Yeremia 6:23

6:23 Its soldiers are armed with bows and spears.

They are cruel and show no mercy.

They sound like the roaring sea

as they ride forth on their horses.

Lined up in formation like men going into battle

to attack you, Daughter Zion.’” ¹ 

Yeremia 7:2

7:2 “Stand in the gate of the Lord’s temple and proclaim ²  this message: ‘Listen, all you people of Judah who have passed through these gates to worship the Lord. ³  Hear what the Lord has to say.

Yeremia 8:4

Willful Disregard of God Will Lead to Destruction

8:4 The Lord said to me, ⁴ 

“Tell them, ‘The Lord says,

Do people not get back up when they fall down?

Do they not turn around when they go the wrong way? ⁵ 

Yeremia 18:22

18:22 Let cries of terror be heard in their houses

when you send bands of raiders unexpectedly to plunder them. ⁶ 

For they have virtually dug a pit to capture me

and have hidden traps for me to step into.

Yeremia 21:2

21:2 “Please ask the Lord to come and help us, ⁷  because King Nebuchadnezzar ⁸  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.” ⁹ 

Yeremia 27:12

27:12 I told King Zedekiah of Judah the same thing. I said, ¹⁰  “Submit ¹¹  to the yoke of servitude to ¹²  the king of Babylon. Be subject to him and his people. Then you will continue to live.

Yeremia 28:8

28:8 From earliest times, the prophets who preceded you and me invariably ¹³  prophesied war, disaster, ¹⁴  and plagues against many countries and great kingdoms.

Yeremia 31:19

31:19 For after we turned away from you we repented.

After we came to our senses ¹⁵  we beat our breasts in sorrow. ¹⁶ 

We are ashamed and humiliated

because of the disgraceful things we did previously.’ ¹⁷ 

Yeremia 34:2

34:2 The Lord God of Israel told Jeremiah ¹⁸  to go and give King Zedekiah of Judah a message. He told Jeremiah ¹⁹  to tell him, “The Lord says, ‘I am going to ²⁰  hand this city over to the king of Babylon and he will burn it down.

Yeremia 35:2

35:2 “Go to the Rechabite community. ²¹  Invite them to come into one of the side rooms ²²  of the Lord’s temple and offer them some wine to drink.”

Yeremia 35:13

35:13 The Lord God of Israel who rules over all ²³  told him, “Go and speak to the people of Judah and the citizens of Jerusalem. Tell them, ²⁴  ‘I, the Lord, say: ²⁵  “You must learn a lesson from this ²⁶  about obeying what I say! ²⁷ 

[6:23]  ¹ sn Jerualem is personified as a young maiden helpless before enemy attackers.

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

[7:2]  ³ sn That is, all those who have passed through the gates of the outer court and are standing in the courtyard of the temple.

[8:4]  ⁴ tn The words “the Lord said to me” are not in the text but are implicit from the context. They are supplied in the translation to make clear who is speaking and who is being addressed.

[8:4]  ⁵ sn There is a play on two different nuances of the same Hebrew word that means “turn” and “return,” “turn away” and “turn back.”

[18:22]  ⁶ tn Heb “when you bring marauders in against them.” For the use of the noun translated here “bands of raiders to plunder them” see 1 Sam 30:3, 15, 23 and BDB 151 s.v. גְּדוּד 1.

[21:2]  ⁷ 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]  ⁸ 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]  ⁹ 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).

[27:12]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “I spoke to Zedekiah…according to all these words, saying.”

[27:12]  ¹¹ sn The verbs in this verse are all plural. They are addressed to Zedekiah and his royal advisers (compare 22:2).

[27:12]  ¹² tn Heb “put their necks in the yoke of.” See the study note on v. 2 for the figure.

[28:8]  ¹³ tn The word “invariably” is not in the text but is implicit in the context and in the tense of the Hebrew verb. It is supplied in the translation for clarity and to help bring out the contrast in the next verse.

