Yeremia 4:7

4:7 Like a lion that has come up from its lair ¹ 

the one who destroys nations has set out from his home base. ² 

He is coming out to lay your land waste.

Your cities will become ruins and lie uninhabited.

Yeremia 4:20

4:20 I see ³  one destruction after another taking place,

so that the whole land lies in ruins.

I see our ⁴  tents suddenly destroyed,

their ⁵  curtains torn down in a mere instant. ⁶ 

Yeremia 5:17

5:17 They will eat up your crops and your food.

They will kill off ⁷  your sons and your daughters.

They will eat up your sheep and your cattle.

They will destroy your vines and your fig trees. ⁸ 

Their weapons will batter down ⁹ 

the fortified cities you trust in.

Yeremia 9:11

9:11 The Lord said, ¹⁰ 

“I will make Jerusalem ¹¹  a heap of ruins.

Jackals will make their home there. ¹² 

I will destroy the towns of Judah

so that no one will be able to live in them.”

Yeremia 9:19

9:19 For the sound of wailing is soon to be heard in Zion.

They will wail, ¹³  ‘We are utterly ruined! ¹⁴  We are completely disgraced!

For our houses have been torn down

and we must leave our land.’” ¹⁵ 

Yeremia 12:10-13

12:10 Many foreign rulers ¹⁶  will ruin the land where I planted my people. ¹⁷ 

They will trample all over my chosen land. ¹⁸ 

They will turn my beautiful land

into a desolate wasteland.

12:11 They will lay it waste.

It will lie parched ¹⁹  and empty before me.

The whole land will be laid waste.

But no one living in it will pay any heed. ²⁰ 

12:12 A destructive army ²¹  will come marching

over the hilltops in the desert.

For the Lord will use them as his destructive weapon ²² 

against ²³  everyone from one end of the land to the other.

No one will be safe. ²⁴ 

12:13 My people will sow wheat, but will harvest weeds. ²⁵ 

They will work until they are exhausted, but will get nothing from it.

They will be disappointed in their harvests ²⁶ 

because the Lord will take them away in his fierce anger. ²⁷ 

[4:7]  ¹ tn Heb “A lion has left its lair.” The metaphor is turned into a simile for clarification. The word translated “lair” has also been understood to refer to a hiding place. However, it appears to be cognate in meaning to the word translated “lair” in Ps 10:9; Jer 25:38, a word which also refers to the abode of the Lord in Ps 76:3.

[4:7]  ² tn Heb “his place.”

[4:20]  ³ tn The words, “I see” are not in the text here or at the beginning of the third line. They are supplied in the translation to show that this is Jeremiah’s vision of what will happen as a result of the invasion announced in 4:5-9, 11-17a.

[4:20]  ⁴ tn Heb “my.” This is probably not a reference to Jeremiah’s own tents since he foresees the destruction of the whole land. Jeremiah so identifies with the plight of his people that he sees the destruction of their tents as though they were his very own. It would probably lead to confusion to translate literally and it is not uncommon in Hebrew laments for the community or its representative to speak of the community as an “I.” See for example the interchange between first singular and first plural pronouns in Ps 44:4-8.

[4:20]  ⁵ tn Heb “my.”

[4:20]  ⁶ tn It is not altogether clear what Jeremiah intends by the use of this metaphor. In all likelihood he means that the defenses of Israel’s cities and towns have offered no more resistance than nomads’ tents. However, in light of the fact that the word “tent” came to be used generically for a person’s home (cf. 1 Kgs 8:66; 12:16), it is possible that Jeremiah is here referring to the destruction of their homes and the resultant feeling of homelessness and loss of even elementary protection. Given the lack of certainty the present translation is rather literal here.

[5:17]  ⁷ tn Heb “eat up.”

[5:17]  ⁸ tn Or “eat up your grapes and figs”; Heb “eat up your vines and your fig trees.”

[5:17]  sn It was typical for an army in time of war in the ancient Near East not only to eat up the crops but to destroy the means of further production.

[5:17]  ⁹ tn Heb “They will beat down with the sword.” The term “sword” is a figure of speech (synecdoche) for military weapons in general. Siege ramps, not swords, beat down city walls; swords kill people, not city walls.

[9:11]  ¹⁰ tn The words “the Lord said” are not in the text, but it is obvious from the content that he is the speaker. These words are supplied in the translation for clarity.

[9:11]  ¹¹ map For location see Map5 B1; Map6 F3; Map7 E2; Map8 F2; Map10 B3; JP1 F4; JP2 F4; JP3 F4; JP4 F4.

