17:16 “‘As surely as I live, declares the sovereign Lord, surely in the city 4 of the king who crowned him, whose oath he despised and whose covenant he broke – in the middle of Babylon he will die!
19:9 They put him in a collar with hooks; 5
they brought him to the king of Babylon;
they brought him to prison 6
so that his voice would not be heard
any longer on the mountains of Israel.
26:7 “For this is what the sovereign Lord says: Take note that 17 I am about to bring King Nebuchadrezzar 18 of Babylon, king of kings, against Tyre from the north, with horses, chariots, and horsemen, an army and hordes of people.
1 tn Or “Babylonians” (NCV, NLT).
sn The Chaldeans were a group of people in the country south of Babylon from which Nebuchadnezzar came. The Chaldean dynasty his father established became the name by which the Babylonians are regularly referred to in the book of Jeremiah, while Jeremiah’s contemporary, Ezekiel, uses both terms.
2 sn He will not see it. This prediction was fulfilled in 2 Kgs 25:7 and Jer 52:11, which recount how Zedekiah was blinded before being deported to Babylon.
3 sn There he will die. This was fulfilled when King Zedekiah died in exile (Jer 52:11).
4 tn Heb “place.”
5 tn Or “They put him in a neck stock with hooks.” The noun סּוּגַר (sugar), translated “collar,” occurs only here in the Bible. L. C. Allen and D. I. Block point out a Babylonian cognate that refers to a device for transporting prisoners of war that held them by their necks (D. I. Block, Ezekiel [NICOT], 1:597, n. 35; L. C. Allen, Ezekiel [WBC], 1:284). Based on the Hebrew root, the traditional rendering had been “cage” (cf. ASV, NAB, NASB, NIV, NRSV).
6 tc The term in the MT occurs only here and in Eccl 9:12 where it refers to a net for catching fish. The LXX translates this as “prison,” which assumes a confusion of dalet and resh took place in the MT.
7 tn Heb “mother.”
8 sn Mesopotamian kings believed that the gods revealed the future through omens. They employed various divination techniques, some of which are included in the list that follows. A particularly popular technique was the examination and interpretation of the livers of animals. See R. R. Wilson, Prophecy and Society in Ancient Israel, 90-110.
9 tn This word refers to personal idols that were apparently used for divination purposes (Gen 31:19; 1 Sam 19:13, 16).
10 tn Heb “sees.”
11 tn Heb “the liver.”
12 tn Heb “they”; the referent (the people in Jerusalem) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
13 sn When the people of Judah realized the Babylonians’ intentions, they would object on grounds that they had made a treaty with the Babylonian king (see 17:13).
14 tn Heb “he”; the referent (the king of Babylon) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
15 tn Or “iniquity.”
16 tn Heb “and he will remind of guilt for the purpose of being captured.” The king would counter their objections by pointing out that they had violated their treaty with him (see 17:18).
17 tn The word הִנֵּה (hinneh, traditionally “behold”) draws attention to something.
18 tn Heb “Nebuchadrezzar” is a variant and more correct spelling of Nebuchadnezzar, as the Babylonian name Nabu-kudurri-usur has an an “r” rather than an “n.”