Yeremia 6:26

6:26 So I said, ¹  “Oh, my dear people, ²  put on sackcloth

and roll in ashes.

Mourn with painful sobs

as though you had lost your only child.

For any moment now ³  that destructive army ⁴ 

will come against us.”

Yeremia 51:47

51:47 “So the time will certainly come ⁵ 

when I will punish the idols of Babylon.

Her whole land will be put to shame.

All her mortally wounded will collapse in her midst. ⁶ 

Yeremia 52:11

52:11 He had Zedekiah’s eyes put out and had him bound in chains. ⁷  Then the king of Babylon had him led off to Babylon and he was imprisoned there until the day he died.

¹ tn These words are not in the text but are implicit from the context.

² tn Heb “daughter of my people.” For the translation given here see 4:11 and the translator’s note there.

³ tn Heb “suddenly.”

⁴ tn Heb “the destroyer.”

⁵ tn Heb “That being so, look, days are approaching.” לָכֵן (lakhen) often introduces the effect of an action. That may be the case here, the turmoil outlined in v. 46 serving as the catalyst for the culminating divine judgment described in v. 47. Another possibility is that לָכֵן here has an asseverative force (“certainly”), as in Isa 26:14 and perhaps Jer 5:2 (see the note there). In this case the word almost has the force of “for, since,” because it presents a cause for an accompanying effect. See Judg 8:7 and the discussion of Isa 26:14 in BDB 486-87 s.v. כֵּן 3.d.

⁶ tn Or “all her slain will fall in her midst.” In other words, her people will be overtaken by judgment and be unable to escape. The dead will lie in heaps in the very heart of the city and land.

⁷ tn Heb “fetters of bronze.” The more generic “chains” is used in the translation because “fetters” is a word unfamiliar to most modern readers.