Yeremia 4:31

4:31 In fact, ¹  I hear a cry like that of a woman in labor,

a cry of anguish like that of a woman giving birth to her first baby.

It is the cry of Daughter Zion ²  gasping for breath,

reaching out for help, ³  saying, “I am done in! ⁴ 

My life is ebbing away before these murderers!”

Yeremia 14:13

14:13 Then I said, “Oh, Lord God, ⁵  look! ⁶  The prophets are telling them that you said, ⁷  ‘You will not experience war or suffer famine. ⁸  I will give you lasting peace and prosperity in this land.’” ⁹ 

Yeremia 36:23

36:23 As soon as Jehudi had read three or four columns ¹⁰  of the scroll, the king ¹¹  would cut them off with a penknife ¹²  and throw them on the fire in the firepot. He kept doing so until the whole scroll was burned up in the fire. ¹³ 

Yeremia 37:17

37:17 Then King Zedekiah had him brought to the palace. There he questioned him privately and asked him, ¹⁴  “Is there any message from the Lord?” Jeremiah answered, “Yes, there is.” Then he announced, ¹⁵  “You will be handed over to the king of Babylon.” ¹⁶ 

Yeremia 46:2

The Prophecy about Egypt’s Defeat at Carchemish

46:2 He spoke about Egypt and the army of Pharaoh Necho king of Egypt which was encamped along the Euphrates River at Carchemish. Now this was the army that King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon defeated in the fourth year that Jehoiakim son of Josiah was ruling ¹⁷  over Judah. ¹⁸ 

[4:31]  ¹ tn The particle כִּי (ki) is more likely asseverative here than causal.

[4:31]  ² sn Jerusalem is personified as a helpless maiden.

[4:31]  ³ tn Heb “spreading out her hands.” The idea of asking or pleading for help is implicit in the figure.

[4:31]  ⁴ tn Heb “Woe, now to me!” See the translator’s note on 4:13 for the usage of “Woe to…”

[14:13]  ⁵ tn Heb “Lord Yahweh.” The translation follows the ancient Jewish tradition of substituting the Hebrew word for God for the proper name Yahweh.

[14:13]  ⁶ tn Heb “Behold.” See the translator’s note on usage of this particle in 1:6.

[14:13]  ⁷ tn The words “that you said” are not in the text but are implicit from the first person in the affirmation that follows. They are supplied in the translation for clarity.

[14:13]  ⁸ tn Heb “You will not see sword and you will not have starvation [or hunger].”

[14:13]  ⁹ tn Heb “I will give you unfailing peace in this place.” The translation opts for “peace and prosperity” here for the word שָׁלוֹם (shalom) because in the context it refers both to peace from war and security from famine and plague. The word translated “lasting” (אֱמֶת, ’emet) is a difficult to render here because it has broad uses: “truth, reliability, stability, steadfastness,” etc. “Guaranteed” or “lasting” seem to fit the context the best.

[36:23]  ¹⁰ 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]  ¹¹ 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]  ¹² 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]  ¹³ tn Heb “until the whole scroll was consumed upon the fire which was in the fire pot.”

[37:17]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “Then King Zedekiah sent and brought him and the king asked him privately [or more literally, in secret] and said.”

[37:17]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “Then he said.”

[37:17]  ¹⁶ sn Jeremiah’s answer even under duress was the same that he had given Zedekiah earlier. (See Jer 34:3 and see the study note on 34:1 for the relative timing of these two incidents.)

[46:2]  ¹⁷ sn The fourth year of Jehoiakim’s reign proved very significant in the prophecies of Jeremiah. It was in that same year that he issued the prophecies against the foreign nations recorded in Jer 25 (and probably the prophecies recorded here in Jer 46-51) and that he had Baruch record and read to the people gathered in the temple all the prophecies he had uttered against Judah and Jerusalem up to that point in the hopes that they would repent and the nation would be spared. The fourth year of Jehoiakim (605 b.c.) marked a significant shift in the balance of power in Palestine. With the defeat of Necho at Carchemish in that year the area came under the control of Nebuchadnezzar and Judah and the surrounding nations had two options, submit to Babylon and pay tribute or suffer the consequences of death in war or exile in Babylon for failure to submit.

[46:2]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “Concerning Egypt: Concerning the army of Pharaoh Necho king of Egypt which was beside the Euphrates River at Carchemish which Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon defeated in the fourth year of Jehoiakim son of Josiah king of Judah.” The sentence has been broken up, restructured, and introductory words supplied in the translation to make the sentences better conform with contemporary English style. The dating formula is placed in brackets because the passage is prophetic about the battle, but the bracketed words were superscription or introduction and thus were added after the outcome was known.