2 Raja-raja 21:3-4

21:3 He rebuilt the high places that his father Hezekiah had destroyed; he set up altars for Baal and made an Asherah pole just like King Ahab of Israel had done. He bowed down to all the stars in the sky ¹  and worshiped ²  them. 21:4 He built altars in the Lord’s temple, about which the Lord had said, “Jerusalem will be my home.” ³ 

Yeremia 8:1-2

8:1 The Lord says, “When that time comes, ⁴  the bones of the kings of Judah and its leaders, the bones of the priests and prophets and of all the other people who lived in Jerusalem will be dug up from their graves. 8:2 They will be spread out and exposed to the sun, the moon and the stars. ⁵  These are things they ⁶  adored and served, things to which they paid allegiance, ⁷  from which they sought guidance, and worshiped. The bones of these people ⁸  will never be regathered and reburied. They will be like manure used to fertilize the ground. ⁹ 

Yeremia 44:17-19

44:17 Instead we will do everything we vowed we would do. ¹⁰  We will sacrifice and pour out drink offerings to the goddess called the Queen of Heaven ¹¹  just as we and our ancestors, our kings, and our leaders previously did in the towns of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem. For then we had plenty of food, were well-off, and had no troubles. ¹²  44:18 But ever since we stopped sacrificing and pouring out drink offerings to the Queen of Heaven, we have been in great need. Our people have died in wars or of starvation.” ¹³  44:19 The women added, ¹⁴  “We did indeed sacrifice and pour out drink offerings to the Queen of Heaven. But it was with the full knowledge and approval of our husbands that we made cakes in her image and poured out drink offerings to her.” ¹⁵ 

[21:3]  ¹ sn See the note at 2 Kgs 17:16.

[21:3]  ² tn Or “served.”

[21:4]  ³ tn Heb “In Jerusalem I will place my name.”

[8:1]  ⁴ tn Heb “At that time.”

[8:2]  ⁵ tc MT, 4QJer^a and LXX read “the sun and the moon and all the host of heaven,” but 4QJer^c reads “the sun and all the stars.”

[8:2]  tn Heb “the host of heaven.”

[8:2]  ⁶ tn Heb “the sun, moon, and host of heaven which they…”

[8:2]  ⁷ tn Heb “followed after.” See the translator’s note at 2:5 for the idiom.

[8:2]  ⁸ tn Heb “they will not” but the referent is far enough removed that it might be ambiguous.

[8:2]  ⁹ tn Heb “like dung/manure on the surface of the ground.”

[44:17]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “that went out of our mouth.” I.e., everything we said, promised, or vowed.

[44:17]  ¹¹ tn Heb “sacrifice to the Queen of Heaven and pour out drink offerings to her.” The expressions have been combined to simplify and shorten the sentence. The same combination also occurs in vv. 18, 19.

[44:17]  sn See the translator’s note and the study note on 7:18 for the problem of translation and identification of the term translated here “the goddess called the Queen of Heaven.”

[44:17]  ¹² tn Heb “saw [or experienced] no disaster/trouble/harm.”

[44:18]  ¹³ tn Heb “we have been consumed/destroyed by sword or by starvation.” The “we” cannot be taken literally here since they are still alive.

[44:18]  sn What is being contrasted here is the relative peace and prosperity under the reign of Manasseh, who promoted all kinds of pagan cults including the worship of astral deities (2 Kgs 21:2-9), and the disasters that befell Judah after the reforms of Josiah, which included the removal of all the cult images and altars from Jerusalem and Judah (2 Kgs 23:4-15). The disasters included the death of Josiah himself at the battle of Megiddo, the deportation of his son Jehoahaz to Egypt, the death of Jehoiakim, the deportation of Jehoiachin (Jeconiah) and many other Judeans in 597 b.c., the death by war, starvation, and disease of many Judeans during the siege of Jerusalem in 588-86 b.c., and the captivity of many of those who survived. Instead of seeing these as punishments for their disobedience to the Lord as Jeremiah had preached to them, they saw these as consequences of their failure to continue the worship of the foreign gods.

[44:19]  ¹⁴ tc The words “And the women added” are not in the Hebrew text. They are, however, implicit in what is said. They are found in the Syriac version and in one recension of the Greek version. W. L. Holladay (Jeremiah [Hermeneia], 2:279, n. 19a) suggests that these words are missing from the Hebrew text because of haplography, i.e., that the scribe left out וַהַנָּשִׁים אָמְרוּ כִי (vahannashim ’omru khi) because his eye jumped from the ו at the beginning to the כִּי (ki) that introduced the temporal clause and left out everything in between. It is, however, just as likely, given the fact that there are several other examples of quotes which have not been formally introduced in the book of Jeremiah, that the words were not there and are supplied by these two ancient versions as a translator’s clarification.

[44:19]  ¹⁵ tn Or “When we sacrificed and poured out drink offering to the Queen of Heaven and made cakes in her image, wasn’t it with the knowledge and approval of our husbands?” Heb “When we sacrificed to the Queen of Heaven and poured out drink offerings [for the use of לְ (lamed) + the infinitive construct to carry on the tense of the preceding verb see BDB 518 s.v. לְ 7.b(h)] to her, did we make cakes to make an image of her and pour out drink offerings apart from [i.e., “without the knowledge and consent of,” so BDB 116 s.v. בִּלְעֲדֵי b(a)] our husbands?” The question expects a positive answer and has been rendered as an affirmation in the translation. The long, complex Hebrew sentence has again been broken in two and restructured to better conform with contemporary English style.

[44:19]  sn According to Jer 7:18-19 it was not only with the full knowledge and approval of their husbands but also with their active participation. Most of the commentaries call attention to the fact that what is being alluded to here is that a woman’s vow had to have her husband’s conscious approval to have any validity (cf. Num 30:7-16 and see the reference to the vow in v. 17).