Yeremia 1:11

Visions Confirming Jeremiah’s Call and Commission

1:11 Later the Lord asked me, “What do you see, Jeremiah?” I answered, “I see a branch of an almond tree.”

Yeremia 2:33

2:33 “My, how good you have become

at chasing after your lovers! ¹ 

Why, you could even teach prostitutes a thing or two! ² 

Yeremia 4:6

4:6 Raise a signal flag that tells people to go to Zion. ³ 

Run for safety! Do not delay!

For I am about to bring disaster out of the north.

It will bring great destruction. ⁴ 

Yeremia 4:18

4:18 “The way you have lived and the things you have done ⁵ 

will bring this on you.

This is the punishment you deserve, and it will be painful indeed. ⁶ 

The pain will be so bad it will pierce your heart.” ⁷ 

Yeremia 4:27

4:27 All this will happen because the Lord said, ⁸ 

“The whole land will be desolate;

however, I will not completely destroy it.

Yeremia 5:4

5:4 I thought, “Surely it is only the ignorant poor who act this way. ⁹ 

They act like fools because they do not know what the Lord demands. ¹⁰ 

They do not know what their God requires of them. ¹¹ 

Yeremia 11:23

11:23 Not one of them will survive. ¹²  I will bring disaster on those men from Anathoth who threatened you. ¹³  A day of reckoning is coming for them.” ¹⁴ 

Yeremia 13:18

13:18 The Lord told me, ¹⁵ 

“Tell the king and the queen mother,

‘Surrender your thrones, ¹⁶ 

for your glorious crowns

will be removed ¹⁷  from your heads. ¹⁸ 

Yeremia 18:9

18:9 And there are times when I promise to build up and establish ¹⁹  a nation or kingdom.

Yeremia 20:17

20:17 For he did not kill me before I came from the womb,

making my pregnant mother’s womb my grave forever. ²⁰ 

Yeremia 21:8

21:8 “But ²¹  tell the people of Jerusalem ²²  that the Lord says, ‘I will give you a choice between two courses of action. One will result in life; the other will result in death. ²³ 

Yeremia 21:11

Warnings to the Royal Court

21:11 The Lord told me to say ²⁴  to the royal court ²⁵  of Judah,

“Listen to what the Lord says,

Yeremia 23:35

23:35 So I, Jeremiah, tell you, ²⁶  “Each of you people should say to his friend or his relative, ‘How did the Lord answer? Or what did the Lord say?’ ²⁷ 

Yeremia 26:17

26:17 Then some of the elders of Judah ²⁸  stepped forward and spoke to all the people gathered there. They said,

Yeremia 27:20

27:20 He has already spoken about these things that King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon did not take away when he carried Jehoiakim’s son King Jeconiah of Judah and the nobles of Judah and Jerusalem away as captives. ²⁹ 

Yeremia 33:6

33:6 But I will most surely ³⁰  heal the wounds of this city and restore it and its people to health. ³¹  I will show them abundant ³²  peace and security.

Yeremia 36:5

36:5 Then Jeremiah told Baruch, “I am no longer allowed to go ³³  into the Lord’s temple.

Yeremia 40:13

Ishmael Murders Gedaliah and Carries the Judeans at Mizpah off as Captives

40:13 Johanan and all the officers of the troops that had been hiding in the open country came to Gedaliah at Mizpah.

Yeremia 42:14

42:14 You must not say, ‘No, we will not stay. Instead we will go and live in the land of Egypt where we will not face war, ³⁴  or hear the enemy’s trumpet calls, ³⁵  or starve for lack of food.’ ³⁶ 

Yeremia 43:13

43:13 He will demolish the sacred pillars in the temple of the sun ³⁷  in Egypt and will burn down the temples of the gods of Egypt.”’”

Yeremia 48:29

48:29 I have heard how proud the people of Moab are,

I know how haughty they are.

