Yeremia 2:7

2:7 I brought you ¹  into a fertile land

so you could enjoy ²  its fruits and its rich bounty.

But when you entered my land, you defiled it; ³ 

you made the land I call my own ⁴  loathsome to me.

Yeremia 4:1

4:1 “If you, Israel, want to come back,” says the Lord,

“if you want to come back to me ⁵ 

you must get those disgusting idols ⁶  out of my sight

and must no longer go astray. ⁷ 

Yehezkiel 7:20-22

7:20 They rendered the beauty of his ornaments into pride, ⁸  and with it they made their abominable images – their detestable idols. Therefore I will render it filthy to them. 7:21 I will give it to foreigners as loot, to the world’s wicked ones as plunder, and they will desecrate it. 7:22 I will turn my face away from them and they will desecrate my treasured place. ⁹  Vandals will enter it and desecrate it. ¹⁰ 

[2:7]  ¹ sn Note how contemporary Israel is again identified with her early ancestors. See the study note on 2:2.

[2:7]  ² tn Heb “eat.”

[2:7]  ³ sn I.e., made it ceremonially unclean. See Lev 18:19-30; Num 35:34; Deut 21:23.

[2:7]  ⁴ tn Heb “my inheritance.” Or “the land [i.e., inheritance] I gave you,” reading the pronoun as indicating source rather than possession. The parallelism and the common use in Jeremiah of the term to refer to the land or people as the Lord’s (e.g., 12:7, 8, 9; 16:18; 50:11) make the possessive use more likely here.

[2:7]  sn The land belonged to the Lord; it was given to the Israelites in trust (or usufruct) as their heritage. See Lev 25:23.

[4:1]  ⁵ tn Or “If you, Israel, want to turn [away from your shameful ways (those described in 3:23-25)]…then you must turn back to me.” Or perhaps, “Israel, you must turn back…Yes, you must turn back to me.”

[4:1]  ⁶ tn Heb “disgusting things.”

[4:1]  ⁷ tn Or possibly, “If you get those disgusting idols out of my sight, you will not need to flee.” This is less probable because the normal meaning of the last verb is “to wander,” “ to stray.”

[7:20]  ⁸ tc The MT reads “he set up the beauty of his ornament as pride.” The verb may be repointed as plural without changing the consonantal text. The Syriac reads “their ornaments” (plural), implying עֶדְיָם (’edyam) rather than עֶדְיוֹ (’edyo) and meaning “they were proud of their beautiful ornaments.” This understands “ornaments” in the common sense of women’s jewelry, which then were used to make idols. The singular suffix “his ornaments” would refer to using items from the temple treasury to make idols. D. I. Block points out the foreshadowing of Ezek 16:17 which, with Rashi and the Targum, supports the understanding that this is a reference to temple items. See D. I. Block, Ezekiel (NICOT), 1:265.

[7:22]  ⁹ sn My treasured place probably refers to the temple (however, cf. NLT “my treasured land”).

[7:22]  ¹⁰ sn Since the pronouns “it” are both feminine, they do not refer to the masculine “my treasured place”; instead they probably refer to Jerusalem or the land, both of which are feminine in Hebrew.