Yeremia 8:14

Jeremiah Laments over the Coming Destruction

8:14 The people say, ¹ 

“Why are we just sitting here?

Let us gather together inside the fortified cities. ² 

Let us at least die there fighting, ³ 

since the Lord our God has condemned us to die.

He has condemned us to drink the poison waters of judgment ⁴ 

because we have sinned against him. ⁵ 

Yeremia 10:13

10:13 When his voice thunders, ⁶  the heavenly ocean roars.

He makes the clouds rise from the far-off horizons. ⁷ 

He makes the lightning flash out in the midst of the rain.

He unleashes the wind from the places where he stores it. ⁸ 

Yeremia 18:18

Jeremiah Petitions the Lord to Punish Those Who Attack Him

18:18 Then some people ⁹  said, “Come on! Let us consider how to deal with Jeremiah! ¹⁰  There will still be priests to instruct us, wise men to give us advice, and prophets to declare God’s word. ¹¹  Come on! Let’s bring charges against him and get rid of him! ¹²  Then we will not need to pay attention to anything he says.”

Yeremia 19:7

19:7 In this place I will thwart ¹³  the plans of the people of Judah and Jerusalem. I will deliver them over to the power of their enemies who are seeking to kill them. They will die by the sword ¹⁴  at the hands of their enemies. ¹⁵  I will make their dead bodies food for the birds and wild beasts to eat.

Yeremia 24:7

24:7 I will give them the desire to acknowledge that I ¹⁶  am the Lord. I will be their God and they will be my people. For they will wholeheartedly ¹⁷  return to me.’

Yeremia 38:27

38:27 All the officials did indeed come and question Jeremiah. ¹⁸  He told them exactly what the king had instructed him to say. ¹⁹  They stopped questioning him any further because no one had actually heard their conversation. ²⁰ 

Yeremia 51:16

51:16 When his voice thunders, the waters in the heavens roar.

He makes the clouds rise from the far-off horizons.

He makes the lightning flash out in the midst of the rain.

He unleashes the wind from the places where he stores it.

[8:14]  ¹ tn The words “The people say” are not in the text but are implicit in the shift of speakers between vv. 4-13 and vv. 14-16. They are supplied in the translation for clarity.

[8:14]  ² tn Heb “Gather together and let us enter into the fortified cities.”

[8:14]  ³ tn Heb “Let us die there.” The words “at least” and “fighting” are intended to bring out the contrast of passive surrender to death in the open country and active resistance to the death implicit in the context.

[8:14]  ⁴ tn The words “of judgment” are not in the text but are intended to show that “poison water” is not literal but figurative of judgment at the hands of God through the agency of the enemy mentioned in v. 16.

[8:14]  ⁵ tn Heb “against the Lord.” The switch is for the sake of smoothness in English.

[10:13]  ⁶ tn Heb “At the voice of his giving.” The idiom “to give the voice” is often used for thunder (cf. BDB 679 s.v. נָתַן Qal.1.x).

[10:13]  ⁷ tn Heb “from the ends of the earth.”

[10:13]  ⁸ tn Heb “he brings out the winds from his storehouses.”

[18:18]  ⁹ tn Heb “They.” The referent is unidentified; “some people” has been used in the translation.

[18:18]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “Let us make plans against Jeremiah.” See 18:18 where this has sinister overtones as it does here.

[18:18]  ¹¹ tn Heb “Instruction will not perish from priest, counsel from the wise, word from the prophet.”

[18:18]  sn These are the three channels through whom God spoke to his people in the OT. See Jer 8:8-10 and Ezek 7:26.

[18:18]  ¹² tn Heb “Let us smite him with our tongues.” It is clear from the context that this involved plots to kill him.

[19:7]  ¹³ sn There is perhaps a two-fold wordplay in the use of this word. One involves the sound play with the word for “jar,” which has been explained as a water decanter. The word here is בַקֹּתִי (vaqqoti). The word for jar in v. 1 is בַקְבֻּק (vaqbuq). There may also be a play on the literal use of this word to refer to the laying waste or destruction of a land (see Isa 24:3; Nah 2:3). Many modern commentaries think that at this point Jeremiah emptied out the contents of the jar, symbolizing the “emptying” out of their plans.

[19:7]  ¹⁴ sn This refers to the fact that they will die in battle. The sword would be only one of the weapons that strikes them down. It is one of the trio of “sword,” “starvation,” and “disease” which were the concomitants of war referred to so often in the book of Jeremiah. Starvation is referred to in v. 9.

[19:7]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “I will cause them to fall by the sword before their enemies and in the hand of those who seek their soul [= life].” In this context the two are meant as obvious qualifications of one entity, not two. Some rearrangement of the qualifiers had to be made in the English translation to convey this.

[24:7]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “I will give them a heart to know me that I am the Lord.” For the use of “heart” here referring to “inclinations, resolutions, and determinations of the will” see BDB 525 s.v. לֵב 4 and compare the usage in 2 Chr 12:14. For the use of “know” to mean “acknowledge” see BDB 384 s.v. יָדַע Qal.1.f and compare the usage in Jer 39:4. For the construction “know ‘someone’ that he…” = “know that ‘someone’…” see GKC 365 §117.h and compare the usage in 2 Sam 3:25.

[24:7]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “with all their heart.”

[38:27]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “All the officials came to Jeremiah and questioned him.”

[38:27]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “And he reported to them according to all these words which the king had commanded.”

[38:27]  ²⁰ tn Heb “And they were silent from him because the word/matter [i.e., the conversation between Jeremiah and the king] had not been heard.” According to BDB 578 s.v. מִן 1.a the preposition “from” is significant in this construction, implying a verb of motion. I.e., “they were [fell] silent [and turned away] from him.”