Yeremia 2:37

2:37 Moreover, you will come away from Egypt

with your hands covering your faces in sorrow and shame ¹ 

because the Lord will not allow your reliance on them to be successful

and you will not gain any help from them. ² 

Yeremia 4:28

4:28 Because of this the land will mourn

and the sky above will grow black. ³ 

For I have made my purpose known ⁴ 

and I will not relent or turn back from carrying it out.” ⁵ 

Yeremia 11:12

11:12 Then those living in the towns of Judah and in Jerusalem will ⁶  go and cry out for help to the gods to whom they have been sacrificing. However, those gods will by no means ⁷  be able to save them when disaster strikes them.

Yeremia 12:13

12:13 My people will sow wheat, but will harvest weeds. ⁸ 

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

They will be disappointed in their harvests ⁹ 

because the Lord will take them away in his fierce anger. ¹⁰ 

Yeremia 13:7

13:7 So I went to Perath and dug up ¹¹  the shorts from the place where I had buried them. I found ¹²  that they were ruined; they were good for nothing.

Yeremia 15:14

15:14 I will make you serve your enemies ¹³  in a land that you know nothing about.

For my anger is like a fire that will burn against you.”

Yeremia 17:6

17:6 They will be like a shrub ¹⁴  in the desert.

They will not experience good things even when they happen.

It will be as though they were growing in the desert,

in a salt land where no one can live.

Yeremia 18:12

18:12 But they just keep saying, ‘We do not care what you say! ¹⁵  We will do whatever we want to do! We will continue to behave wickedly and stubbornly!’” ¹⁶ 

Yeremia 22:6

22:6 “‘For the Lord says concerning the palace of the king of Judah,

“This place looks like a veritable forest of Gilead to me.

It is like the wooded heights of Lebanon in my eyes.

But I swear that I will make it like a wilderness

whose towns have all been deserted. ¹⁷ 

Yeremia 22:28

22:28 This man, Jeconiah, will be like a broken pot someone threw away.

He will be like a clay vessel ¹⁸  that no one wants. ¹⁹ 

Why will he and his children be forced into exile?

Why will they be thrown out into a country they know nothing about? ²⁰ 

Yeremia 25:10

25:10 I will put an end to the sounds of joy and gladness, to the glad celebration of brides and grooms in these lands. ²¹  I will put an end to the sound of people grinding meal. I will put an end to lamps shining in their houses. ²² 

Yeremia 26:16

26:16 Then the officials and all the people rendered their verdict to the priests and the prophets. They said, ²³  “This man should not be condemned to die. ²⁴  For he has spoken to us under the authority of the Lord our God.” ²⁵ 

Yeremia 30:8

30:8 When the time for them to be rescued comes,” ²⁶ 

says the Lord who rules over all, ²⁷ 

“I will rescue you from foreign subjugation. ²⁸ 

I will deliver you from captivity. ²⁹ 

Foreigners will then no longer subjugate them.

Yeremia 30:14

30:14 All your allies have abandoned you. ³⁰ 

They no longer have any concern for you.

For I have attacked you like an enemy would.

I have chastened you cruelly.

For your wickedness is so great

and your sin is so much. ³¹ 

Yeremia 32:5

32:5 Zedekiah will be carried off to Babylon and will remain there until I have fully dealt with him. ³²  I, the Lord, affirm it! ³³  Even if you ³⁴  continue to fight against the Babylonians, ³⁵  you cannot win.’”

Yeremia 42:10

42:10 ‘If you will just stay ³⁶  in this land, I will build you up. I will not tear you down. I will firmly plant you. ³⁷  I will not uproot you. For I am filled with sorrow because of the disaster that I have brought on you.

Yeremia 49:33

49:33 “Hazor will become a permanent wasteland,

a place where only jackals live. ³⁸ 

No one will live there.

No human being will settle in it.” ³⁹ 

Yeremia 51:29

51:29 The earth will tremble and writhe in agony. ⁴⁰ 

For the Lord will carry out his plan.

He plans to make the land of Babylonia ⁴¹ 

a wasteland where no one lives. ⁴² 

Yeremia 51:39

51:39 When their appetites are all stirred up, ⁴³ 

I will set out a banquet for them.

