Jeremiah 34:2-3

34:2 The Lord God of Israel told Jeremiah 1  to go and give King Zedekiah of Judah a message. He told Jeremiah 2  to tell him, “The Lord says, ‘I am going to 3  hand this city over to the king of Babylon and he will burn it down. 34:3 You yourself will not escape his clutches, but will certainly be captured and handed over to him. You must confront the king of Babylon face to face and answer to him personally. 4  Then you must go to Babylon.

Jeremiah 34:19-22

34:19 I will punish the leaders of Judah and Jerusalem, the court officials, 5  the priests, and all the other people of the land who passed between the pieces of the calf. 6  34:20 I will hand them over to their enemies who want to kill them. Their dead bodies will become food for the birds and the wild animals. 7  34:21 I will also hand King Zedekiah of Judah and his officials over to their enemies who want to kill them. I will hand them over to the army of the king of Babylon, even though they have temporarily withdrawn from attacking you. 8  34:22 For I, the Lord, affirm that 9  I will soon give the order and bring them back to this city. They will fight against it and capture it and burn it down. I will also make the towns of Judah desolate so that there will be no one living in them.”’”

1 tn Heb “told him”; the referent (Jeremiah) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

2 tn Heb “told him”; the referent (Jeremiah) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

3 tn Heb 34:1 “The word which came to Jeremiah from the Lord…saying, ‘Thus says the Lord God of Israel, “Go and speak to Zedekiah king of Judah and say to him, ‘Thus says the Lord, “I am going to….”’”’” The translation has tried to avoid some of the confusion that is created by embedding quotations within quotations by using indirect quotation in some instances; the conceptualization is the same but the style is simpler.

4 tn Heb “Your eyes will see the eyes of the king of Babylon and his mouth will speak with your mouth.” For this same idiom in reverse order see 32:4 and consult the translator’s note there for the obligatory nuance given to the verbs.

sn For the fulfillment of this see Jer 52:7-11.

5 tn For the rendering of this term see the translator’s note on 29:2.

6 tn This verse is not actually a sentence in the Hebrew original but is a prepositioned object to the verb in v. 20, “I will hand them over.” This construction is called casus pendens in the older grammars and is used to call attention to a subject or object (cf. GKC 458 §143.d and compare the usage in 33:24). The same nondescript “I will punish” which was used to resolve the complex sentence in the previous verse has been chosen to introduce the objects here before the more specific “I will hand them over” in the next verse.

7 sn See this same phrase in Jer 7:33; 16:4; 19:7.

8 tn Heb “And Zedekiah king of Judah and his officials I will give into the hand of their enemies and into the hand of those who seek their lives and into the hands of the army of the king of Babylon which has gone up from against them.” The last two “and into the hand” phrases are each giving further explication of “their enemies” (the conjunction is explicative [cf. BDB 252 s.v. וְ 1.b]). The sentence has been broken down into shorter English sentences in conformity with contemporary English style.

sn This refers to the relief offered by the withdrawal of the Babylonian troops to fight against the Egyptians which were coming to Zedekiah’s aid (cf. 37:5, 7, 11).

9 tn Heb “Oracle of the Lord.”