Yeremia 3:21

3:21 “A noise is heard on the hilltops.

It is the sound of the people of Israel crying and pleading to their gods.

Indeed they have followed sinful ways; ¹ 

they have forgotten to be true to the Lord their God. ² 

Yeremia 4:2

4:2 You must be truthful, honest and upright

when you take an oath saying, ‘As surely as the Lord lives!’ ³ 

If you do, ⁴  the nations will pray to be as blessed by him as you are

and will make him the object of their boasting.” ⁵ 

Yeremia 7:2

7:2 “Stand in the gate of the Lord’s temple and proclaim ⁶  this message: ‘Listen, all you people of Judah who have passed through these gates to worship the Lord. ⁷  Hear what the Lord has to say.

Yeremia 11:12

11:12 Then those living in the towns of Judah and in Jerusalem will ⁸  go and cry out for help to the gods to whom they have been sacrificing. However, those gods will by no means ⁹  be able to save them when disaster strikes them.

Yeremia 15:5

15:5 The Lord cried out, ¹⁰ 

“Who in the world ¹¹  will have pity on you, Jerusalem?

Who will grieve over you?

Who will stop long enough ¹² 

to inquire about how you are doing? ¹³ 

Yeremia 21:2

21:2 “Please ask the Lord to come and help us, ¹⁴  because King Nebuchadnezzar ¹⁵  of Babylon is attacking us. Maybe the Lord will perform one of his miracles as in times past and make him stop attacking us and leave.” ¹⁶ 

Yeremia 37:20

37:20 But now please listen, your royal Majesty, ¹⁷  and grant my plea for mercy. ¹⁸  Do not send me back to the house of Jonathan, the royal secretary. If you do, I will die there.” ¹⁹ 

Yeremia 38:26

38:26 If they do this, tell ²⁰  them, ‘I was pleading with the king not to send me back to die in the dungeon of Jonathan’s house.’” ²¹ 

Yeremia 44:4

44:4 I sent my servants the prophets to you people over and over ²²  again warning you not to do this disgusting thing I hate. ²³ 

Yeremia 44:10

44:10 To this day your people ²⁴  have shown no contrition! They have not revered me nor followed the laws and statutes I commanded ²⁵  you and your ancestors.’

Yeremia 46:14

46:14 “Make an announcement throughout Egypt.

Proclaim it in Migdol, Memphis, and Tahpanhes. ²⁶ 

‘Take your positions and prepare to do battle.

For the enemy army is destroying all the nations around you.’ ²⁷ 

[3:21]  ¹ tn Heb “A sound is heard on the hilltops, the weeping of the supplication of the children of Israel because [or indeed] they have perverted their way.” At issue here is whether the supplication is made to Yahweh in repentance because of what they have done or whether it is supplication to the pagan gods which is evidence of their perverted ways. The reference in this verse to the hilltops where idolatry was practiced according to 3:2 and the reference to Israel’s unfaithfulness in the preceding verse make the latter more likely. For the asseverative use of the Hebrew particle (here rendered “indeed”) where the particle retains some of the explicative nuance; cf. BDB 472-73 s.v. כִּי 1.e and 3.c.

[3:21]  ² tn Heb “have forgotten the Lord their God,” but in the view of the parallelism and the context, the word “forget” (like “know” and “remember”) involves more than mere intellectual activity.

[4:2]  ³ tn Heb “If you [= you must, see the translator’s note on the word “do” later in this verse] swear/take an oath, ‘As the Lord lives,’ in truth, justice, and righteousness…”

[4:2]  ⁴ tn 4:1-2a consists of a number of “if” clauses, two of which are formally introduced by the Hebrew particle אִם (’im) while the others are introduced by the conjunction “and,” followed by a conjunction (“and” = “then”) with a perfect in 4:2b which introduces the consequence. The translation “You must…. If you do,” was chosen to avoid a long and complicated sentence.

[4:2]  ⁵ tn Heb “bless themselves in him and make their boasts in him.”

[7:2]  ⁶ tn Heb “Proclaim there…” The adverb is unnecessary in English style.

[7:2]  ⁷ sn That is, all those who have passed through the gates of the outer court and are standing in the courtyard of the temple.

[11:12]  ⁸ tn Heb “Then the towns of Judah and those living in Jerusalem will…”

[11:12]  ⁹ 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.

[15:5]  ¹⁰ tn The words “The Lord cried out” are not in the text. However, they are necessary to show the shift in address between speaking to Jeremiah in vv. 1-4 about the people and addressing Jerusalem in vv. 5-6 and the shift back to the address to Jeremiah in vv. 7-9. The words “oracle of the Lord” are, moreover, found at the beginning of v. 6.

[15:5]  ¹¹ tn The words, “in the world” are not in the text but are the translator’s way of trying to indicate that this rhetorical question expects a negative answer.

[15:5]  ¹² tn Heb “turn aside.”

