Jeremiah 4:23

4:23 “I looked at the land and saw¹ that it was an empty wasteland.²

I looked up at the sky, and its light had vanished.

Jeremiah 4:25

4:25 I looked and saw that there were no more people,³

and that all the birds in the sky had flown away.

Jeremiah 38:21

38:21 But if you refuse to surrender, the Lord has shown me a vision of what will happen. Here is what I saw:

Jeremiah 41:13

41:13 When all the people that Ishmael had taken captive saw⁴ Johanan son of Kareah and all the army officers with him, they were glad.

¹tn Heb “I looked at the land and behold...” This indicates the visionary character of Jeremiah’s description of the future condition of the land of Israel.

²tn Heb “formless and empty.” This is a case of hendiadys (two nouns joined by “and” both describe the same thing): one noun retains its full nominal force, the other functions as an adjective. The words תֹהוּ וָבֹהוּ (tohu vavohu) allude to Gen 1:2, hyperbolically picturing a reversal of creation and return to the original precreation chaos.

³tn Heb “there was no man/human being.”

⁴tn Heb “all the people who were with Ishmael.” However, this does not refer to his own troops but to those he had taken with him from Mizpah, i.e., the captives. The phrase is specifically clarified in the next verse, i.e. “the people whom Ishmael had taken captive from Mizpah.” Hence the phrase is translated here according to sense, not according to the literal wording.