Jeremiah 1:3

1:3 The Lord also spoke to him when Jehoiakim son of Josiah ruled over Judah, and he continued to speak to him until the fifth month of the eleventh year 1  that Zedekiah son of Josiah ruled over Judah. That was when the people of Jerusalem 2  were taken into exile. 3 

Jeremiah 19:11

19:11 Tell them the Lord who rules over all says, 4  ‘I will do just as Jeremiah has done. 5  I will smash this nation and this city as though it were a potter’s vessel which is broken beyond repair. 6  The dead will be buried here in Topheth until there is no more room to bury them.’ 7 

Jeremiah 25:3

25:3 “For the last twenty-three years, from the thirteenth year that Josiah son of Amon was ruling in Judah 8  until now, the Lord has been speaking to me. I told you over and over again 9  what he said. 10  But you would not listen.

Jeremiah 27:8

27:8 But suppose a nation or a kingdom will not be subject to King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon. Suppose it will not submit to the yoke of servitude to 11  him. I, the Lord, affirm that 12  I will punish that nation. I will use the king of Babylon to punish it 13  with war, 14  starvation, and disease until I have destroyed it. 15 

Jeremiah 27:22

27:22 He has said, ‘They will be carried off to Babylon. They will remain there until it is time for me to show consideration for them again. 16  Then I will bring them back and restore them to this place.’ I, the Lord, affirm this!” 17 

Jeremiah 32:30

32:30 This will happen because the people of Israel and Judah have repeatedly done what displeases me 18  from their earliest history until now 19  and because they 20  have repeatedly made me angry by the things they have done. 21  I, the Lord, affirm it! 22 

Jeremiah 36:23

36:23 As soon as Jehudi had read three or four columns 23  of the scroll, the king 24  would cut them off with a penknife 25  and throw them on the fire in the firepot. He kept doing so until the whole scroll was burned up in the fire. 26 

Jeremiah 37:21

37:21 Then King Zedekiah ordered that Jeremiah be committed to the courtyard of the guardhouse. He also ordered that a loaf of bread 27  be given to him every day from the baker’s street until all the bread in the city was gone. So Jeremiah was kept 28  in the courtyard of the guardhouse.

Jeremiah 49:37

49:37 I will make the people of Elam terrified of their enemies,

who are seeking to kill them.

I will vent my fierce anger

and bring disaster upon them,” 29  says the Lord. 30 

“I will send armies chasing after them 31 

until I have completely destroyed them.

1 sn This would have been August, 586 b.c. according to modern reckoning.

2 map For location see Map5-B1; Map6-F3; Map7-E2; Map8-F2; Map10-B3; JP1-F4; JP2-F4; JP3-F4; JP4-F4.

3 tn Heb “and it [the word of the Lord] came in the days of Jehoiakim…until the end of the eleventh year of Zedekiah…until the carrying away captive of Jerusalem in the fifth month.”

4 tn Heb “Thus says Yahweh of armies.” For this title see the study note on 2:19. The translation attempts to avoid the confusion of embedding quotes within quotes by reducing this one to an indirect quote.

5 tn The adverb “Thus” or “Like this” normally points back to something previously mentioned. See, e.g., Exod 29:35; Num 11:15; 15:11; Deut 25:9.

6 tn Heb “Like this I will break this people and this city, just as one breaks the vessel of a potter which is not able to be repaired.”

7 sn See Jer 7:22-23 for parallels.

8 sn The year referred to would be 627 b.c. The same year is referred to in 1:2 in reference to his call to be a prophet.

9 tn For the idiom involved here see the notes at 7:13 and 11:7.

10 tn The words “what he said” are not in the text but are implicit. They are supplied in the translation for clarity.

11 tn Heb “put their necks in the yoke of.” See the study note on v. 2 for the figure.

12 tn Heb “oracle of the Lord.”

