2:15 Like lions his enemies roar victoriously over him;
they raise their voices in triumph. 1
They have laid his land waste;
his cities have been burned down and deserted. 2
5:12 “These people have denied what the Lord says. 3
They have said, ‘That is not so! 4
No harm will come to us.
We will not experience war and famine. 5
9:13 The Lord answered, “This has happened because these people have rejected my laws which I gave them. They have not obeyed me or followed those laws. 6 9:14 Instead they have followed the stubborn inclinations of their own hearts. They have paid allegiance to 7 the gods called Baal, 8 as their fathers 9 taught them to do.
31:29 “When that time comes, people will no longer say, ‘The parents have eaten sour grapes, but the children’s teeth have grown numb.’ 14
47:7 But how can it rest 20
when I, the Lord, have 21 given it orders?
I have ordered it to attack
the people of Ashkelon and the seacoast. 22
51:51 ‘We 23 are ashamed because we have been insulted. 24
Our faces show our disgrace. 25
For foreigners have invaded
the holy rooms 26 in the Lord’s temple.’
1 tn Heb “Lions shout over him, they give out [raise] their voices.”
sn The reference to lions is here a metaphor for the Assyrians (and later the Babylonians, see Jer 50:17). The statement about lions roaring over their prey implies that the prey has been vanquished.
2 tn Heb “without inhabitant.”
3 tn Heb “have denied the
4 tn Or “he will do nothing”; Heb “Not he [or it]!”
5 tn Heb “we will not see the sword and famine.”
6 tn Heb “and they have not walked in it (with “it” referring to “my law”).
7 tn Heb “they have gone/followed after.” See the translator’s note at 2:5 for the idiom.
8 tn Heb “the Baals,” referring either to the pagan gods called “Baals” or the images of Baal (so NLT).
9 tn Or “forefathers,” or “ancestors.” Here the referent could be the immediate parents or, by their example, more distant ancestors.
10 tn Heb “Hananiah, ‘Thus says the
11 tn The Greek version reads “I have made/put” rather than “you have made/put.” This is the easier reading and is therefore rejected.
12 tn Heb “the yoke bars of wood you have broken, but you have made in its stead yoke bars of iron.”
sn This whole incident (and the preceding one in Jer 28) is symbolic. Jeremiah’s wearing of the yoke was symbolic of the
13 tn Heb “pay attention to the word of the
14 tn This word only occurs here and in the parallel passage in Ezek 18:2 in the Qal stem and in Eccl 10:10 in the Piel stem. In the latter passage it refers to the bluntness of an ax that has not been sharpened. Here the idea is of the “bluntness” of the teeth, not from having ground them down due to the bitter taste of sour grapes but to the fact that they have lost their “edge,” “bite,” or “sharpness” because they are numb from the sour taste. For this meaning for the word see W. L. Holladay, Jeremiah (Hermeneia), 2:197.
sn This is a proverbial statement that is also found in Ezek 18:2. It served to articulate the complaint that the present generation was suffering for the accrued sins of their ancestors (cf. Lam 5:7) and that the
15 tn Heb “We have not drunk wine all our days.” Actually vv. 8b-9a are a series of infinitive constructs plus the negative לְבִלְתִּי (lÿvilti) explaining the particulars of how they have obeyed, i.e., by not drinking wine…and by not building….” The more direct declarative statement is used here to shorten the sentence and is more in keeping with contemporary style.
16 tn This is an attempt to represent the particle כִּי (ki) which is probably not really intensive here (cf. BDB 472 s.v. כִּי 1.e) but is one of those causal uses of כִּי that BDB discusses on 473-74 s.v. כִּי 3.c where the cause is really the failure of the people of Judah and Jerusalem to listen/obey. I.e., the causal particle is at the beginning of the sentence so as not to interrupt the contrast drawn.
17 tn Heb “this people.” However, the speech is addressed to the people of Judah and the citizens of Jerusalem, so the second person is retained in English. In addition to the stylistic difference that Hebrew exhibits in the rapid shift between persons (second to third and third to second, which have repeatedly been noted and documented from GKC 462 §144.p) there may be a subtle rhetorical reason for the shift here. The shift from direct address to indirect address which characterizes this verse and the next may reflect the
18 tn Heb “they” but as H. Freedman (Jeremiah [SoBB], 284) notes the third person is used here to include the people just referred to as well as the current addressees. Hence “your people” or “the people of Judah.” It is possible that the third person again reflects the rhetorical distancing that was referred to earlier in 35:16 (see the translator’s note there for explanation) in which case one might translate “you have shown,” and “you have not revered.”
19 tn Heb “to set before.” According to BDB 817 s.v. פָּנֶה II.4.b(g) this refers to “propounding to someone for acceptance or choice.” This is clearly the usage in Deut 30:15, 19; Jer 21:8 and is likely the case here. However, to translate literally would not be good English idiom and “proposed to” might not be correctly understood, so the basic translation of נָתַן (natan) has been used here.
20 tn The reading here follows the Greek, Syriac, and Latin versions. The Hebrew text reads “how can you rest” as a continuation of the second person in v. 6.
21 tn Heb “When the
22 tn Heb “Against Ashkelon and the sea coast, there he has appointed it.” For the switch to the first person see the preceding translator’s note. “There” is poetical and redundant and the idea of “attacking” is implicit in “against.”
23 sn The exiles lament the way they have been humiliated.
24 tn Heb “we have heard an insult.”
25 tn Heb “disgrace covers our face.”
26 tn Or “holy places, sanctuaries.”