[28:8]  ¹⁴ tc Many Hebrew mss read “starvation/famine” which is the second member of a common triad “sword, famine, and plague” in Jeremiah. This triad occurs thirteen times in the book and undoubtedly influenced a later scribe to read “starvation [= famine]” here. For this triad see the note on 14:14. The words “disaster and plagues” are missing in the LXX.

[31:19]  ¹⁵ tn For this meaning of the verb see HAL 374 s.v. יָדַע Nif 5 or W. L. Holladay, Concise Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon, 129. REB translates “Now that I am submissive” relating the verb to a second root meaning “be submissive.” (See HALOT 375 s.v. II יָדַע and J. Barr, Comparative Philology and the Text of the Old Testament, 19-21, for evidence for this verb. Other passages cited with this nuance are Judg 8:16; Prov 10:9; Job 20:20.)

[31:19]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “I struck my thigh.” This was a gesture of grief and anguish (cf. Ezek 21:12 [21:17 HT]). The modern equivalent is “to beat the breast.”

[31:19]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “because I bear the reproach of my youth.” For the plural referents see the note at the beginning of v. 18.

[31:19]  sn The expression the disgraceful things we did in our earlier history refers to the disgrace that accompanied the sins that Israel did in her earlier years before she learned the painful lesson of submission to the Lord through the discipline of exile. For earlier references to the sins of her youth (i.e., in her earlier years as a nation) see 3:24-25; 22:21 and see also 32:29. At the time that these verses were written, neither northern Israel or Judah had expressed the kind of contrition voiced in vv. 18-19. As one commentator notes, the words here are both prophetic and instructive.

[34:2]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “told him”; the referent (Jeremiah) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[34:2]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “told him”; the referent (Jeremiah) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[34:2]  ²⁰ tn Heb 34:1 “The word which came to Jeremiah from the Lord…saying, ‘Thus says the Lord God of Israel, “Go and speak to Zedekiah king of Judah and say to him, ‘Thus says the Lord, “I am going to….”’”’” The translation has tried to avoid some of the confusion that is created by embedding quotations within quotations by using indirect quotation in some instances; the conceptualization is the same but the style is simpler.

[35:2]  ²¹ tn Heb “the house of the Rechabites.” “House” is used here in terms of “household” or “family” (cf. BDB 109 s.v. בַּיִת 5.a, b).

[35:2]  sn Nothing is known about the Rechabite community other than what is said about them in this chapter. From vv. 7-8 it appears that they were a nomadic tribe that had resisted settling down and taking up farming. They had also agreed to abstain from drinking wine. Most scholars agree in equating the Jonadab son of Rechab mentioned as the leader who had instituted these strictures as the same Jonadab who assisted Jehu in his religious purge of Baalism following the reign of Ahab (2 Kgs 10:15, 23-24). If this is the case, the Rechabites followed these same rules for almost 250 years because Jehu’s purge of Baalism and the beginning of his reign was in 841 b.c. and the incident here took place some time after Jehoiakim’s rebellion in 603 b.c. (see the study note on v. 1).

[35:2]  ²² sn This refers to one of the rooms built on the outside of the temple that were used as living quarters for the priests and for storage rooms (cf. Neh 13:4-5; 1 Kgs 6:5; 1 Chr 28:12; 2 Chr 31:11 and compare Ezek 41:1-14).

[35:13]  ²³ tn Heb “Yahweh of armies, the God of Israel.” For this title see 7:3 and the study note on 2:19.

[35:13]  ²⁴ tn Heb “35:12 And the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah, saying, ‘Thus says Yahweh of armies the God of Israel, “Go and say…‘Will you not learn…’”’” The use of the indirect introduction has been chosen here as in 34:1-2 to try to cut down on the confusion created by embedding quotations within quotations.

[35:13]  ²⁵ tn Heb “Oracle of the Lord.”

[35:13]  ²⁶ tn The words “from this” are not in the text but are implicit from the context. They have been supplied in the translation for the sake of clarity.

[35:13]  ²⁷ tn Heb “Will you not learn a lesson…?” The rhetorical question here has the force of an imperative, made explicit in the translation.