13 tn Heb “The nation and/or the kingdom which will not serve him, Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon, and which will not put its neck in the yoke of the king of Babylon, by sword, starvation, and disease I will punish [or more literally, “visit upon”] that nation, oracle of the Lord.” The long complex Hebrew sentence has been broken up in conformity with contemporary English style and the figures interpreted for the sake of clarity. The particle אֵת, the sign of the accusative, before “which will not put…” is a little unusual here. For its use to introduce a new topic (here a second relative clause) see BDB 85 s.v. אֵת 3.α.

14 tn Heb “with/by the sword.”

15 tc The verb translated “destroy” (תָּמַם, tamam) is usually intransitive in the stem of the verb used here. It is found in a transitive sense elsewhere only in Ps 64:7. BDB 1070 s.v. תָּמַם 7 emends both texts. In this case they recommend תִּתִּי (titi): “until I give them into his hand.” That reading is suggested by the texts of the Syriac and Targumic translations (see BHS fn c). The Greek translation supports reading the verb “destroy” but treats it as though it were intransitive “until they are destroyed by his hand” (reading תֻּמָּם [tummam]). The MT here is accepted as the more difficult reading and support is seen in the transitive use of the verb in Ps 64:7.

tn Heb “I will punish that nation until I have destroyed them [i.e., its people] by his hand.” “Hand” here refers to agency. Hence, “I will use him.”

16 tn This verb is a little difficult to render here. The word is used in the sense of taking note of something and acting according to what is noticed. It is the word that has been translated several times throughout Jeremiah as “punish [someone].” It is also used in the opposite of sense of taking note and “show consideration for” (or “care for;” see, e.g., Ruth 1:6). Here the nuance is positive and is further clarified by the actions that follow, bringing them back and restoring them.

17 tn Heb “oracle of the Lord.”

18 tn Heb “that which is evil in my eyes.” For this idiom see BDB 744 s.v. עַיִן 3.c and compare usage in 18:10.

19 tn Heb “from their youth.”

sn Compare Jer 3:24-25; 11:21. The nation is being personified and reference is made to her history from the time she left Egypt onward (cf. 2:2).

20 tn Heb “the people of Israel.” However, since “people of Israel” has been used in the preceding line for the northern kingdom as opposed to the kingdom of Judah, it might lead to confusion to translate literally. Moreover, the pronoun “they” accomplishes the same purpose.

21 tn Heb “by the work of their hands.” See the translator’s note on 25:6 and the parallelism in 25:14 for this rendering rather than referring it to the making of idols as in 1:16; 10:3.

22 tn Heb “Oracle of the Lord.”

23 tn Heb “doors.” This is the only time the word “door” is used in this way but all the commentaries and lexicons agree that it means “columns.” The meaning is figurative based on the similarity of shape.

24 tn Heb “he.” The majority of commentaries and English versions are agreed that “he” is the king. However, since a penknife (Heb “a scribe’s razor”) is used to cut the columns off, it is possible that Jehudi himself did it. However, even if Jehudi himself did it, he was acting on the king’s orders.

25 sn Heb “a scribe’s razor.” There is some irony involved here since a scribe’s razor was used to trim the sheets to be sewn together, scrape them in preparation for writing, and to erase errors. What was normally used to prepare the scroll was used to destroy it.

26 tn Heb “until the whole scroll was consumed upon the fire which was in the fire pot.”

27 tn Heb “And/Then King Zedekiah ordered and they committed Jeremiah to [or deposited…in] the courtyard of the guardhouse and they gave to him a loaf of bread.” The translation has been structured the way it has to avoid the ambiguous “they” which is the impersonal subject which is sometimes rendered passive in English (cf. GKC 460 §144.d). This text also has another example of the vav (ו) + infinitive absolute continuing a finite verbal form (וְנָתֹן [vÿnaton] = “and they gave”; cf. GKC 345 §113.y and see Jer 32:44; 36:23).

28 tn Heb “Stayed/Remained/ Lived.”

29 tn Heb “I will bring disaster upon them, even my fierce anger.”

30 tn Heb “Oracle of the Lord.”

31 tn Heb “I will send the sword after them.”