Jeremiah 11:10

11:10 They have gone back to the evil ways 1  of their ancestors of old who refused to obey what I told them. They, too, have paid allegiance to 2  other gods and worshiped them. Both the nation of Israel and the nation of Judah 3  have violated the covenant I made with their ancestors.

Jeremiah 34:18

34:18 I will punish those people who have violated their covenant with me. I will make them like the calf they cut in two and passed between its pieces. 4  I will do so because they did not keep the terms of the covenant they made in my presence. 5 

1 tn Or “They have repeated the evil actions of….”

2 tn Heb “have walked/followed after.” See the translator’s note at 2:5 for the idiom.

3 tn Heb “house of Israel and house of Judah.”

4 sn See the study note on v. 8 for explanation and parallels.

5 tn There is a little confusion in the syntax of this section because the noun “the calf” does not have any formal conjunction or preposition with it showing how it relates to the rest of the sentence. KJV treats it and the following words as though they were a temporal clause modifying “covenant which they made.” The majority of modern English versions and commentaries, however, understand it as a second accusative after the verb + object “I will make the men.” This fits under the category of what GKC 375 §118.r calls an accusative of comparison (compare usage in Isa 21:8; Zech 2:8). Stated baldly, “I will make the people…the calf,” it is, however, more forceful than the formal use of the noun + preposition כְּ just as metaphors are generally more forceful than similes. The whole verse is one long, complex sentence in Hebrew: “I will make the men who broke my covenant [referring to the Mosaic covenant containing the stipulation to free slaves after six years] [and] who did not keep the terms of the covenant which they made before me [referring to their agreement to free their slaves] [like] the calf which they cut in two and passed between its pieces.” The sentence has been broken down into shorter sentences in conformity with contemporary English style.