Ratapan 3:15

3:15 He has given me my fill of bitter herbs

and made me drunk with bitterness. ¹ 

Ratapan 3:26-27

3:26 It is good to wait patiently ² 

for deliverance from the Lord. ³ 

3:27 It is good for a man ⁴ 

to bear ⁵  the yoke ⁶  while he is young. ⁷ 

Ratapan 3:37

מ (Mem)

3:37 Whose command was ever fulfilled ⁸ 

unless the Lord ⁹  decreed it?

Ratapan 5:19-20

5:19 But you, O Lord, reign forever;

your throne endures from generation to generation.

5:20 Why do you keep on forgetting ¹⁰  us?

Why do you forsake us so long?

[3:15]  ¹ tn Heb “wormwood” or “bitterness” (BDB 542 s.v. לַעֲנָה; HALOT 533 s.v. לַעֲנָה).

[3:26]  ² tn Heb “waiting and silently.” The two adjectives וְיָחִיל וְדוּמָם (vÿyakhil vÿdumam, “waiting and silently”) form a hendiadys: The first functions verbally and the second functions adverbially: “to wait silently.” The adjective דוּמָם (dumam, “silently”) also functions as a metonymy of association, standing for patience or rest (HALOT 217 s.v.). This metonymical nuance is captured well in less literal English versions: “wait in patience” (TEV) and “wait patiently” (CEV, NJPS). The more literal English versions do not express the metonymy as well: “quietly wait” (KJV, NKJV, ASV), “waits silently” (NASB), “wait quietly” (RSV, NRSV, NIV).

[3:26]  ³ tn Heb “deliverance of the Lord.” In the genitive-construct, the genitive יהוה (YHWH, “the Lord”) denotes source, that is, he is the source of the deliverance: “deliverance from the Lord.”

[3:27]  ⁴ tn See note at 3:1 on the Hebrew term for “man” here.

[3:27]  ⁵ tn Heb “that he bear.”

[3:27]  ⁶ sn Jeremiah is referring to the painful humiliation of subjugation to the Babylonians, particularly to the exile of the populace of Jerusalem. The Babylonians and Assyrians frequently used the phrase “bear the yoke” as a metaphor: their subjects were made as subservient to them as yoked oxen were to their masters. Because the Babylonian exile would last for seventy years, only those who were in their youth when Jerusalem fell would have any hope of living until the return of the remnant. For the middle-aged and elderly, the yoke of exile would be insufferable; but those who bore this “yoke” in their youth would have hope.

[3:27]  ⁷ tn Heb “in his youth.” The preposition ב (bet) functions in a temporal sense: “when.”

[3:37]  ⁸ tn Heb “Who is this, he spoke and it came to pass?” The general sense is to ask whose commands are fulfilled. The phrase “he spoke and it came to pass” is taken as an allusion to the creation account (see Gen 1:3).

[3:37]  ⁹ tc The MT reads אֲדֹנָי (’adonay, “the Lord”) here rather than יהוה (YHWH, “the Lord”). See the tc note at 1:14.

[5:20]  ¹⁰ tn The Hebrew verb “forget” often means “to not pay attention to, ignore,” just as the Hebrew “remember” often means “to consider, attend to.”

[5:20]  sn The verbs “to forget” and “to remember” are often used figuratively in scripture when God is the subject, particularly in contexts of judgment (God forgets his people) and restoration of blessing (God remembers his people). In this case, the verb “to forget” functions as a hypocatastasis (implied comparison), drawing a comparison between God’s judgment and rejection of Jerusalem to a person forgetting that Jerusalem even exists. God’s judgment of Jerusalem was so intense and enduring that it seemed as though he had forgotten her. The synonymous parallelism makes this clear.