Yeremia 48:27-28

48:27 For did not you people of Moab laugh at the people of Israel?

Did you think that they were nothing but thieves, ¹ 

that you shook your head in contempt ² 

every time you talked about them? ³ 

48:28 Leave your towns, you inhabitants of Moab.

Go and live in the cliffs.

Be like a dove that makes its nest

high on the sides of a ravine. ⁴ 

[48:27]  ¹ tn Heb “were they caught among thieves?”

[48:27]  ² tn Heb “that you shook yourself.” But see the same verb in 18:16 in the active voice with the object “head” in a very similar context of contempt or derision.

[48:27]  ³ tc The reading here presupposes the emendation of דְבָרֶיךָ (dÿvarekha, “your words”) to דַבֶּרְךָ (dabberkha, “your speaking”), suggested by BHS (cf. fn c) on the basis of one of the Greek versions (Symmachus). For the idiom cf. BDB 191 s.v. דַּי 2.c.α.

[48:28]  ⁴ tn Heb “in the sides of the mouth of a pit/chasm.” The translation follows the suggestion of J. Bright, Jeremiah (AB), 321. The point of the simile is inaccessibility.