Yeremia 20:4

20:4 For the Lord says, ‘I will make both you and your friends terrified of what will happen to you. ¹  You will see all of them die by the swords of their enemies. ²  I will hand all the people of Judah over to the king of Babylon. He will carry some of them away into exile in Babylon and he will kill others of them with the sword.

Yeremia 36:23

36:23 As soon as Jehudi had read three or four columns ³  of the scroll, the king ⁴  would cut them off with a penknife ⁵  and throw them on the fire in the firepot. He kept doing so until the whole scroll was burned up in the fire. ⁶ 

[20:4]  ¹ tn Heb “I will make you an object of terror to both you and your friends.”

[20:4]  ² tn Heb “And they will fall by the sword of their enemies and [with] your eyes seeing [it].”

[36:23]  ³ tn Heb “doors.” This is the only time the word “door” is used in this way but all the commentaries and lexicons agree that it means “columns.” The meaning is figurative based on the similarity of shape.

[36:23]  ⁴ tn Heb “he.” The majority of commentaries and English versions are agreed that “he” is the king. However, since a penknife (Heb “a scribe’s razor”) is used to cut the columns off, it is possible that Jehudi himself did it. However, even if Jehudi himself did it, he was acting on the king’s orders.

[36:23]  ⁵ sn Heb “a scribe’s razor.” There is some irony involved here since a scribe’s razor was used to trim the sheets to be sewn together, scrape them in preparation for writing, and to erase errors. What was normally used to prepare the scroll was used to destroy it.

[36:23]  ⁶ tn Heb “until the whole scroll was consumed upon the fire which was in the fire pot.”