Yeremia 32:28

32:28 Therefore I, the Lord, say: ¹  ‘I will indeed hand ²  this city over to King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon and the Babylonian army. ³  They will capture it.

Yeremia 21:4

21:4 that the Lord, the God of Israel, says, ⁴  ‘The forces at your disposal ⁵  are now outside the walls fighting against King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon and the Babylonians ⁶  who have you under siege. I will gather those forces back inside the city. ⁷ 

Yeremia 34:2-3

34:2 The Lord God of Israel told Jeremiah ⁸  to go and give King Zedekiah of Judah a message. He told Jeremiah ⁹  to tell him, “The Lord says, ‘I am going to ¹⁰  hand this city over to the king of Babylon and he will burn it down. 34:3 You yourself will not escape his clutches, but will certainly be captured and handed over to him. You must confront the king of Babylon face to face and answer to him personally. ¹¹  Then you must go to Babylon.

[32:28]  ¹ tn Heb “Thus says the Lord.” However, the speech has already been introduced as first person. So the first person style has been retained for smoother narrative style.

[32:28]  ² tn Heb “Behold, I will give this city into the hand of…”

[32:28]  ³ tn Heb “The Chaldeans.” See the study note on 21:4 for further explanation.

[21:4]  ⁴ tn Heb “Tell Zedekiah, ‘Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel.’” Using the indirect quote eliminates one level of embedded quotation and makes it easier for the reader to follow.

[21:4]  ⁵ tn Heb “the weapons which are in your hand.” Weapons stands here by substitution for the soldiers who wield them.

[21:4]  ⁶ sn The Babylonians (Heb “the Chaldeans”). The Chaldeans were a group of people in the country south of Babylon from which Nebuchadnezzar came. The Chaldean dynasty his father established became the name by which the Babylonians are regularly referred to in the book of Jeremiah. Jeremiah’s contemporary Ezekiel uses both terms.

[21:4]  ⁷ tn The structure of the Hebrew sentence of this verse is long and complex and has led to a great deal of confusion and misunderstanding. There are two primary points of confusion: 1) the relation of the phrase “outside the walls,” and 2) the antecedent of “them” in the last clause of the verse that reads in Hebrew: “I will gather them back into the midst of the city.” Most take the phrase “outside the walls” with “the Babylonians….” Some take it with “turn back/bring back” to mean “from outside….” However, the preposition “from” is part of the idiom for “outside….” The phrase goes with “fighting” as J. Bright (Jeremiah [AB], 215) notes and as NJPS suggests. The antecedent of “them” has sometimes been taken mistakenly to refer to the Babylonians. It refers rather to “the forces at your disposal” which is literally “the weapons which are in your hands.” This latter phrase is a figure involving substitution (called metonymy) as Bright also correctly notes. The whole sentence reads in Hebrew: “I will bring back the weapons of war which are in your hand with which you are fighting Nebuchadrezzar the King of Babylon and the Chaldeans who are besieging you outside your wall and I will gather them into the midst of the city.” The sentence has been restructured to better reflect the proper relationships and to make the sentence conform more to contemporary English style.

[34:2]  ⁸ tn Heb “told him”; the referent (Jeremiah) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[34:2]  ⁹ tn Heb “told him”; the referent (Jeremiah) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[34:2]  ¹⁰ tn Heb 34:1 “The word which came to Jeremiah from the Lord…saying, ‘Thus says the Lord God of Israel, “Go and speak to Zedekiah king of Judah and say to him, ‘Thus says the Lord, “I am going to….”’”’” The translation has tried to avoid some of the confusion that is created by embedding quotations within quotations by using indirect quotation in some instances; the conceptualization is the same but the style is simpler.

[34:3]  ¹¹ tn Heb “Your eyes will see the eyes of the king of Babylon and his mouth will speak with your mouth.” For this same idiom in reverse order see 32:4 and consult the translator’s note there for the obligatory nuance given to the verbs.

[34:3]  sn For the fulfillment of this see Jer 52:7-11.