Jeremiah 2:4

The Lord Reminds Them of the Unfaithfulness of Their Ancestors

2:4 Now listen to what the Lord has to say, you descendants ¹  of Jacob,

all you family groups from the nation ²  of Israel.

Jeremiah 3:20

3:20 But, you have been unfaithful to me, nation of Israel, ³ 

like an unfaithful wife who has left her husband,” ⁴ 

says the Lord.

Jeremiah 5:9

5:9 I will surely punish them for doing such things!” says the Lord.

“I will surely bring retribution on such a nation as this!” ⁵ 

Jeremiah 5:29

5:29 I will certainly punish them for doing such things!” says the Lord.

“I will certainly bring retribution on such a nation as this! ⁶ 

Jeremiah 9:9

9:9 I will certainly punish them for doing such things!” says the Lord.

“I will certainly bring retribution on such a nation as this!” ⁷ 

Jeremiah 12:7

12:7 “I will abandon my nation. ⁸ 

I will forsake the people I call my own. ⁹ 

I will turn my beloved people ¹⁰ 

over to the power ¹¹  of their enemies.

Jeremiah 18:10

18:10 But if that nation does what displeases me and does not obey me, then I will cancel the good I promised to do to it.

Jeremiah 25:14

25:14 For many nations and great kings will make slaves of the king of Babylon and his nation ¹²  too. I will repay them for all they have done!’” ¹³ 

Jeremiah 50:3

50:3 For a nation from the north ¹⁴  will attack Babylon.

It will lay her land waste.

People and animals will flee out of it.

No one will inhabit it.’

Jeremiah 50:41

50:41 “Look! An army is about to come from the north.

A mighty nation and many kings ¹⁵  are stirring into action

in faraway parts of the earth.

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¹ tn Heb “house.”

² tn Heb “house.”

³ tn Heb “house of Israel.”

⁴ tn Heb “a wife unfaithful from her husband.”

⁵ tn Heb “Should I not punish them…? Should I not bring retribution…?” The rhetorical questions have the force of strong declarations.

⁶ tn Heb “Should I not punish…? Should I not bring retribution…?” The rhetorical questions function as emphatic declarations.

sn These words are repeated from 5:9 to give a kind of refrain justifying again the necessity of punishment in the light of such sins.

⁷ tn Heb “Should I not punish them…? Should I not bring retribution…?” The rhetorical questions function as emphatic declarations.

sn See 5:9, 29. This is somewhat of a refrain at the end of a catalog of Judah’s sins.

⁸ tn Heb “my house.” Or “I have abandoned my nation.” The word “house” has been used throughout Jeremiah for both the temple (e.g., 7:2, 10), the nation or people of Israel or of Judah (e.g. 3:18, 20), or the descendants of Jacob (i.e., the Israelites, e.g., 2:4). Here the parallelism argues that it refers to the nation of Judah. The translation throughout vv. 5-17 assumes that the verb forms are prophetic perfects, the form that conceives of the action as being as good as done. It is possible that the forms are true perfects and refer to a past destruction of Judah. If so, it may have been connected with the assaults against Judah in 598/7 b.c. by the Babylonians and the nations surrounding Judah recorded in 2 Kgs 24:14. No other major recent English version reflects these as prophetic perfects besides NIV and NCV, which does not use the future until v. 10. Hence the translation is somewhat tentative. C. Feinberg, “Jeremiah,” EBC 6:459 takes them as prophetic perfects and H. Freedman (Jeremiah [SoBB], 88) mentions that as a possibility for explaining the presence of this passage here. For another example of an extended use of the prophetic perfect without imperfects interspersed see Isa 8:23-9:6. The translation assumes they are prophetic and are part of the Lord’s answer to the complaint about the prosperity of the wicked; both the wicked Judeans and the wicked nations God will use to punish them will be punished.

⁹ tn Heb “my inheritance.”

¹⁰ tn Heb “the beloved of my soul.” Here “soul” stands for the person and is equivalent to “my.”

¹¹ tn Heb “will give…into the hands of.”

¹² tn Heb “make slaves of them.” The verb form here indicates that the action is as good as done (the Hebrew prophetic perfect). For the use of the verb rendered “makes slaves” see parallel usage in Lev 25:39, 46 (cf. BDB 713 s.v. עָבַד 3).

¹³ tn Heb “according to their deeds and according to the work of their hands.” The two phrases are synonymous; it would be hard to represent them both in translation without being redundant. The translation attempts to represent them by the qualifier “all” before the first phrase.

¹⁴ sn A nation from the north refers to Medo-Persia which at the time of the conquest of Babylon in 539 b.c. had conquered all the nations to the north, the northwest, and the northeast of Babylon forming a vast empire to the north and east of Babylon. Contingents of these many nations were included in her army and reference is made to them in 50:9 and 51:27-28. There is also some irony involved here because the “enemy from the north” referred to so often in Jeremiah (cf. 1:14; 4:6; 6:1) has been identified with Babylon (cf. 25:9). Here in a kind of talionic justice Judah’s nemesis from the north will be attacked and devastated by an enemy from the north.

¹⁵ sn A mighty nation and many kings is an allusion to the Medo-Persian empire and the vassal kings who provided forces for the Medo-Persian armies.