I have heard how arrogant, proud, and haughty they are,

what a high opinion they have of themselves. ³⁸ 

Yeremia 51:31

51:31 One runner after another will come to the king of Babylon.

One messenger after another will come bringing news. ³⁹ 

They will bring news to the king of Babylon

that his whole city has been captured. ⁴⁰ 

Yeremia 52:13

52:13 He burned down the Lord’s temple, the royal palace, and all the houses in Jerusalem, including every large house.

Yeremia 52:16

52:16 But he ⁴¹  left behind some of the poor ⁴²  and gave them fields and vineyards.

Yeremia 52:23

52:23 There were ninety-six pomegranate-shaped ornaments on the sides; in all there were one hundred pomegranate-shaped ornaments over the latticework that went around it.

[2:33]  ¹ tn Heb “How good you have made your ways to seek love.”

[2:33]  ² tn Heb “so that even the wicked women you teach your ways.”

[4:6]  ³ tn Heb “Raise up a signal toward Zion.”

[4:6]  ⁴ tn Heb “out of the north, even great destruction.”

[4:18]  ⁵ tn Heb “Your way and your deeds.”

[4:18]  ⁶ tn Heb “How bitter!”

[4:18]  ⁷ tn Heb “Indeed, it reaches to your heart.” The subject must be the pain alluded to in the last half of the preceding line; the verb is masculine, agreeing with the adjective translated “painful.” The only other possible antecedent “punishment” is feminine.

[4:27]  ⁸ tn Heb “For this is what the Lord said,”

[5:4]  ⁹ tn Heb “Surely they are poor.” The translation is intended to make clear the explicit contrasts and qualifications drawn in this verse and the next.

[5:4]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “the way of the Lord.”

[5:4]  ¹¹ tn Heb “the judgment [or ordinance] of their God.”

[11:23]  ¹² tn Heb “There will be no survivors for/among them.”

[11:23]  ¹³ tn Heb “the men of Anathoth.” For the rationale for adding the qualification see the notes on v. 21.

[11:23]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “I will bring disaster on…, the year of their punishment.”

[13:18]  ¹⁵ tn The words “The Lord told me” are not in the text but are implicit in the shift from second plural pronouns in vv. 15-17 to second singular in the Hebrew text of this verse. These words are supplied in the translation for clarity.

[13:18]  ¹⁶ tn Or “You will come down from your thrones”; Heb “Make low! Sit!” This is a case of a construction where two forms in the same case, mood, or tense are joined in such a way that one (usually the first) is intended as an adverbial or adjectival modifier of the other (a figure called hendiadys). This is also probably a case where the imperative is used to express a distinct assurance or promise. See GKC 324 §110.b and compare the usage in Isa 37:30 and Ps 110:2.

[13:18]  sn The king and queen mother are generally identified as Jehoiachin and his mother who were taken into captivity with many of the leading people of Jerusalem in 597 b.c. See Jer 22:26; 29:2; 2 Kgs 24:14-16.

[13:18]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “have come down.” The verb here and those in the following verses are further examples of the “as good as done” form of the Hebrew verb (the prophetic perfect).

[13:18]  ¹⁸ tc The translation follows the common emendation of a word normally meaning “place at the head” (מַרְאֲשׁוֹת [mar’ashot] plus pronoun = מַרְאֲוֹשׁתֵיכֶם [mar’aoshtekhem]) to “from your heads” (מֵרָאשֵׁיכֶם, mera’shekhem) following the ancient versions. The meaning “tiara” is nowhere else attested for this word.

[18:9]  ¹⁹ sn Heb “plant.” The terms “uproot,” “tear down,” “destroy,” “build,” and “plant” are the two sides of the ministry Jeremiah was called to (cf. Jer 1:10).

[20:17]  ²⁰ tn Heb “because he did not kill me from the womb so my mother might be to me for my grave and her womb eternally pregnant.” The sentence structure has been modified and the word “womb” moved from the last line to the next to the last line for English stylistic purposes and greater clarity.

