Jeremiah 2:5

2:5 This is what the Lord says:

“What fault could your ancestors ¹  have possibly found in me

that they strayed so far from me? ² 

They paid allegiance to ³  worthless idols, and so became worthless to me. ⁴ 

Jeremiah 7:29

7:29 So, mourn, ⁵  you people of this nation. ⁶  Cut off your hair and throw it away. Sing a song of mourning on the hilltops. For the Lord has decided to reject ⁷  and forsake this generation that has provoked his wrath!’” ⁸ 

Jeremiah 34:13

34:13 “The Lord God of Israel has a message for you. ⁹  ‘I made a covenant with your ancestors ¹⁰  when I brought them out of Egypt where they had been slaves. ¹¹  It stipulated, ¹² 

Jeremiah 42:9

42:9 Then Jeremiah said to them, “You sent me to the Lord God of Israel to make your request known to him. Here is what he says to you: ¹³ 

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¹ tn Heb “fathers.”

² tn Or “I did not wrong your ancestors in any way. Yet they went far astray from me.” Both translations are an attempt to render the rhetorical question which demands a negative answer.

³ tn Heb “They went/followed after.” This idiom is found most often in Deuteronomy or covenant contexts. It refers to loyalty to God and to his covenant or his commandments (e.g., 1 Kgs 14:8; 2 Chr 34:31) with the metaphor of a path or way underlying it (e.g., Deut 11:28; 28:14). To “follow other gods” was to abandon this way and this loyalty (i.e., to “abandon” or “forget” God, Judg 2:12; Hos 2:13) and to follow the customs or religious traditions of the pagan nations (e.g., 2 Kgs 17:15). The classic text on “following” God or another god is 1 Kgs 18:18, 21 where Elijah taunts the people with “halting between two opinions” whether the Lord was the true God or Baal was. The idiom is often found followed by “to serve and to worship” or “they served and worshiped” such and such a god or entity (see, e.g., Jer 8:2; 11:10; 13:10; 16:11; 25:6; 35:15).

⁴ tn The words “to me” are not in the Hebrew text but are implicit from the context: Heb “they followed after the worthless thing/things and became worthless.” There is an obvious wordplay on the verb “became worthless” and the noun “worthless thing,” which is probably to be understood collectively and to refer to idols as it does in Jer 8:19; 10:8; 14:22; Jonah 2:8.

⁵ tn The word “mourn” is not in the text. It is supplied in the translation for clarity to explain the significance of the words “Cut your hair and throw it away.”

sn Cf. Mic 1:16; Job 1:20 for other examples of this practice which was involved in mourning.

⁶ tn The words, “you people of this nation” are not in the text. Many English versions supply, “Jerusalem.” The address shifts from second masculine singular addressing Jeremiah (vv. 27-28a) to second feminine singular. It causes less disruption in the flow of the context to see the nation as a whole addressed here as a feminine singular entity (as, e.g., in 2:19, 23; 3:2, 3; 6:26) than to introduce a new entity, Jerusalem.

⁷ tn The verbs here are the Hebrew scheduling perfects. For this use of the perfect see GKC 312 §106.m.

⁸ tn Heb “the generation of his wrath.”

⁹ tn Heb “Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, ‘…’” The style adopted here has been used to avoid a longer, more complex English sentence.

¹⁰ tn Heb “fathers” (also in vv. 14, 15).

¹¹ tn Heb “out of the house of bondage.”

sn This refers to the Mosaic covenant, initiated at Mount Sinai and renewed on the plains of Moab. The statement “I brought you out of Egypt, out of the house of bondage” functions as the “historical prologue” in the Ten Commandments which is the Lord’s vassal treaty with Israel in miniature. (See the study note on 11:2 and see Exod 20:2; Deut 5:6 and Exod 34:8. As such it was a motivating factor in their pledge of loyalty to him. This statement was also invoked within the law itself as a motivation for kindly treatment of slaves including their emancipation (see Deut 15:15).)

¹² tn Heb “made a covenant, saying.” This was only one of several stipulations of the covenant. The form used here has been chosen as an indirect way of relating the specific stipulation that is being focused upon to the general covenant that is referred to in v. 13.

¹³ tn Heb “Thus says the Lord God of Israel to whom you sent me to present your petition before him, ‘…’” The sentence has been restructured to cut down on the length of the introduction leading in to the long quote.

sn Their “request” is that Jeremiah would tell them where to go and what to do (v. 3).