Yeremia 9:19

9:19 For the sound of wailing is soon to be heard in Zion.

They will wail, ¹  ‘We are utterly ruined! ²  We are completely disgraced!

For our houses have been torn down

and we must leave our land.’” ³ 

Yeremia 12:13

12:13 My people will sow wheat, but will harvest weeds. ⁴ 

They will work until they are exhausted, but will get nothing from it.

They will be disappointed in their harvests ⁵ 

because the Lord will take them away in his fierce anger. ⁶ 

[9:19]  ¹ tn The words “They will wail” are not in the text. They are supplied in the translation to make clear that this is the wailing that will be heard.

[9:19]  sn The destruction is still in the future, but it is presented graphically as though it had already taken place.

[9:19]  ² tn Heb “How we are ruined!”

[9:19]  ³ tn The order of these two lines has been reversed for English stylistic reasons. The text reads in Hebrew “because we have left our land because they have thrown down our dwellings.” The two clauses offer parallel reasons for the cries “How ruined we are! [How] we are greatly disgraced!” But the first line must contain a prophetic perfect (because the lament comes from Jerusalem) and the second a perfect referring to a destruction that is itself future. This seems the only way to render the verse that would not be misleading.

[12:13]  ⁴ sn Invading armies lived off the land, using up all the produce and destroying everything they could not consume.

[12:13]  ⁵ tn The pronouns here are actually second plural: Heb “Be ashamed/disconcerted because of your harvests.” Because the verb form (וּבֹשׁוּ, uvoshu) can either be Qal perfect third plural or Qal imperative masculine plural many emend the pronoun on the noun to third plural (see, e.g., BHS). However, this is the easier reading and is not supported by either the Latin or the Greek which have second plural. This is probably another case of the shift from description to direct address that has been met with several times already in Jeremiah (the figure of speech called apostrophe; for other examples see, e.g., 9:4; 11:13). As in other cases the translation has been leveled to third plural to avoid confusion for the contemporary English reader. For the meaning of the verb here see BDB 101 s.v. בּוֹשׁ Qal.2 and compare the usage in Jer 48:13.

[12:13]  ⁶ tn Heb “be disappointed in their harvests from the fierce anger of the Lord.” The translation makes explicit what is implicit in the elliptical poetry of the Hebrew original.