Yeremia 32:31

32:31 This will happen because ¹  the people of this city have aroused my anger and my wrath since the time they built it until now. ²  They have made me so angry that I am determined to remove ³  it from my sight.

Yeremia 36:7

36:7 Perhaps then they will ask the Lord for mercy and will all stop doing the evil things they have been doing. ⁴  For the Lord has threatened to bring great anger and wrath against these people.” ⁵ 

Yeremia 50:25

50:25 I have opened up the place where my weapons are stored. ⁶ 

I have brought out the weapons for carrying out my wrath. ⁷ 

For I, the Lord God who rules over all, ⁸ 

have work to carry out in the land of Babylonia. ⁹ 

[32:31]  ¹ tn The statements in vv. 28-29 regarding the certain destruction of the city are motivated by three parallel causal clauses in vv. 30a, b, 31, the last of which extends through subordinate and coordinate clauses until the end of v. 35. An attempt has been made to bring out this structure by repeating the idea “This/it will happen” in front of each of these causal clauses in the English translation.

[32:31]  ² tn Heb “from the day they built it until this day.”

[32:31]  sn The Israelites did not in fact “build” Jerusalem. They captured it from the Jebusites in the time of David. This refers perhaps to the enlarging and fortifying of the city after it came into the hands of the Israelites (2 Sam 5:6-10).

[32:31]  ³ tn Heb “For this city has been to me for a source of my anger and my wrath from the day they built it until this day so as remove it.” The preposition ְל (lamed) with the infinitive (Heb “so as to remove it”; לַהֲסִירָהּ, lahasirah) expresses degree (cf. R. J. Williams, Hebrew Syntax, 37, §199, and compare usage in 2 Sam 13:2).

[36:7]  ⁴ tn Heb “will turn each one from his wicked way.”

[36:7]  ⁵ tn Heb “For great is the anger and the wrath which the Lord has spoken against this people.” The translation uses the more active form which is more in keeping with contemporary English style.

[50:25]  ⁶ tn Or “I have opened up my armory.”

[50:25]  ⁷ tn Heb “The Lord has opened up his armory and has brought out the weapons of his wrath.” The problem of the Lord referring to himself in the third person (or of the prophet speaking on his behalf) is again raised here and is again resolved by using the first person throughout. The construction “weapons of my wrath” would not convey any meaning to many readers so the significance has been spelled out in the translation.

[50:25]  sn The weapons are the nations which God is bringing from the north against them. Reference has already been made in the study notes that Assyria is the “rod” or “war club” by which God vents his anger against Israel (Isa 10:5-6) and Babylon a hammer or war club with which he shatters the nations (Jer 50:23; 51:20). Now God will use other nations as weapons to execute his wrath against Babylon. For a similar idea see Isa 13:2-5 where reference is made to marshaling the nations against Babylon. Some of the nations that the Lord will marshal against Babylon are named in Jer 51:27-28.

[50:25]  ⁸ tn Heb “the Lord Yahweh of armies.” For an explanation of this rendering and the significance of this title see the study note on 2:19.

[50:25]  ⁹ tn The words “of Babylonia” are not in the text but are implicit from the context. They have been supplied in the translation to clarify the referent.

[50:25]  sn The verbs in vv. 22-25 are all descriptive of the present but, all of this is really to take place in the future. Hebrew poetry has a way of rendering future actions as though they were already accomplished. The poetry of this section makes it difficult, however, to render the verbs as future as the present translation has regularly done.