I will make them drunk

so that they will pass out, ⁴⁴ 

they will fall asleep forever,

they will never wake up,” ⁴⁵ 

says the Lord. ⁴⁶ 

[2:37]  ¹ tn Heb “with your hands on your head.” For the picture here see 2 Sam 13:19.

[2:37]  ² tn Heb “The Lord has rejected those you trust in; you will not prosper by/from them.”

[4:28]  ³ sn The earth and the heavens are personified here and depicted in the act of mourning and wearing black clothes because of the destruction of the land of Israel.

[4:28]  ⁴ tn Heb “has spoken and purposed.” This is an example of hendiadys where two verbs are joined by “and” but one is meant to serve as a modifier of the other.

[4:28]  ⁵ tn Heb “will not turn back from it.”

[11:12]  ⁶ tn Heb “Then the towns of Judah and those living in Jerusalem will…”

[11:12]  ⁷ tn The Hebrew construction is emphatic involving the use of an infinitive of the verb before the verb itself (Heb “saving they will not save”). For this construction to give emphasis to an antithesis, cf. GKC 343 §113.p.

[12:13]  ⁸ sn Invading armies lived off the land, using up all the produce and destroying everything they could not consume.

[12:13]  ⁹ 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]  ¹⁰ 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.

[13:7]  ¹¹ tn Heb “dug and took.”

[13:7]  ¹² tn Heb “And behold.”

[15:14]  ¹³ tc This reading follows the Greek and Syriac versions and several Hebrew mss. Other Hebrew mss read “I will cause the enemy to pass through a land.” The difference in the reading is between one Hebrew letter, a dalet (ד) and a resh (ר).

[17:6]  ¹⁴ tn This word occurs only here and in Jer 48:6. It has been identified as a kind of juniper, which is a short shrub with minute leaves that look like scales. For a picture and more discussion see Fauna and Flora of the Bible, 131.

[18:12]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “It is useless!” See the same expression in a similar context in Jer 2:25.

[18:12]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “We will follow our own plans and do each one according to the stubbornness of his own wicked heart.”

[18:12]  sn This has been the consistent pattern of their behavior. See 7:24; 9:13; 13:10; 16:12.

[22:6]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “Gilead you are to me, the height of Lebanon, but I will surely make you a wilderness [with] cities uninhabited.” The points of comparison are made explicit in the translation for the sake of clarity. See the study note for further explanation. For the use of the preposition לְ (lamed) = “in my eyes/in my opinion” see BDB 513 s.v. לְ 5.a(d) and compare Jonah 3:3; Esth 10:3. For the use of the particles אִם לֹא (’im lo’) to introduce an emphatic oath see BDB 50 s.v. אִם 1.b(2).

[22:6]  sn Lebanon was well known for its cedars and the palace (and the temple) had used a good deal of such timber in its construction (see 1 Kgs 5:6, 8-10; 7:2-3). In this section several references are made to cedar (see vv. 7, 14, 15, 23) and allusion has also been made to the paneled and colonnade armory of the Forest of Lebanon (2:14). It appears to have been a source of pride and luxury, perhaps at the expense of justice. Gilead was also noted in antiquity for its forests as well as for its fertile pastures.

[22:28]  ¹⁸ tn The word translated “clay vessel” occurs only here. Its meaning, however, is assured on the basis of the parallelism and on the basis of the verb root which is used for shaping or fashioning in Job 10:8. The KJV renders it as “idol,” but that word, while having the same consonants, never appears in the singular. The word is missing in the Greek version but is translated “vessel” in the Latin version. The word “clay” is supplied in the translation to clarify what sort of vessel is meant; its inclusion is justified based on the context and the use of the same verb root in Job 10:8 to refer to shaping or fashioning, which would imply clay pots or vessels.

[22:28]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “Is this man, Coniah, a despised, broken vessel or a vessel that no one wants?” The question is rhetorical expecting a positive answer in agreement with the preceding oracle.

[22:28]  sn For the image of the rejected, broken vessel see Jer 19:1-13 (where, however, the vessel is rejected first and then broken) and compare also the image of the linen shorts which are good for nothing in Jer 13 (see especially vv. 10-11).

