Jeremiah 13:23

13:23 But there is little hope for you ever doing good,

you who are so accustomed to doing evil.

Can an Ethiopian 1  change the color of his skin?

Can a leopard remove its spots? 2 

Jeremiah 29:11

29:11 For I know what I have planned for you,’ says the Lord. 3  ‘I have plans to prosper you, not to harm you. I have plans to give you 4  a future filled with hope. 5 

1 tn This is a common proverb in English coming from this biblical passage. For cultures where it is not proverbial perhaps it would be better to translate “Can black people change the color of their skin?” Strictly speaking these are “Cushites” inhabitants of a region along the upper Nile south of Egypt. The Greek text is responsible for the identification with Ethiopia. The term in Greek is actually a epithet = “burnt face.”

2 tn Heb “Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard his spots? [Then] you also will be able to do good who are accustomed to do evil.” The English sentence has been restructured and rephrased in an attempt to produce some of the same rhetorical force the Hebrew original has in this context.

3 tn Heb “Oracle of the Lord.”

4 tn Heb “I know the plans that I am planning for you, oracle of the Lord, plans of well-being and not for harm to give to you….”

5 tn Or “the future you hope for”; Heb “a future and a hope.” This is a good example of hendiadys where two formally coordinated nouns (adjectives, verbs) convey a single idea where one of the terms functions as a qualifier of the other. For this figure see E. W. Bullinger, Figures of Speech, 658-72. This example is discussed on p. 661.