Yeremia 23:16

23:16 The Lord who rules over all ¹  says to the people of Jerusalem: ² 

“Do not listen to what

those prophets are saying to you.

They are filling you with false hopes.

They are reporting visions of their own imaginations,

not something the Lord has given them to say. ³ 

Yeremia 27:9

27:9 So do not listen to your prophets or to those who claim to predict the future by divination, ⁴  by dreams, by consulting the dead, ⁵  or by practicing magic. They keep telling you, ‘You do not need to be ⁶  subject to the king of Babylon.’

Yeremia 27:15-16

27:15 For I, the Lord, affirm ⁷  that I did not send them. They are prophesying lies to you. If you ⁸  listen to them, I will drive you and the prophets who are prophesying lies out of the land and you will all die in exile.” ⁹ 

27:16 I also told the priests and all the people, “The Lord says, ‘Do not listen to what your prophets are saying. They are prophesying to you that ¹⁰  the valuable articles taken from the Lord’s temple will be brought back from Babylon very soon. ¹¹  But they are prophesying a lie to you.

[23:16]  ¹ tn Heb “Yahweh of armies.”

[23:16]  sn See the study note on 2:19 for explanation of this title.

[23:16]  ² tn The words “to the people of Jerusalem” are not in the Hebrew text but are supplied in the translation to reflect the masculine plural form of the imperative and the second masculine plural form of the pronoun. These words have been supplied in the translation for clarity.

[23:16]  ³ tn Heb “They tell of a vision of their own heart [= mind] not from the mouth of the Lord.”

[27:9]  ⁴ sn Various means of divination are alluded to in the OT. For example, Ezek 21:26-27 alludes to throwing down arrows to see which way they fall and consulting the shape of the liver of slaughtered animals. Gen 44:5 alludes to reading the future through pouring liquid in a cup. The means alluded to in this verse were all classified as pagan and prohibited as illegitimate in Deut 18:10-14. The Lord had promised that he would speak to them through prophets like Moses (Deut 18:15, 18). But even prophets could lie. Hence, the Lord told them that the test of a true prophet was whether what he said came true or not (Deut 18:20-22). An example of false prophesying and the vindication of the true as opposed to the false will be given in the chapter that follows this.

[27:9]  ⁵ sn An example of this is seen in 1 Sam 28.

[27:9]  ⁶ tn The verb in this context is best taken as a negative obligatory imperfect. See IBHS 508-9 §31.4g for discussion and examples. See Exod 4:15 as an example of positive obligation.

[27:15]  ⁷ tn Heb “oracle of the Lord.”

[27:15]  ⁸ sn The verbs are again plural referring to the king and his royal advisers.

[27:15]  ⁹ tn Heb “…drive you out and you will perish, you and the prophets who are prophesying lies.”

[27:15]  sn For the fulfillment of this prophecy see Jer 39:5-7; 52:7-11; 2 Kgs 25:4-7.

[27:16]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “don’t listen to the words of the prophets who are prophesying to you….” The sentence has been broken up for the sake of English style and one level of embedded quotes has been eliminated to ease complexity.

[27:16]  ¹¹ sn This refers to the valuable articles of the temple treasury which were carried off by Nebuchadnezzar four years earlier when he carried off Jeconiah, his family, some of his nobles, and some of the cream of Judean society (2 Kgs 24:10-16, especially v. 13 and see also vv. 19-20 in the verses following).