[22:28]  ²⁰ sn The question “Why?” is a common rhetorical feature in the book of Jeremiah. See Jer 2:14, 31; 8:5, 19, 22; 12:1; 13:22; 14:19. In several cases like this one no answer is given, leaving a sense of exasperation and hopelessness with the sinfulness of the nation that calls forth such punishment from God.

[25:10]  ²¹ sn Compare Jer 7:24 and 16:9 for this same dire prediction limited to Judah and Jerusalem.

[25:10]  ²² sn The sound of people grinding meal and the presence of lamps shining in their houses were signs of everyday life. The Lord is going to make these lands desolate (v. 11) destroying all signs of life. (The statement is, of course, hyperbolic or poetic exaggeration; even after the destruction of Jerusalem many people were left in the land.) For these same descriptions of everyday life applying to the end of life see the allegory in Eccl 12:3-6.

[26:16]  ²³ tn Heb “Then the officials and all the people said to the priests and the prophets…”

[26:16]  ²⁴ sn Contrast v. 11.

[26:16]  ²⁵ tn Heb “For in the name of the Lord our God he has spoken to us.” The emphasis is on “in the name of…”

[26:16]  sn The priests and false prophets claimed that they were speaking in the Lord’s name (i.e., as his representatives and with his authority [see 1 Sam 25:9; 1 Kgs 21:8 and cf. the study note on Jer 23:27]) and felt that Jeremiah’s claims to be doing so were false (see v. 9). Jeremiah (and the Lord) charged that the opposite was the case (cf. 14:14-15; 23:21). The officials and the people, at least at this time, accepted his claims that the Lord had sent him (vv. 12, 15).

[30:8]  ²⁶ tn Heb “And it shall happen in that day.”

[30:8]  sn The time for them to be rescued (Heb “that day”) is the day of deliverance from the trouble alluded to at the end of the preceding verse, not the day of trouble mentioned at the beginning. Israel (even the good figs) will still need to go through the period of trouble (cf. vv. 10-11).

[30:8]  ²⁷ tn Heb “Oracle of Yahweh of armies.” See the study note on 2:19 for explanation of the title for God.

[30:8]  ²⁸ tn Heb “I will break his yoke from upon your neck.” For the explanation of the figure see the study note on 27:2. The shift from third person at the end of v. 7 to second person in v. 8c, d and back to third person in v. 8e is typical of Hebrew poetry in the book of Psalms and in the prophetic books (cf., GKC 351 §114.p and compare usage in Deut 32:15; Isa 5:8 listed there). The present translation, like several other modern ones, has typically leveled them to the same person to avoid confusion for modern readers who are not accustomed to this poetic tradition.

[30:8]  sn In the immediate context the reference to the yoke of their servitude to foreign domination (Heb “his yoke”) should be understood as a reference to the yoke of servitude to Nebuchadnezzar which has been referred to often in Jer 27-28 (see, e.g., 27:8, 12; 28:2, 4, 11). The end of that servitude has already been referred to in 25:11-14; 29:11-14. Like many other passages in the OT it has been given a later eschatological reinterpretation in the light of subsequent bondages and lack of complete fulfillment, i.e., of restoration to the land and restoration of the Davidic monarchy.

[30:8]  ²⁹ tn Heb “I will tear off their bands.” The “bands” are the leather straps which held the yoke bars in place (cf. 27:2). The metaphor of the “yoke on the neck” is continued. The translation reflects the sense of the metaphor but not the specific referent.

[30:14]  ³⁰ tn Heb “forgotten you.”

[30:14]  ³¹ tn Heb “attacked you like…with the chastening of a cruel one because of the greatness of your iniquity [and because] your sins are many.” The sentence has been broken down to conform to contemporary English style and better poetic scansion.

[32:5]  ³² tn This is the verb (פָּקַד, paqad) that has been met with several times in the book of Jeremiah, most often in the ominous sense of “punish” (e.g., 6:15; 11:22; 23:24) but also in the good sense of “resume concern for” (e.g., 27:22; 29:10). Here it is obviously in the ominous sense referring to his imprisonment and ultimate death (52:11).

