Yeremia 23:31-32

23:31 I, the Lord, affirm ¹  that I am opposed to those prophets who are using their own tongues to declare, ‘The Lord declares….’ ²  23:32 I, the Lord, affirm ³  that I am opposed to those prophets who dream up lies and report them. They are misleading my people with their reckless lies. ⁴  I did not send them. I did not commission them. They are not helping these people at all. ⁵  I, the Lord, affirm it!” ⁶ 

Yeremia 28:2

28:2 “The Lord God of Israel who rules over all ⁷  says, ‘I will break the yoke of servitude ⁸  to the king of Babylon.

Yeremia 28:15

28:15 Then the prophet Jeremiah told the prophet Hananiah, “Listen, Hananiah! The Lord did not send you! You are making these people trust in a lie! ⁹ 

[23:31]  ¹ tn Heb “Oracle of the Lord.”

[23:31]  ² tn The word “The Lord” is not actually in the text but is implicit in the idiom. It is generally supplied in all the English versions.

[23:31]  sn Jer 23:30-33 are filled with biting sarcasm. The verses all begin with “Behold I am against the prophets who…” and go on to describe their reprehensible behavior. They “steal” one another’s messages which the Lord sarcastically calls “my words” (The passage shows that they are not; compare Marc Anthony’s use of “noble” to describe the ignoble men who killed Caesar). Here the use of the idiom translated “to use their own tongue” is really the idiom that refers to taking something in preparation for action, i.e., “they take their tongue” and “declare.” The verb “declare” is only used here and is derived from the idiom “oracle of “ which is almost universally used in the idiom “oracle of the Lord” which occurs 176 times in Jeremiah. I.e., it is their tongue that is “declaring not his mouth (v. 16). Moreover in the report of what they “declare” the Lord has left out the qualifying “of the Lord” to suggest the delusive nature of their message, i.e. they mislead people into believing that their message is from the Lord. Elsewhere in the discussion of the issue of false prophecy the Lord will use the full formula (Ezek 13:6-7). How ironic that their “Oracle of…” is punctuated by the triple “Oracle of the Lord” (vv. 30, 31, 32; translated here “I, the Lord, affirm that…).

[23:32]  ³ tn Heb “Oracle of the Lord.”

[23:32]  ⁴ tn Heb “with their lies and their recklessness.” This is an example of hendiadys where two nouns (in this case a concrete and an abstract one) are joined by “and” but one is intended to be the adjectival modifier of the other.

[23:32]  ⁵ sn In the light of what has been said this is a rhetorical understatement; they are not only “not helping,” they are leading them to their doom (cf. vv. 19-22). This figure of speech is known as litotes.

[23:32]  ⁶ tn Heb “Oracle of the Lord.”

[28:2]  ⁷ tn Heb “Yahweh of armies, the God of Israel.” See the study notes on 2:19 and 7:3 for the explanation of this title.

[28:2]  ⁸ sn See the study note on 27:2 for this figure. Hananiah is given the same title “the prophet” as Jeremiah throughout the chapter and claims to speak with the same authority (compare v. 2a with 27:21a). He even speaks like the true prophet; the verb form “I will break” is in the “prophetic perfect” emphasizing certitude. His message here is a contradiction of Jeremiah’s message recorded in the preceding chapter (compare especially v. 3 with 27:16, 19-22 and v. 4 with 22:24-28). The people and the priests are thus confronted with a choice of whom to believe. Who is the “true” prophet and who is the “false” one? Only fulfillment of their prophecies will prove which is which (see Deut 18:21-22).

[28:15]  ⁹ tn Or “You are giving these people false assurances.”