2:20 “Indeed, 1 long ago you threw off my authority
and refused to be subject to me. 2
You said, ‘I will not serve you.’ 3
Instead, you gave yourself to other gods on every high hill
and under every green tree,
like a prostitute sprawls out before her lovers. 4
3:6 When Josiah was king of Judah, the Lord said to me, “Jeremiah, you have no doubt seen what wayward Israel has done. 5 You have seen how she went up to every high hill and under every green tree to give herself like a prostitute to other gods. 6
25:30 “Then, Jeremiah, 7 make the following prophecy 8 against them:
‘Like a lion about to attack, 9 the Lord will roar from the heights of heaven;
from his holy dwelling on high he will roar loudly.
He will roar mightily against his land. 10
He will shout in triumph like those stomping juice from the grapes 11
against all those who live on the earth.
51:58 This is what the Lord who rules over all 15 says,
“Babylon’s thick wall 16 will be completely demolished. 17
Her high gates will be set on fire.
The peoples strive for what does not satisfy. 18
The nations grow weary trying to get what will be destroyed.” 19
1 tn Or “For.” The Hebrew particle (כִּי, ki) here introduces the evidence that they had no respect for him.
2 tn Heb “you broke your yoke…tore off your yoke ropes.” The metaphor is that of a recalcitrant ox or heifer which has broken free from its master.
3 tc The MT of this verse has two examples of the old second feminine singular perfect, שָׁבַרְתִּי (shavarti) and נִתַּקְתִּי (nittaqti), which the Masoretes mistook for first singulars leading to the proposal to read אֶעֱבוֹר (’e’evor, “I will not transgress”) for אֶעֱבֹד (’e’evod, “I will not serve”). The latter understanding of the forms is accepted in KJV but rejected by almost all modern English versions as being less appropriate to the context than the reading accepted in the translation given here.
4 tn Heb “you sprawled as a prostitute on….” The translation reflects the meaning of the metaphor.
5 tn “Have you seen…” The question is rhetorical and expects a positive answer.
6 tn Heb “she played the prostitute there.” This is a metaphor for Israel’s worship; she gave herself to the worship of other gods like a prostitute gives herself to her lovers. There seems no clear way to completely spell out the metaphor in the translation.
7 tn The word “Jeremiah” is not in the text. It is supplied in the translation to make clear who is being addressed.
8 tn Heb “Prophesy against them all these words.”
9 tn The words “like a lion about to attack” are not in the text but are implicit in the metaphor. The explicit comparison of the
sn For the metaphor of the
10 sn The word used here (Heb “his habitation”) refers to the land of Canaan which the
11 sn The metaphor shifts from God as a lion to God as a mighty warrior (Jer 20:11; Isa 42:13; Zeph 3:17) shouting in triumph over his foes. Within the metaphor is a simile where the warrior is compared to a person stomping on grapes to remove the juice from them in the making of wine. The figure will be invoked later in a battle scene where the sounds of joy in the grape harvest are replaced by the sounds of joy of the enemy soldiers (Jer 48:33). The picture is drawn in more gory detail in Isa 63:1-6.
12 tn English versions and commentaries differ on the number of officials named here and the exact spelling of their names. For a good discussion of the options see F. B. Huey, Jeremiah, Lamentations (NAC), 341, n. 71. Most commentaries follow the general lead of J. Bright (Jeremiah [AB], 243) as the present translation has done here. However, the second name is not emended on the basis of v. 13 as Bright does, nor is the second Nergal-Sharezer regarded as the same man as the first and the information on the two combined as he does. The first Nergal-Sharezer is generally identified on the basis of Babylonian records as the man who usurped the throne from Nebuchadnezzar’s son, Awel-Marduk or Evil-Merodach as he is known in the OT (Jer 52:31; 2 Kgs 25:27). The present translation renders the two technical Babylonian terms “Rab-Saris” (only in Jer 39:3, 13; 2 Kgs 18:17) and “Rab-Mag” (only in Jer 39:3, 13) as “chief officer” and “high official” without knowing precisely what offices they held. This has been done to give the modern reader some feeling of their high position without specifying exactly what their precise positions were (i.e., the generic has been used for the [unknown] specific).
13 tn Heb “sat.” The precise meaning of this phrase is not altogether clear, but J. Bright (Jeremiah [AB], 243) is undoubtedly correct in assuming that it had to do with setting up a provisional military government over the city.
14 tn The Hebrew style here is typically full or redundant, giving a general subject first and then listing the specifics. The Hebrew text reads: “Then all the officers of the king of Babylon came and sat in the Middle Gate, Nergal-Sharezer…and all the rest of the officers of the king of Babylon.” In the translation the general subject has been eliminated and the list of the “real” subjects used instead; this eliminates the dashes or commas typical of some modern English versions.
sn The identification of the location of the Middle Gate is uncertain since it is mentioned nowhere else in the OT.
15 sn See the note at Jer 2:19.
16 tn The text has the plural “walls,” but many Hebrew
17 tn The infinitive absolute emphasizes the following finite verb. Another option is to translate, “will certainly be demolished.”
18 tn Heb “for what is empty.”
19 tn Heb “and the nations for fire, and they grow weary.”