[21:8]  ²¹ tn Heb “And/But unto this people you shall say…” “But” is suggested here by the unusual word order which offsets what they are to say to Zedekiah (v. 3).

[21:8]  ²² tn Heb “these people.”

[21:8]  ²³ tn Heb “Behold I am setting before you the way of life and the way of death.”

[21:11]  ²⁴ tn The words “The Lord told me to say” are not in the text. They have been supplied in the translation for clarity. This text has been treated in two very different ways depending upon how one views the connection of the words “and to/concerning the household of the King of Judah, ‘Hear the word of the Lord:…’” with the preceding and following. Some treat the words that follow as a continuation of Jeremiah’s response to the delegation sent by Zedekiah (cf. vv. 3, 8). Others treat this as introducing a new set of oracles parallel to those in 23:9-40 which are introduced by the heading “to/concerning the prophets.” There are three reasons why this is the more probable connection: (1) the parallelism in expression with 23:9; (2) the other introductions in vv. 3, 8 use the preposition אֶל (’el) instead of לְ (lÿ) used here, and they have the formal introduction “you shall say…”; (3) the warning or challenge here would mitigate the judgment pronounced on the king and the city in vv. 4-7. Verses 8-9 are different. They are not a mitigation but an offer of escape for those who surrender. Hence, these words are a title “Now concerning the royal court.” (The vav [ו] that introduces this is disjunctive = “Now.”) However, since the imperative that follows is masculine plural and addressed to the royal house, something needs to be added to introduce it. Hence the translation supplies “The Lord told me to say” to avoid confusion or mistakenly connecting it with the preceding.

[21:11]  ²⁵ tn Heb “house” or “household.” It is clear from 22:1-6 that this involved the King, the royal family, and the court officials.

[23:35]  ²⁶ tn The words “So, I, Jeremiah tell you” are not in the text. They are supplied in the translation for clarity to show that it is he who is addressing the people, not the Lord. See “our God” in v. 38 and “Here is what the Lord says…” which indicate the speaker is other than he.

[23:35]  ²⁷ tn This line is sometimes rendered as a description of what the people are doing (cf. NIV). However, repetition with some slight modification referring to the prophet in v. 37 followed by the same kind of prohibition that follows here shows that what is being contrasted is two views toward the Lord’s message, i.e., one of openness to receive what the Lord says through the prophet and one that already characterizes the Lord’s message as a burden. Allusion to the question that started the discussion in v. 33 should not be missed. The prophet alluded to is Jeremiah. He is being indirect in his reference to himself.

[26:17]  ²⁸ tn Heb “elders of the land.”

[26:17]  sn The elders were important land-owning citizens, separate from the “heads” or leaders of the tribes, the officers and the judges. They were very influential in both the judicial, political, and religious proceedings of the cities and the state. (See, e.g., Josh 24:1; 2 Sam 19:11; 2 Kgs 23:1 for elders of Israel/Judah, and Deut 21:1-9; Ruth 4:1-2 for elders of the cities.)

[27:20]  ²⁹ tn 27:19-20 are all one long sentence in Hebrew. It has been broken up for the sake of English style. Some of the sentences still violate contemporary English style (e.g., v. 20) but breaking them down any further would lose the focus. For further discussion see the study note on v. 21.

[33:6]  ³⁰ tn Heb “Behold I am healing.” For the usage of the particle “behold” indicating certainty see the translator’s note on 1:6. These are the great and hidden things that the Lord promised to reveal. The statements in v. 5 have been somewhat introductory. See the usage of הִנְנִי (hinni) after the introductory “Thus says the Lord” in Jer 32:28, 37.

[33:6]  ³¹ sn Compare Jer 30:17. Jerusalem is again being personified and her political and spiritual well-being are again in view.