[32:5]  sn Compare Jer 34:2-3 for this same prophecy. The incident in Jer 34:1-7 appears to be earlier than this one. Here Jeremiah is confined to the courtyard of the guardhouse; there he appears to have freedom of movement.

[32:5]  ³³ tn Heb “Oracle of the Lord.”

[32:5]  ³⁴ sn The pronouns are plural here, referring to the people of Judah and Jerusalem. Jeremiah had counseled that they surrender (cf. 27:12; 21:8-10) because they couldn’t succeed against the Babylonian army even under the most favorable circumstances (37:3-10).

[32:5]  ³⁵ tn Heb “The Chaldeans.” See the study note on 21:4 for further explanation.

[42:10]  ³⁶ tn The word “just” is intended to reflect the infinitive absolute before the finite verb emphasizing here the condition rather than the verb root (see Joüon 2:423 §123.g, and compare the usage in Exod 15:26). The form looks like the infinitive absolute of the verb שׁוּב (shuv), but all the versions interpret it as though it is from יָשַׁב (yashav) which is the root of the verb that follows it. Either this is a textual error of the loss of a י (yod) or this is one of the cases that GKC 69 §19.i list as the possible loss of a weak consonant at the beginning of a word.

[42:10]  ³⁷ tn Or “I will firmly plant you in the land,” or “I will establish you.” This is part of the metaphor that has been used of God (re)establishing Israel in the land. See 24:6; 31:28; 32:41.

[49:33]  ³⁸ sn Compare Jer 9:11.

[49:33]  ³⁹ sn Compare Jer 49:18 and 50:40 where the same thing is said about Edom and Babylon.

[51:29]  ⁴⁰ sn The figure here is common in the poetic tradition of the Lord going forth to do battle against his foes and the earth’s reaction to it is compared to a person trembling with fear and writhing in agony, agony like that of a woman in labor (cf. Judg 5:4; Nah 1:2-5; Hab 3:1-15 [especially v. 6]).

[51:29]  ⁴¹ tn Heb “For the plans of the Lord have been carried out to make the land of Babylon…” The passive has been turned into an active and the sentence broken up to better conform with contemporary English style. For the meaning of the verb קוּם (qum) in the sense used here see BDB 878 s.v. קוּם 7.g and compare the usage in Prov 19:21 and Isa 46:10.

[51:29]  ⁴² tn The verbs in this verse and v. 30 are all in the past tense in Hebrew, in the tense that views the action as already as good as done (the Hebrew prophetic perfect). The verb in v. 31a, however, is imperfect, viewing the action as future; the perfects that follow are all dependent on that future. Verse 33 looks forward to a time when Babylon will be harvested and trampled like grain on the threshing floor and the imperatives imply a time in the future. Hence the present translation has rendered all the verbs in vv. 29-30 as future.

[51:39]  ⁴³ tn Heb “When they are hot.”

[51:39]  ⁴⁴ tc The translation follows the suggestion of KBL 707 s.v. עָלַז and a number of modern commentaries (e.g., Bright, J. A. Thompson, and W. L. Holladay) in reading יְעֻלְּפוּ (ye’ullÿfu) for יַעֲלֹזוּ (ya’alozu) in the sense of “swoon away” or “grow faint” (see KBL 710 s.v. עָלַף Pual). That appears to be the verb that the LXX (the Greek version) was reading when they translated καρωθῶσιν (karwqwsin, “they will be stupefied”). For parallel usage KBL cites Isa 51:20. This fits the context much better than “they will exult” in the Hebrew text.

[51:39]  ⁴⁵ sn The central figure here is the figure of the cup of the Lord’s wrath (cf. 25:15-29, especially v. 26). Here the Babylonians have been made to drink so deeply of it that they fall into a drunken sleep from which they will never wake up (i.e., they die, death being compared to sleep [cf. Ps 13:3 (13:4 HT); 76:5 (76:6 HT); 90:5]). Compare the usage in Jer 51:57 for this same figure.

[51:39]  ⁴⁶ tn Heb “Oracle of the Lord.”