Yeremia 3:22

3:22 Come back to me, you wayward people.

I want to cure your waywardness. ¹ 

Say, ²  ‘Here we are. We come to you

because you are the Lord our God.

Yeremia 8:4

Willful Disregard of God Will Lead to Destruction

8:4 The Lord said to me, ³ 

“Tell them, ‘The Lord says,

Do people not get back up when they fall down?

Do they not turn around when they go the wrong way? ⁴ 

Yeremia 26:3

26:3 Maybe they will pay attention and each of them will stop living the evil way they do. ⁵  If they do that, then I will forgo destroying them ⁶  as I had intended to do because of the wicked things they have been doing. ⁷ 

Yeremia 31:19

31:19 For after we turned away from you we repented.

After we came to our senses ⁸  we beat our breasts in sorrow. ⁹ 

We are ashamed and humiliated

because of the disgraceful things we did previously.’ ¹⁰ 

Yeremia 36:3

36:3 Perhaps when the people of Judah hear about all the disaster I intend to bring on them, they will all stop doing the evil things they have been doing. ¹¹  If they do, I will forgive their sins and the wicked things they have done.” ¹² 

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. ¹³  For the Lord has threatened to bring great anger and wrath against these people.” ¹⁴ 

Yeremia 50:16

50:16 Kill all the farmers who sow the seed in the land of Babylon.

Kill all those who wield the sickle at harvest time. ¹⁵ 

Let all the foreigners return to their own people.

Let them hurry back to their own lands

to escape destruction by that enemy army. ¹⁶ 

[3:22]  ¹ tn Or “I will forgive your apostasies.” Heb “I will [or want to] heal your apostasies.” For the use of the verb “heal” (רָפָא, rafa’) to refer to spiritual healing and forgiveness see Hos 14:4.

[3:22]  ² tn Or “They say.” There is an obvious ellipsis of a verb of saying here since the preceding words are those of the Lord and the following are those of the people. However, there is debate about whether these are the response of the people to the Lord’s invitation, a response which is said to be inadequate according to the continuation in 4:1-4, or whether these are the Lord’s model for Israel’s confession of repentance to which he adds further instructions about the proper heart attitude that should accompany it in 4:1-4. The former implies a dialogue with an unmarked twofold shift in speaker between 3:22b-25 and 4:1-4:4 while the latter assumes the same main speaker throughout with an unmarked instruction only in 3:22b-25. This disrupts the flow of the passage less and appears more likely.

[8:4]  ³ tn The words “the Lord said to me” are not in the text but are implicit from the context. They are supplied in the translation to make clear who is speaking and who is being addressed.

[8:4]  ⁴ sn There is a play on two different nuances of the same Hebrew word that means “turn” and “return,” “turn away” and “turn back.”

[26:3]  ⁵ tn Heb “will turn from his wicked way.”

[26:3]  ⁶ tn For the idiom and translation of terms involved here see 18:8 and the translator’s note there.

[26:3]  sn The Lord is being consistent in the application of the principle laid down in Jer 18:7-8 that reformation of character will result in the withdrawal of the punishment of “uprooting, tearing down, destroying.” His prophecies of doom are conditional threats, open to change with change in behavior.

[26:3]  ⁷ tn Heb “because of the wickedness of their deeds.”

[31:19]  ⁸ tn For this meaning of the verb see HAL 374 s.v. יָדַע Nif 5 or W. L. Holladay, Concise Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon, 129. REB translates “Now that I am submissive” relating the verb to a second root meaning “be submissive.” (See HALOT 375 s.v. II יָדַע and J. Barr, Comparative Philology and the Text of the Old Testament, 19-21, for evidence for this verb. Other passages cited with this nuance are Judg 8:16; Prov 10:9; Job 20:20.)

[31:19]  ⁹ tn Heb “I struck my thigh.” This was a gesture of grief and anguish (cf. Ezek 21:12 [21:17 HT]). The modern equivalent is “to beat the breast.”

[31:19]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “because I bear the reproach of my youth.” For the plural referents see the note at the beginning of v. 18.

[31:19]  sn The expression the disgraceful things we did in our earlier history refers to the disgrace that accompanied the sins that Israel did in her earlier years before she learned the painful lesson of submission to the Lord through the discipline of exile. For earlier references to the sins of her youth (i.e., in her earlier years as a nation) see 3:24-25; 22:21 and see also 32:29. At the time that these verses were written, neither northern Israel or Judah had expressed the kind of contrition voiced in vv. 18-19. As one commentator notes, the words here are both prophetic and instructive.

[36:3]  ¹¹ tn Heb “will turn each one from his wicked way.”

[36:3]  ¹² tn Heb “their iniquity and their sin.”

[36:3]  sn The offer of withdrawal of punishment for sin is consistent with the principles of Jer 18:7-8 and the temple sermon delivered early in the reign of this king (cf. 26:1-3; 7:5-7).

[36:7]  ¹³ tn Heb “will turn each one from his wicked way.”

[36:7]  ¹⁴ 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.

[50:16]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “Cut off the sower from Babylon, and the one who wields the sickle at harvest time.” For the meaning “kill” for the root “cut off” see BDB 503 s.v. כָּרַת Qal.1.b and compare usage in Jer 11:19. The verb is common in this nuance in the Hiphil, cf. BDB 504 s.v. כָּרַת Hiph, 2.b.

[50:16]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “Because of [or out of fear of] the sword of the oppressor, let each of them turn toward his [own] people and each of them flee to his [own] country.” Compare a similar expression in 46:16 where the reference was to the flight of the mercenaries. Here it refers most likely to foreigners who are counseled to leave Babylon before they are caught up in the destruction. Many of the commentaries and English versions render the verbs as futures but they are more likely third person commands (jussives). Compare the clear commands in v. 8 followed by essentially the same motivation. The “sword of the oppressor,” of course, refers to death at the hands of soldiers wielding all kinds of weapons, chief of which has been a reference to the bow (v. 14).