Jeremiah 5:2

5:2 These people make promises in the name of the Lord.¹

But the fact is,² what they swear to is really a lie.”³

Jeremiah 13:5

13:5 So I went and buried them at Perath⁴ as the Lord had ordered me to do.

Jeremiah 14:11

Judgment for Believing the Misleading Lies of the False Prophets

14:11 Then the Lord said to me, “Do not pray for good to come to these people!⁵

Jeremiah 22:29

22:29 O land of Judah, land of Judah, land of Judah!⁶

Listen to what the Lord has to say!

Jeremiah 30:4

Israel and Judah Will Be Delivered after a Time of Deep Distress

30:4 So here is what the Lord has to say about Israel and Judah.⁷

Jeremiah 32:6

32:6 So now, Jeremiah said, “The Lord told me,⁸

Jeremiah 42:7

42:7 Ten days later the Lord spoke to Jeremiah.

Jeremiah 45:2

45:2 “The Lord God of Israel has a message for you, Baruch.

Jeremiah 46:1

Prophecies Against Foreign Nations⁹

46:1 The Lord spoke to Jeremiah about the nations.¹⁰

Jeremiah 49:6

49:6 Yet in days to come

I will reverse Ammon’s ill fortune.”¹¹

says the Lord.¹²

¹tn Heb “Though they say, ‘As surely as the Lord lives.” The idea of “swear on oath” comes from the second line.

²tc The translation follows many Hebrew mss and the Syriac version in reading “surely” (אָכֵן, ’akhen) instead of “therefore” (לָכֵן, lakhen) in the MT.

tn Heb “Surely.”

³tn Heb “they swear falsely.”

⁴tc The translation reads בִּפְרָתָה (bifratah) with 4QJer^a as noted in W. L. Holladay, Jeremiah (Hermeneia), 1:393 instead of בִּפְרָת (bifrat) in the MT.

⁵tn Heb “on behalf of these people for benefit.”

⁶tn There is no certain explanation for the triple repetition of the word “land” here. F. B. Huey (Jeremiah, Lamentations [NAC], 209) suggests the idea of exasperation, but exasperation at what? Their continued apostasy which made these exiles necessary? Or exasperation at their pitiful hopes of seeing Jeconiah restored? Perhaps “pitiful, pitiful, pitiful land of Judah” would convey some of the force of the repetition without being any more suggestive of why the land is so addressed.

⁷tn Heb “And these are the words/things that the Lord speaks concerning Israel and Judah.”

⁸tn Heb “The word of the Lord came to me, saying.” This verse resumes the narrative introduction in v. 1 which was interrupted by the long parenthetical note about historical background. There is again some disjunction in the narrative (compare the translator’s notes on 27:2 and 28:1). What was begun as a biographical (third person) narrative turns into an autobiographical (first person) narrative until v. 26 where the third person is again resumed. Again this betrays the hand of the narrator, Baruch.

⁹sn Jeremiah was called to be a prophet not only to Judah and Jerusalem but to the nations (1:5, 10). The prophecies or oracles that are collected here in Jer 46-51 are found after 25:13a in the Greek version where they are also found in a different order and with several textual differences. The issue of which represents the original placement is part of the broader issue of the editorial or redactional history of the book of Jeremiah which went through several editions, two of which are referred to in Jer 36, i.e., the two scrolls written in the fourth year of Jehoiakim (605 b.c.), a third which included all the preceding plus the material down to the time of the fall of Jerusalem (cf. the introduction in 1:1-3) and a fourth that included all the preceding plus the materials in Jer 40-44. The oracles against the foreign nations collected here are consistent with the note of judgment sounded against all nations (including some not mentioned in Jer 46-51) in Jer 25. See the translator’s note on 25:13 for further details regarding the possible relationship of the oracles to the foreign nations to the judgment speeches in Jer 25.

¹⁰tn Heb “That which came [as] the word of the Lord to Jeremiah about the nations.” See the translator’s note on 14:1 for the construction here.

¹¹tn See Jer 29:14; 30:3 and the translator’s note on 29:14 for the idiom used here.

¹²tn Heb “Oracle of the Lord.”