Yeremia 5:4

5:4 I thought, “Surely it is only the ignorant poor who act this way. ¹ 

They act like fools because they do not know what the Lord demands. ² 

They do not know what their God requires of them. ³ 

Yeremia 20:13

20:13 Sing to the Lord! Praise the Lord!

For he rescues the oppressed from the clutches of evildoers. ⁴ 

Yeremia 48:26

48:26 “Moab has vaunted itself against me.

So make him drunk with the wine of my wrath ⁵ 

until he splashes ⁶  around in his own vomit,

until others treat him as a laughingstock.

[5:4]  ¹ 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]  ² tn Heb “the way of the Lord.”

[5:4]  ³ tn Heb “the judgment [or ordinance] of their God.”

[20:13]  ⁴ sn While it may be a little confusing to modern readers to see the fluctuation in moods and the shifts in addressee in a prayer and complaint like this, it was not at all unusual for Israel where these were often offered in the temple in the conscious presence of God before fellow worshipers. For another example of these same shifts see Ps 22 which is a prayer of David in a time of deep distress.

[48:26]  ⁵ tn Heb “Make him drunk because he has magnified himself against the Lord.” The first person has again been adopted for consistency within a speech of the Lord. Almost all of the commentaries relate the figure of drunkenness to the figure of drinking the cup of God’s wrath spelled out in Jer 25 where reference is made at one point to the nations drinking, staggering, vomiting, and falling (25:27 and see G. L. Keown, P. J. Scalise, T. G. Smothers, Jeremiah 26-52 [WBC], 316, for a full list of references to this figure including this passage and 49:12-13; 51:6-10, 39, 57).

[48:26]  ⁶ tn The meaning of this word is uncertain. It is usually used of clapping the hands or the thigh in helpless anger or disgust. Hence J. Bright (Jeremiah [AB], 321) paraphrases “shall vomit helplessly.” HALOT 722 s.v. II סָפַק relates this to an Aramaic word and see a homonym meaning “vomit” or “spew out.” The translation is that of BDB 706 s.v. סָפַק Qal.3, “splash (fall with a splash),” from the same root that refers to slapping or clapping the thigh.