2:17 You have brought all this on yourself, Israel, 1
by deserting the Lord your God when he was leading you along the right path. 2
3:22 Come back to me, you wayward people.
I want to cure your waywardness. 3
Say, 4 ‘Here we are. We come to you
because you are the Lord our God.
5:4 I thought, “Surely it is only the ignorant poor who act this way. 5
They act like fools because they do not know what the Lord demands. 6
They do not know what their God requires of them. 7
15:16 As your words came to me I drank them in, 17
and they filled my heart with joy and happiness
because I belong to you. 18
25:15 So 20 the Lord, the God of Israel, spoke to me in a vision. 21 “Take this cup from my hand. It is filled with the wine of my wrath. 22 Take it and make the nations to whom I send you drink it.
26:16 Then the officials and all the people rendered their verdict to the priests and the prophets. They said, 23 “This man should not be condemned to die. 24 For he has spoken to us under the authority of the Lord our God.” 25
31:6 Yes, a time is coming
when watchmen 28 will call out on the mountains of Ephraim,
“Come! Let us go to Zion
to worship the Lord our God!”’” 29
32:36 “You and your people 30 are right in saying, ‘War, 31 starvation, and disease are sure to make this city fall into the hands of the king of Babylon.’ 32 But now I, the Lord God of Israel, have something further to say about this city: 33
37:3 King Zedekiah sent 34 Jehucal 35 son of Shelemiah and the priest Zephaniah 36 son of Maaseiah to the prophet Jeremiah. He told them to say, “Please pray to the Lord our God on our behalf.”
44:11 “Because of this, the Lord God of Israel who rules over all says, ‘I am determined to bring disaster on you, 39 even to the point of destroying all the Judeans here. 40
50:28 Listen! Fugitives and refugees are coming from the land of Babylon.
They are coming to Zion to declare there
how the Lord our God is getting revenge,
getting revenge for what they have done to his temple. 41
1 tn Heb “Are you not bringing this on yourself.” The question is rhetorical and expects a positive answer.
2 tn Heb “at the time of leading you in the way.”
3 tn Or “I will forgive your apostasies.” Heb “I will [or want to] heal your apostasies.” For the use of the verb “heal” (רָפָא, rafa’) to refer to spiritual healing and forgiveness see Hos 14:4.
4 tn Or “They say.” There is an obvious ellipsis of a verb of saying here since the preceding words are those of the
5 tn Heb “Surely they are poor.” The translation is intended to make clear the explicit contrasts and qualifications drawn in this verse and the next.
6 tn Heb “the way of the
7 tn Heb “the judgment [or ordinance] of their God.”
8 tn Verses 22-23a read in Hebrew, “I did not speak with your ancestors and I did not command them when I brought them out of Egypt about words/matters concerning burnt offering and sacrifice, but I commanded them this word:” Some modern commentators have explained this passage as an evidence for the lateness of the Pentateuchal instruction regarding sacrifice or a denial that sacrifice was practiced during the period of the wilderness wandering. However, it is better explained as an example of what R. de Vaux calls a dialectical negative, i.e., “not so much this as that” or “not this without that” (Ancient Israel, 454-56). For other examples of this same argument see Isa 1:10-17; Hos 6:4-6; Amos 5:21-25.
9 tn Heb “Obey me and I will be.” The translation is equivalent syntactically but brings out the emphasis in the command.
10 tn Heb “Walk in all the way that I command you.”
11 tn Heb “Faithfulness has vanished. It is cut off from their lips.”
sn For the need for faithfulness see 5:1, 3.
12 tn Heb “Yahweh of armies, the God of Israel.”
sn See the study notes on 2:9 and 7:3.
13 tn Heb “Therefore, thus says the
14 tn Heb “I will feed this people wormwood and make them drink poison water.” “Wormwood” and “poison water” are not to be understood literally here but are symbolic of judgment and suffering. See, e.g., BDB 542 s.v. לַעֲנָה.
15 tn Heb “Then the towns of Judah and those living in Jerusalem will…”
16 tn The Hebrew construction is emphatic involving the use of an infinitive of the verb before the verb itself (Heb “saving they will not save”). For this construction to give emphasis to an antithesis, cf. GKC 343 §113.p.
17 sn Heb “Your words were found and I ate them.” This along with Ezek 2:8–3:3 is a poetic picture of inspiration. The prophet accepted them, assimilated them, and made them such a part of himself that he spoke with complete assurance what he knew were God’s words.
18 tn Heb “Your name is called upon me.”
sn See Jer 14:9 where this idiom is applied to Israel as a whole and Jer 7:10 where it is applied to the temple. For discussion cf. notes on 7:10.
