Jeremiah 3:2

3:2 “Look up at the hilltops and consider this. ¹ 

You have had sex with other gods on every one of them. ² 

You waited for those gods like a thief lying in wait in the desert. ³ 

You defiled the land by your wicked prostitution to other gods. ⁴ 

Jeremiah 3:8

3:8 She also saw ⁵  that I gave wayward Israel her divorce papers and sent her away because of her adulterous worship of other gods. ⁶  Even after her unfaithful sister Judah had seen this, ⁷  she still was not afraid, and she too went and gave herself like a prostitute to other gods. ⁸ 

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¹ tn Heb “and see.”

² tn Heb “Where have you not been ravished?” The rhetorical question expects the answer “nowhere,” which suggests she has engaged in the worship of pagan gods on every one of the hilltops.

³ tn Heb “You sat for them [the lovers, i.e., the foreign gods] beside the road like an Arab in the desert.”

⁴ tn Heb “by your prostitution and your wickedness.” This is probably an example of hendiadys where, when two nouns are joined by “and,” one expresses the main idea and the other qualifies it.

⁵ tc Heb “she [‘her sister, unfaithful Judah’ from the preceding verse] saw” with one Hebrew ms, some Greek mss, and the Syriac version. The MT reads “I saw” which may be a case of attraction to the verb at the beginning of the previous verse.

⁶ tn Heb “because she committed adultery.” The translation is intended to spell out the significance of the metaphor.

⁷ tn The words “Even after her unfaithful sister, Judah, had seen this” are not in the Hebrew text but are implicit in the connection and are supplied for clarification.

⁸ 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.