Yeremia 2:17

2:17 You have brought all this on yourself, Israel, ¹ 

by deserting the Lord your God when he was leading you along the right path. ² 

Yeremia 2:33

2:33 “My, how good you have become

at chasing after your lovers! ³ 

Why, you could even teach prostitutes a thing or two! ⁴ 

Yeremia 4:18

4:18 “The way you have lived and the things you have done ⁵ 

will bring this on you.

This is the punishment you deserve, and it will be painful indeed. ⁶ 

The pain will be so bad it will pierce your heart.” ⁷ 

Yeremia 5:27

5:27 Like a cage filled with the birds that have been caught, ⁸ 

their houses are filled with the gains of their fraud and deceit. ⁹ 

That is how they have gotten so rich and powerful. ¹⁰ 

Yeremia 13:24

13:24 “The Lord says, ¹¹ 

‘That is why I will scatter your people ¹²  like chaff

that is blown away by a desert wind. ¹³ 

Yeremia 18:14

18:14 Does the snow ever completely vanish from the rocky slopes of Lebanon?

Do the cool waters from those distant mountains ever cease to flow? ¹⁴ 

Yeremia 20:17

20:17 For he did not kill me before I came from the womb,

making my pregnant mother’s womb my grave forever. ¹⁵ 

Yeremia 31:30

31:30 Rather, each person will die for his own sins. The teeth of the person who eats the sour grapes will themselves grow numb. ¹⁶ 

Yeremia 49:26

49:26 For her young men will fall in her city squares.

All her soldiers will be destroyed at that time,”

says the Lord who rules over all. ¹⁷ 

[2:17]  ¹ tn Heb “Are you not bringing this on yourself.” The question is rhetorical and expects a positive answer.

[2:17]  ² tn Heb “at the time of leading you in the way.”

[2:33]  ³ tn Heb “How good you have made your ways to seek love.”

[2:33]  ⁴ tn Heb “so that even the wicked women you teach your ways.”

[4:18]  ⁵ tn Heb “Your way and your deeds.”

[4:18]  ⁶ tn Heb “How bitter!”

[4:18]  ⁷ tn Heb “Indeed, it reaches to your heart.” The subject must be the pain alluded to in the last half of the preceding line; the verb is masculine, agreeing with the adjective translated “painful.” The only other possible antecedent “punishment” is feminine.

[5:27]  ⁸ tn The words, “that have been caught” are not in the text but are implicit in the comparison.

[5:27]  ⁹ tn Heb “are filled with deceit.” The translation assumes a figure of speech of cause for effect (metonymy). Compare the same word in the same figure in Zeph 1:9.

[5:27]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “therefore they have gotten great and rich.”

[13:24]  ¹¹ tn The words, “The Lord says” are not in the text at this point. The words “an oracle of the Lord” does, however, occur in the middle of the next verse and it is obvious the Lord is the speaker. The words have been moved up from the next verse to enhance clarity.

[13:24]  ¹² tn Heb “them.” This is another example of the rapid shift in pronouns seen several times in the book of Jeremiah. The pronouns in the preceding and the following are second feminine singular. It might be argued that “them” goes back to the “flock”/“sheep” in v. 20, but the next verse refers the fate described here to “you” (feminine singular). This may be another example of the kind of metaphoric shifts in referents discussed in the notes on 13:20 above. Besides, it would sound a little odd in the translation to speak of scattering one person like chaff.

[13:24]  ¹³ sn Compare the threat using the same metaphor in Jer 4:11-12.

[18:14]  ¹⁴ tn The precise translation of this verse is somewhat uncertain. Two phrases in this verse are the primary cause of discussion and the source of numerous emendations, none of which has gained consensus. The phrase which is rendered here “rocky slopes” is in Hebrew צוּר שָׂדַי (tsur saday), which would normally mean something like “rocky crag of the field” (see BDB 961 s.v. שָׂדַי 1.g). Numerous emendations have been proposed, most of which are listed in the footnotes of J. A. Thompson, Jeremiah (NICOT), 436. The present translation has chosen to follow the proposal of several scholars that the word here is related to the Akkadian word shadu meaning mountain. The other difficulty is the word translated “cease” which in the MT is literally “be uprooted” (יִנָּתְשׁוּ, yinnatshu). The word is usually emended to read יִנָּשְׁתוּ (yinnashtu, “are dried up”) as a case of transposed letters (cf., e.g., BDB 684 s.v. נָתַשׁ Niph). This is probably a case of an error in hearing and the word נָטַשׁ (natash) which is often parallel to עָזַב (’azav), translated here “vanish,” should be read in the sense that it has in 1 Sam 10:2. Whether one reads “are plucked up” and understands it figuratively of ceasing (“are dried” or “cease”), the sense is the same. For the sense of “distant” for the word זָרִים (zarim) see 2 Kgs 19:24.

[18:14]  sn Israel’s actions are contrary to nature. See the same kind of argumentation in Jer 2:11; 8:7.

[20:17]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “because he did not kill me from the womb so my mother might be to me for my grave and her womb eternally pregnant.” The sentence structure has been modified and the word “womb” moved from the last line to the next to the last line for English stylistic purposes and greater clarity.

[31:30]  ¹⁶ sn The Lord answers their charge by stating that each person is responsible for his own sin and will himself bear the consequences. Ezek 18 has a more extended treatment of this and shows that this extends not just to the link between parents and children but between former behavior and future behavior of the same individual. To a certain extent the principle articulated here is anticipatory of the statement in v. 34 which refers to the forgiveness of former sins.

[49:26]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “Oracle of Yahweh of armies.” For this title for God see the study note on 2:19.