Jeremiah 47:6-7

47:6 How long will you cry out, ¹  ‘Oh, sword of the Lord,

how long will it be before you stop killing? ² 

Go back into your sheath!

Stay there and rest!’ ³ 

47:7 But how can it rest ⁴ 

when I, the Lord, have ⁵  given it orders?

I have ordered it to attack

the people of Ashkelon and the seacoast. ⁶ 

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¹ tn The words “How long will you cry out” are not in the text but some such introduction seems necessary because the rest of the speech assumes a personal subject.

² tn Heb “before you are quiet/at rest.”

³ sn The passage is highly figurative. The sword of the Lord, which is itself a figure of the destructive agency of the enemy armies, is here addressed as a person and is encouraged in rhetorical questions (the questions are designed to dissuade) to “be quiet,” “be at rest,” “be silent,” all of which is designed to get the Lord to call off the destruction against the Philistines.

⁴ tn The reading here follows the Greek, Syriac, and Latin versions. The Hebrew text reads “how can you rest” as a continuation of the second person in v. 6.

⁵ tn Heb “When the Lord has.” The first person is again adopted because the Lord has been speaking.

⁶ tn Heb “Against Ashkelon and the sea coast, there he has appointed it.” For the switch to the first person see the preceding translator’s note. “There” is poetical and redundant and the idea of “attacking” is implicit in “against.”