3:23 We know our noisy worship of false gods
on the hills and mountains did not help us. 3
We know that the Lord our God
is the only one who can deliver Israel. 4
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
6:26 So I said, 8 “Oh, my dear people, 9 put on sackcloth
and roll in ashes.
Mourn with painful sobs
as though you had lost your only child.
For any moment now 10 that destructive army 11
will come against us.”
10:10 The Lord is the only true God.
He is the living God and the everlasting King.
When he shows his anger the earth shakes.
None of the nations can stand up to his fury.
10:22 Listen! News is coming even now. 12
The rumble of a great army is heard approaching 13 from a land in the north. 14
It is coming to turn the towns of Judah into rubble,
places where only jackals live.
29:10 “For the Lord says, ‘Only when the seventy years of Babylonian rule 19 are over will I again take up consideration for you. 20 Then I will fulfill my gracious promise to you and restore 21 you to your homeland. 22
31:36 The Lord affirms, 23 “The descendants of Israel will not
cease forever to be a nation in my sight.
That could only happen if the fixed ordering of the heavenly lights
were to cease to operate before me.” 24
49:9 If grape pickers came to pick your grapes,
would they not leave a few grapes behind? 31
If robbers came at night,
would they not pillage only what they needed? 32
1 tn Heb “And even in all this.”
2 tn Heb “ has not turned back to me with all her heart but only in falsehood.”
3 tn Heb “Truly in vain from the hills the noise/commotion [and from] the mountains.” The syntax of the Hebrew sentence is very elliptical here.
4 tn Heb “Truly in 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 These words are not in the text but are implicit from the context.
9 tn Heb “daughter of my people.” For the translation given here see 4:11 and the translator’s note there.
10 tn Heb “suddenly.”
11 tn Heb “the destroyer.”
12 tn Heb “The sound of a report, behold, it is coming.”
13 tn Heb “ coming, even a great quaking.”
14 sn Compare Jer 6:22.
15 tn The words “Don’t listen to them” have been repeated from v. 9a to pick up the causal connection between v. 9a and v. 10 that is formally introduced by a causal particle in v. 10 in the original text.
16 tn Heb “they are prophesying a lie.”
17 tn Heb “lies will result in your being taken far…” (לְמַעַן [lÿma’an] + infinitive). This is a rather clear case of the particle לְמַעַן introducing result (contra BDB 775 s.v. מַעַן note 1. There is no irony in this statement; it is a bold prediction).
18 tn The words “out of your country” are not in the text but are implicit in the meaning of the verb. The words “in exile” are also not in the text but are implicit in the context. These words have been supplied in the translation for clarity.
19 sn See the study note on Jer 25:11 for the reckoning of the seventy years.
20 tn See the translator’s note on Jer 27:22 for this term.
21 tn Verse 10 is all one long sentence in the Hebrew original: “According to the fullness of Babylon seventy years I will take thought of you and I will establish my gracious word to you by bringing you back to this place.” The sentence has been broken up to conform better to contemporary English style.
22 tn Heb “this place.” The text has probably been influenced by the parallel passage in 27:22. The term appears fifteen times in Jeremiah and is invariably a reference to Jerusalem or Judah.
sn See Jer 27:22 for this promise.
23 tn Heb “Oracle of the
24 tn Heb “‘If these fixed orderings were to fail to be present before me,’ oracle of the
25 tn Heb “Thus says the
26 tn The word יוֹמָם (yomam) is normally an adverb meaning “daytime, by day, daily.” However, here and in v. 25 and in Jer 15:9 it means “day, daytime” (cf. BDB 401 s.v. יוֹמָם 1).
27 tn Heb “you.” The pronoun is plural as in 32:36, 43; 33:10.
28 tn Heb “And the army of the king of Babylon was fighting against Jerusalem and against all the cities of Judah which were left, [namely] against Lachish and Azekah for they alone were left of the cities of Judah as fortified cities.” The intent of this sentence is to serve as a circumstantial sentence to v. 6 (= “while the army…”). That thought is picked up by “he did this while….” The long complex sentence in v. 7 has been broken down and qualifying material placed in the proper places to convey the same information in shorter English sentences in conformity with contemporary English style.
29 tn Heb “all the army of the Chaldeans.” For the rendering “Babylonian” in place of Chaldean see the study note on 21:4.
30 tn The length and complexity of this English sentence violates the more simple style that has been used to conform such sentences to contemporary English style. However, there does not seem to be any alternative that would enable a simpler style and still retain the causal and conditional connections that give this sentence the rhetorical force that it has in the original. The condition is, of course, purely hypothetical and the consequence a poetic exaggeration. The intent is to assure Zedekiah that there is absolutely no hope of the city being spared.
31 tn The translation of this verse is generally based on the parallels in Obad 5. There the second line has a ה interrogative in front of it. The question can still be assumed because questions can be asked in Hebrew without a formal marker (cf. GKC 473 §150.a and BDB 519 s.v. לֹא 1.a[e] and compare usage in 2 Kgs 5:26).
32 tn The tense and nuance of the verb translated “pillage” are both different than the verb in Obad 5. There the verb is the imperfect of גָּנַב (ganav, “to steal”). Here the verb is the perfect of a verb which means to “ruin” or “spoil.” The English versions and commentaries, however, almost all render the verb here in much the same way as in Obad 5. The nuance must mean they only “ruin, destroy” (by stealing) only as much as they need (Heb “their sufficiency”), and the verb is used as metonymical substitute, effect for cause. The perfect must be some kind of a future perfect; “would they not have destroyed only…” The negative question is carried over by ellipsis from the preceding lines.