[9:11]  ¹² tn Heb “a heap of ruins, a haunt for jackals.”

[9:19]  ¹³ tn The words “They will wail” are not in the text. They are supplied in the translation to make clear that this is the wailing that will be heard.

[9:19]  sn The destruction is still in the future, but it is presented graphically as though it had already taken place.

[9:19]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “How we are ruined!”

[9:19]  ¹⁵ tn The order of these two lines has been reversed for English stylistic reasons. The text reads in Hebrew “because we have left our land because they have thrown down our dwellings.” The two clauses offer parallel reasons for the cries “How ruined we are! [How] we are greatly disgraced!” But the first line must contain a prophetic perfect (because the lament comes from Jerusalem) and the second a perfect referring to a destruction that is itself future. This seems the only way to render the verse that would not be misleading.

[12:10]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “Many shepherds.” For the use of the term “shepherd” as a figure for rulers see the notes on 10:21.

[12:10]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “my vineyard.” To translate literally would presuppose an unlikely familiarity of this figure on the part of some readers. To translate as “vineyards” as some do would be misleading because that would miss the figurative nuance altogether.

[12:10]  sn The figure of Israel as God’s vine and the land as God’s vineyard is found several times in the Bible. The best known of these is the extended metaphor in Isa 5:1-7. This figure also appears in Jer 2:20.

[12:10]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “my portion.”

[12:11]  ¹⁹ tn For the use of this verb see the notes on 12:4. Some understand the homonym here meaning “it [the desolated land] will mourn to me.” However, the only other use of the preposition עַל (’al) with this root means “to mourn over” not “to” (cf. Hos 10:5). For the use of the preposition here see BDB 753 s.v. עַל II.1.b and compare the use in Gen 48:7.

[12:11]  ²⁰ tn Heb “But there is no man laying it to heart.” For the idiom here see BDB 525 s.v. לֵב II.3.d and compare the usage in Isa 42:25; 47:7.

[12:11]  sn There is a very interesting play on words and sounds in this verse that paints a picture of desolation and the pathos it evokes. Part of this is reflected in the translation. The same Hebrew word referring to a desolation or a waste (שְׁמֵמָה, shÿmemah) is repeated three times at the end of three successive lines and the related verb is found at the beginning of the fourth (נָשַׁמָּה, nashammah). A similar sounding word is found in the second of the three successive lines (שָׁמָהּ, shamah = “he [they] will make it”). This latter word is part of a further play because it is repeated in a different form in the last line (שָׁם, sham = “laying”); they lay it waste but no one lays it to heart. There is also an interesting contrast between the sorrow the Lord feels and the inattention of the people.

[12:12]  ²¹ tn Heb “destroyers.”

[12:12]  ²² tn Heb “It is the Lord’s consuming sword.”

[12:12]  ²³ tn Heb “For a sword of the Lord will devour.” The sword is often symbolic for destructive forces of all kinds. Here and in Isa 34:6; Jer 47:6 it is symbolic of the enemy armies that the Lord uses to carry out destructive punishment against his enemies, hence the translation “his destructive weapon.” A similar figure is use in Isa 10:5 where the figure is more clearly identified; Assyria is the rod/club that the Lord will use to discipline unfaithful Israel.

[12:12]  ²⁴ tn Heb “There is no peace to all flesh.”

[12:13]  ²⁵ sn Invading armies lived off the land, using up all the produce and destroying everything they could not consume.

[12:13]  ²⁶ tn The pronouns here are actually second plural: Heb “Be ashamed/disconcerted because of your harvests.” Because the verb form (וּבֹשׁוּ, uvoshu) can either be Qal perfect third plural or Qal imperative masculine plural many emend the pronoun on the noun to third plural (see, e.g., BHS). However, this is the easier reading and is not supported by either the Latin or the Greek which have second plural. This is probably another case of the shift from description to direct address that has been met with several times already in Jeremiah (the figure of speech called apostrophe; for other examples see, e.g., 9:4; 11:13). As in other cases the translation has been leveled to third plural to avoid confusion for the contemporary English reader. For the meaning of the verb here see BDB 101 s.v. בּוֹשׁ Qal.2 and compare the usage in Jer 48:13.

[12:13]  ²⁷ tn Heb “be disappointed in their harvests from the fierce anger of the Lord.” The translation makes explicit what is implicit in the elliptical poetry of the Hebrew original.