[33:6]  ³² tn The meaning and text of this word is questioned by KBL 749 s.v. עֲתֶרֶת. However, KBL also emends both occurrences of the verb from which BDB 801 s.v. עֲתֶרֶת derives this noun. BDB is more likely correct in seeing this and the usage of the verb in Prov 27:6; Ezek 35:13 as Aramaic loan words from a root meaning to be rich (equivalent to the Hebrew עָשַׁר, ’ashar).

[36:5]  ³³ tn Heb “I am restrained; I cannot go into.” The word “restrained” is used elsewhere in Jeremiah of his being confined to the courtyard of the guardhouse (33:1; 39:15). However, that occurred only later during the tenth year of Zedekiah (Jer 32:1-2) and Jeremiah appears here to be free to come and go as he pleased (vv. 19, 26). The word is used in the active voice of the Lord preventing Sarah from having a baby (Gen 16:2). The probable nuance is here “I am prevented/ debarred” from being able to go. No reason is given why he was prevented/debarred. It has been plausibly suggested that he was prohibited from going into the temple any longer because of the scathing sermon he delivered there earlier (Jer 26:1-3; 7:1-15).

[42:14]  ³⁴ tn Heb “see [or experience] war.”

[42:14]  ³⁵ tn Heb “hear the sound of the trumpet.” The trumpet was used to gather the troops and to sound the alarm for battle.

[42:14]  ³⁶ tn Jer 42:13-14 are a long complex condition (protasis) whose consequence (apodosis) does not begin until v. 15. The Hebrew text of vv. 13-14 reads: 42:13 “But if you say [or continue to say (the form is a participle)], ‘We will not stay in this land’ with the result that you do not obey [or “more literally, do not hearken to the voice of] the Lord your God, 42:14 saying, ‘No, but to the land of Egypt we will go where we…and there we will live,’ 42:15 now therefore hear the word of the Lord…” The sentence has been broken up and restructured to better conform with contemporary English style but an attempt has been made to maintain the contingencies and the qualifiers that are in the longer Hebrew original.

[43:13]  ³⁷ sn It is generally agreed that the temple of the sun was located in Heliopolis, which is elsewhere referred to as On (cf. Gen 41:45). It was the center for the worship of Amon-Re, the Egyptian sun god, and was famous for its obelisks (conical shaped pillars) dedicated to that god. It was located about 6 miles (10 km) northeast of modern-day Cairo.

[48:29]  ³⁸ tn Heb “We have heard of the pride of Moab – [he is] exceedingly proud – of his haughtiness, and his pride, and his haughtiness, and the loftiness of his heart.” These words are essentially all synonyms, three of them coming from the same Hebrew root (גָּאָה, ga’ah) and one of the words being used twice (גָּאוֹן). Since the first person singular is used in the next verse, the present translation considers the “we” of this verse to refer to the plural of majesty or the plural referring to the divine council in such passages as Gen 1:26; 3:22; 11:7; Isa 6:8 and has translated in the singular to avoid possible confusion of who the “we” are. Most understand the reference to be to Jeremiah and his fellow Judeans.

[51:31]  ³⁹ tn Heb “Runner will run to meet runner and…” The intent is to portray a relay of runners carrying the news that follows on in vv. 31d-33 to the king of Babylon. The present translation attempts to spell out the significance.

[51:31]  ⁴⁰ tn Heb “Runner will run to meet runner and messenger to meet messenger to report to the king of Babylon that his city has been taken in [its] entirety.” There is general agreement among the commentaries that the first two lines refer to messengers converging on the king of Babylon from every direction bringing news the sum total of which is reported in the lines that follow. For the meaning of the last phrase see BDB 892 s.v. קָצֶה 3 and compare the usage in Gen 19:4 and Isa 56:11. The sentence has been broken down and restructured to better conform with contemporary English style.

[52:16]  ⁴¹ tn Heb “Nebuzaradan, the captain of the royal guard.” However, the subject is clear from the preceding and modern English style would normally avoid repeating the proper name and title.

[52:16]  ⁴² tn Heb “poor of the land.”