Yeremia 2:5

2:5 This is what the Lord says:

“What fault could your ancestors ¹  have possibly found in me

that they strayed so far from me? ² 

They paid allegiance to ³  worthless idols, and so became worthless to me. ⁴ 

Yeremia 11:22

11:22 So the Lord who rules over all ⁵  said, “I will surely ⁶  punish them! Their young men will be killed in battle. ⁷  Their sons and daughters will die of starvation.

Yeremia 26:8

26:8 Jeremiah had just barely finished saying all the Lord had commanded him to say to all the people. All at once some ⁸  of the priests, the prophets, and the people grabbed him and shouted, “You deserve to die! ⁹ 

Yeremia 29:17

29:17 The Lord who rules over all ¹⁰  says, ‘I will bring war, ¹¹  starvation, and disease on them. I will treat them like figs that are so rotten ¹²  they cannot be eaten.

Yeremia 44:3

44:3 This happened because of the wickedness the people living there did. ¹³  They made me angry ¹⁴  by worshiping and offering sacrifice to ¹⁵  other gods whom neither they nor you nor your ancestors ¹⁶  previously knew. ¹⁷ 

Yeremia 51:62

51:62 Then say, ‘O Lord, you have announced that you will destroy this place so that no people or animals live in it any longer. Certainly it will lie desolate forever!’

[2:5]  ¹ tn Heb “fathers.”

[2:5]  ² tn Or “I did not wrong your ancestors in any way. Yet they went far astray from me.” Both translations are an attempt to render the rhetorical question which demands a negative answer.

[2:5]  ³ tn Heb “They went/followed after.” This idiom is found most often in Deuteronomy or covenant contexts. It refers to loyalty to God and to his covenant or his commandments (e.g., 1 Kgs 14:8; 2 Chr 34:31) with the metaphor of a path or way underlying it (e.g., Deut 11:28; 28:14). To “follow other gods” was to abandon this way and this loyalty (i.e., to “abandon” or “forget” God, Judg 2:12; Hos 2:13) and to follow the customs or religious traditions of the pagan nations (e.g., 2 Kgs 17:15). The classic text on “following” God or another god is 1 Kgs 18:18, 21 where Elijah taunts the people with “halting between two opinions” whether the Lord was the true God or Baal was. The idiom is often found followed by “to serve and to worship” or “they served and worshiped” such and such a god or entity (see, e.g., Jer 8:2; 11:10; 13:10; 16:11; 25:6; 35:15).

[2:5]  ⁴ tn The words “to me” are not in the Hebrew text but are implicit from the context: Heb “they followed after the worthless thing/things and became worthless.” There is an obvious wordplay on the verb “became worthless” and the noun “worthless thing,” which is probably to be understood collectively and to refer to idols as it does in Jer 8:19; 10:8; 14:22; Jonah 2:8.

[11:22]  ⁵ tn Heb “Yahweh of armies.”

[11:22]  sn For the significance of the term see the notes at 2:19 and 7:3.

[11:22]  ⁶ tn Heb “Behold I will.” For the function of this particle see the translator’s note on 1:6.

[11:22]  ⁷ tn Heb “will die by the sword.” Here “sword” stands contextually for “battle” while “starvation” stands for death by starvation during siege.

[26:8]  ⁸ tn The translation again represents an attempt to break up a long complex Hebrew sentence into equivalent English ones that conform more to contemporary English style: Heb “And as soon as Jeremiah finished saying all that…the priests…grabbed him and said…” The word “some” has been supplied in the translation, because obviously it was not all the priests, the prophets, and all the people, but only some of them. There is, of course, rhetorical intent here to show that all were implicated, although all may not have actually participated. (This is a common figure called synecdoche where all is put for a part – all for all kinds or representatives of all kinds. See E. W. Bullinger, Figures of Speech, 614-19, and compare usage in Acts 10:12; Matt 3:5.)

[26:8]  ⁹ tn Or “You must certainly die!” The construction here is again emphatic with the infinitive preceding the finite verb (cf. Joüon 2:423 §123.h, and compare usage in Exod 21:28).

[29:17]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “Yahweh of armies.” See the study note on 2:19 for explanation of this title.

[29:17]  ¹¹ tn Heb “the sword.”

[29:17]  ¹² tn The meaning of this word is somewhat uncertain. It occurs only here in the Hebrew Bible. BDB 1045 s.v. שֹׁעָר relates it to the noun “horrible thing” (translated “something shocking”) in Jer 5:30; 23:14 and defines it as “horrid, disgusting.” HALOT 1495 s.v. שֹׁעָר relates it to the same noun and define it as “rotten; corrupt.” That nuance is accepted here.

[29:17]  sn Compare Jer 24:8-10 in its context for the figure here.

[44:3]  ¹³ tn Heb “they.” The referent must be supplied from the preceding, i.e., Jerusalem and all the towns of Judah. “They” are those who have experienced the disaster and are distinct from those being addressed and their ancestors (44:3b).

[44:3]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “thus making me angry.” However, this is a good place to break the sentence to create a shorter sentence that is more in keeping with contemporary English style.

[44:3]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “by going to offer sacrifice in serving/worshiping.” The second לְ (lamed) + infinitive is epexegetical of the first (cf. IBHS 608-9 §36.2.3e).

[44:3]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “fathers” (also in vv. 9, 10, 17, 21).

[44:3]  ¹⁷ sn Compare Jer 19:4 for the same thought and see also 7:9.