[15:5]  ¹³ tn Or “about your well-being”; Heb “about your welfare” (שָׁלוֹם, shalom).

[21:2]  ¹⁴ tn The verb used here is often used of seeking information through a prophet (e.g., 2 Kgs 1:16; 8:8) and hence many translate “inquire of the Lord for us.” However, it is obvious from the following that they were not seeking information but help. The word is also used for that in Pss 34:4 (34:5 HT); 77:2 (77:3 HT).

[21:2]  ¹⁵ tn The dominant spelling of this name is actually Nebuchadrezzar which is closer to his Babylonian name Nebu kudduri uzzur. An alternate spelling which is found 6 times in the book of Jeremiah and 17 times elsewhere is Nebuchadnezzar which is the form of the name that is usually used in English versions.

[21:2]  sn Nebuchadnezzar was the second and greatest king of Babylon. He is known in the Bible both for his two conquests of Jerusalem in 597 b.c. (2 Kgs 24:10-17) and 587 b.c. (2 Kgs 25:1-7) and for his having built Babylon the Great (Dan 4:28-30).

[21:2]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “Perhaps the Lord will do according to his miracles that he may go up from against us.”

[21:2]  sn The miracles that they may have had in mind would have included the Exodus, the conquest of Jericho, the deliverance of Jehoshaphat (2 Chr 20:1-30), etc., but predominant in their minds was probably the deliverance of Jerusalem from Sennacherib in the times of Hezekiah (Isa 37:33-38).

[37:20]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “My lord, the king.”

[37:20]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “let my plea for mercy fall before you.” I.e., let it come before you and be favorably received (= granted; by metonymical extension).

[37:20]  ¹⁹ tn Or “So that I will not die there,” or “or I will die there”; Heb “and I will not die there.” The particle that introduces this clause (וְלֹא) regularly introduces negative purpose clauses after the volitive sequence (אַל [’al] + jussive here) according to GKC 323 §109.g. However, purpose and result clauses in Hebrew (and Greek) are often indistinguishable. Here the clause is more in the nature of a negative result.

[38:26]  ²⁰ tn Verses 25-26 form a long compound, complex conditional sentence. The condition is found in v. 25 and contains a long quote. The consequence is found in v. 26 and contains another long quote. The Hebrew sentence literally reads: “And if the officials hear that I have talked with you and come to you and say to you, ‘Please tell us what you said to the king. Do not hide from us and we will not kill you [so that we will not kill you] and [tell us] what the king said to you,’ then tell them.” The sentence has been broken up to better conform with contemporary English style.

[38:26]  ²¹ tn Heb “I was causing to fall [= presenting] my petition before the king not to send me back to Jonathan’s house to die there.” The word “dungeon of” is supplied in the translation to help the reader connect this petition with Jeremiah’s earlier place of imprisonment where the officials had put him with every intention of letting him die there (37:15-16, 20).

[38:26]  sn See Jer 37:15-16, 20.

[44:4]  ²² tn See 7:13 for an explanation of this idiom and compare 7:25; 25:4; 26:5; 29:19; 35:15 for similar references to the persistent warnings of the prophets.

[44:4]  ²³ tn Heb “sent…over again, saying, ‘Do not do this terrible thing that I hate.’” The indirect quote has been used to shorten the sentence and eliminate one level of embedded quotes.

[44:4]  sn This refers to the worship of other gods mentioned in the previous verse.

[44:10]  ²⁴ tn Heb “they” but as H. Freedman (Jeremiah [SoBB], 284) notes the third person is used here to include the people just referred to as well as the current addressees. Hence “your people” or “the people of Judah.” It is possible that the third person again reflects the rhetorical distancing that was referred to earlier in 35:16 (see the translator’s note there for explanation) in which case one might translate “you have shown,” and “you have not revered.”

[44:10]  ²⁵ tn Heb “to set before.” According to BDB 817 s.v. פָּנֶה II.4.b(g) this refers to “propounding to someone for acceptance or choice.” This is clearly the usage in Deut 30:15, 19; Jer 21:8 and is likely the case here. However, to translate literally would not be good English idiom and “proposed to” might not be correctly understood, so the basic translation of נָתַן (natan) has been used here.

[46:14]  ²⁶ tn Heb “Declare in Egypt and announce in Migdol and announce in Noph [= Memphis] and in Tahpanhes.” The sentence has been restructured to reflect the fact that the first command is a general one, followed by announcements in specific (representative?) cities.

[46:14]  sn For the location of the cities of Migdol, Memphis, and Tahpanhes see the note on Jer 44:1. These were all cities in Lower or northern Egypt that would have been the first affected by an invasion.

[46:14]  ²⁷ tn Heb “For the sword devours those who surround you.” The “sword” is again figurative of destructive forces. Here it is a reference to the forces of Nebuchadnezzar which have already destroyed the Egyptian forces at Carchemish and have made victorious forays into the Philistine plain.