Yeremia 9:25-26

9:25 The Lord says, “Watch out! ¹  The time is soon coming when I will punish all those who are circumcised only in the flesh. ²  9:26 That is, I will punish the Egyptians, the Judeans, the Edomites, the Ammonites, the Moabites, and all the desert people who cut their hair short at the temples. ³  I will do so because none of the people of those nations are really circumcised in the Lord’s sight. ⁴  Moreover, none of the people of Israel ⁵  are circumcised when it comes to their hearts.” ⁶ 

Yeremia 25:18-19

25:18 I made Jerusalem ⁷  and the cities of Judah, its kings and its officials drink it. ⁸  I did it so Judah would become a ruin. I did it so Judah, its kings, and its officials would become an object ⁹  of horror and of hissing scorn, an example used in curses. ¹⁰  Such is already becoming the case! ¹¹  25:19 I made all of these other people drink it: Pharaoh, king of Egypt; ¹²  his attendants, his officials, his people,

[9:25]  ¹ tn Heb “Behold!”

[9:25]  ² tn Heb “punish all who are circumcised in the flesh.” The translation is contextually motivated to better bring out the contrast that follows.

[9:26]  ³ tn Heb “all those who are cut off on the side of the head who live in the desert.” KJV and some other English versions (e.g., NIV “who live in the desert in distant places”; NLT “who live in distant places”) have followed the interpretation that this is a biform of an expression meaning “end or remote parts of the [far] corners [of the earth].” This interpretation is generally abandoned by the more recent commentaries and lexicons (see, e.g. BDB 802 s.v. פֵּאָה 1 and HALOT 858 s.v. פֵּאָה 1.β). It occurs also in 25:33; 49:32.

[9:26]  ⁴ tn Heb “For all of these nations are uncircumcised.” The words “I will do so” are supplied in the translation to indicate the connection with the preceding statement.

[9:26]  sn A contrast is drawn here between circumcision as a mere external cutting of the flesh and a sign of commitment to the covenant and the God of the covenant. The people of these nations practiced circumcision but not as a sign of the covenant. The people of Israel engaged in it as a religious practice but without any obedience to the covenant that it was a sign of or any real commitment to the Lord.

[9:26]  ⁵ tn Heb “house of Israel.”

[9:26]  ⁶ tn Heb “And all the house of Israel is uncircumcised of heart.”

[25:18]  ⁷ map For location see Map5 B1; Map6 F3; Map7 E2; Map8 F2; Map10 B3; JP1 F4; JP2 F4; JP3 F4; JP4 F4.

[25:18]  ⁸ tn The words “I made” and “drink it” are not in the text. The text from v. 18 to v. 26 contains a list of the nations that Jeremiah “made drink it.” The words are supplied in the translation here and at the beginning of v. 19 for the sake of clarity. See also the note on v. 26.

[25:18]  ⁹ tn Heb “in order to make them a ruin, an object of…” The sentence is broken up and the antecedents are made specific for the sake of clarity and English style.

[25:18]  ¹⁰ tn See the study note on 24:9 for explanation.

[25:18]  ¹¹ tn Heb “as it is today.” This phrase would obviously be more appropriate after all these things had happened as is the case in 44:6, 23 where the verbs referring to these conditions are past. Some see this phrase as a marginal gloss added after the tragedies of 597 b.c. or 586 b.c. However, it may refer here to the beginning stages where Judah has already suffered the loss of Josiah, of its freedom, of some of its temple treasures, and of some of its leaders (Dan 1:1-3. The different date for Jehoiakim there is due to the different method of counting the king’s first year; the third year there is the same as the fourth year in 25:1).

[25:19]  ¹² sn See further Jer 46:2-28 for the judgment against Egypt.