.), some have not yet been exiled at the time this prophesy is given (see study note on v. 1 for the date). However, contemporary English style does not regularly use the future perfect, choosing instead to use the simple future or the simple perfect as the present translation has done here.