19 tn Heb “the land of the Chaldeans.” See the study note on 21:4.
20 tn This is an attempt to render the Hebrew particle כִּי (ki) which is probably being used in the sense that BDB 473-74 s.v. כִּי 3.c notes, i.e., the causal connection is somewhat loose, related here to the prophecies against the nations. “So” seems to be the most appropriate way to represent this.
21 tn Heb “Thus said the
22 sn “Drinking from the cup of wrath” is a common figure to represent being punished by God. Isaiah had used it earlier to refer to the punishment which Judah was to suffer and from which God would deliver her (Isa 51:17, 22) and Jeremiah’s contemporary Habakkuk uses it of Babylon “pouring out its wrath” on the nations and in turn being forced to drink the bitter cup herself (Hab 2:15-16). In Jer 51:7 the
23 tn Heb “Then the officials and all the people said to the priests and the prophets…”
24 sn Contrast v. 11.
25 tn Heb “For in the name of the
sn The priests and false prophets claimed that they were speaking in the
26 tn Heb “Yahweh of armies, the God of Israel.” For the significance of this title see the note at 2:19.
27 sn Some of the flavor of the repetitive nature of Hebrew narrative is apparent in vv. 19-21. In the Hebrew original vv. 19-20 are all one long sentence with complex coordination and subordinations. I.e., all the objects in v. 19 are all objects of the one verb “has spoken about” and the description in v. 20 is one long relative or descriptive clause. The introductory “For the
28 sn Watchmen were stationed at vantage points to pass on warning of coming attack (Jer 6:17; Ezek 33:2, 6) or to spread the news of victory (Isa 52:8). Here reference is made to the watchmen who signaled the special times of the year such as the new moon and festival times when Israel was to go to Jerusalem to worship. Reference is not made to these in the Hebrew Bible but there is a good deal of instruction regarding them in the later Babylonian Talmud.
29 sn Not only will Israel and Judah be reunited under one ruler (cf. 23:5-6), but they will share a unified place and practice of worship once again in contrast to Israel using the illicit places of worship, illicit priesthood, and illicit feasts instituted by Jeroboam (1 Kgs 12:26-31) and continued until the downfall of Samaria in 722
30 tn Heb “you.” However, the pronoun is plural and is addressed to more than just Jeremiah (v. 26). It includes Jeremiah and those who have accepted his prophecy of doom.
31 tn Heb “sword.”
32 sn Compare Jer 32:24, 28. In 32:24 this is Jeremiah’s statement just before he expresses his perplexity about the
33 tn Heb “And now therefore thus says the
34 sn This is the second of two delegations that Zedekiah sent to Jeremiah to ask him to pray for a miraculous deliverance. Both of them are against the background of the siege of Jerusalem which was instigated by Zedekiah’s rebelling against Nebuchadnezzar and sending to Egypt for help (cf. Ezek 17:15). The earlier delegation (21:1-2) was sent before Nebuchadnezzar had clamped down on Jerusalem because the Judean forces at that time were still fighting against the Babylonian forces in the open field (see 21:4 and the translator’s note there). Here the siege has been lifted because the Babylonian troops had heard a report that the Egyptian army was on the way into Palestine to give the Judeans the promised aid (vv. 5, 7). The request is briefer here than in 21:2 but the intent is no doubt the same (see also the study note on 21:2).
35 sn Jehucal was one of the officials who later sought to have Jeremiah put to death for what they considered treason (38:1-4).
36 sn The priest Zephaniah son of Maaseiah was a member of the earlier delegation (21:2) and the chief of security in the temple to whom the Babylonian false prophet wrote a letter complaining that Jeremiah should be locked up for his treasonous prophecies (29:25-26). See the study notes on 21:2 and 29:25 for further details.
37 tn Heb “do according to all the word which.”
38 sn It is generally agreed that the temple of the sun was located in Heliopolis, which is elsewhere referred to as On (cf. Gen 41:45). It was the center for the worship of Amon-Re, the Egyptian sun god, and was famous for its obelisks (conical shaped pillars) dedicated to that god. It was located about 6 miles (10 km) northeast of modern-day Cairo.
39 tn Heb “Behold I am setting my face against you for evil/disaster.” For the meaning of the idiom “to set the face to/against” see the translator’s note on 42:15 and compare the references listed there.
40 tn Heb “and to destroy all Judah.” However, this statement must be understood within the rhetoric of the passage (see vv. 7-8 and the study note on v. 8) and within the broader context of the
41 tn Heb “Hark! Fugitives and refugees from the land of Babylon to declare in Zion the vengeance of the
sn This verse appears to be a parenthetical exclamation of the prophet in the midst of his report of what the