Jeremiah 51:29

51:29 The earth will tremble and writhe in agony. ¹ 

For the Lord will carry out his plan.

He plans to make the land of Babylonia ² 

a wasteland where no one lives. ³ 

Jeremiah 4:19

4:19 I said, ⁴ 

“Oh, the feeling in the pit of my stomach! ⁵ 

I writhe in anguish.

Oh, the pain in my heart! ⁶ 

My heart pounds within me.

I cannot keep silent.

For I hear the sound of the trumpet; ⁷ 

the sound of the battle cry pierces my soul! ⁸ 

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¹ sn The figure here is common in the poetic tradition of the Lord going forth to do battle against his foes and the earth’s reaction to it is compared to a person trembling with fear and writhing in agony, agony like that of a woman in labor (cf. Judg 5:4; Nah 1:2-5; Hab 3:1-15 [especially v. 6]).

² tn Heb “For the plans of the Lord have been carried out to make the land of Babylon…” The passive has been turned into an active and the sentence broken up to better conform with contemporary English style. For the meaning of the verb קוּם (qum) in the sense used here see BDB 878 s.v. קוּם 7.g and compare the usage in Prov 19:21 and Isa 46:10.

³ tn The verbs in this verse and v. 30 are all in the past tense in Hebrew, in the tense that views the action as already as good as done (the Hebrew prophetic perfect). The verb in v. 31a, however, is imperfect, viewing the action as future; the perfects that follow are all dependent on that future. Verse 33 looks forward to a time when Babylon will be harvested and trampled like grain on the threshing floor and the imperatives imply a time in the future. Hence the present translation has rendered all the verbs in vv. 29-30 as future.

⁴ tn The words “I said” are not in the text. They are used to mark the shift from the Lord’s promise of judgment to Jeremiah’s lament concerning it.

⁵ tn Heb “My bowels! My bowels!”

⁶ tn Heb “the walls of my heart!”

⁷ tn Heb “ram’s horn,” but the modern equivalent is “trumpet” and is more readily understandable.

⁸ tc The translation reflects a different division of the last two lines than that suggested by the Masoretes. The written text (the Kethib) reads “for the sound of the ram’s horn I have heard [or “you have heard,” if the form is understood as the old second feminine singular perfect] my soul” followed by “the battle cry” in the last line. The translation is based on taking “my soul” with the last line and understanding an elliptical expression “the battle cry [to] my soul.” Such an elliptical expression is in keeping with the elliptical nature of the exclamations at the beginning of the verse (cf. the literal translations of the first two lines of the verse in the notes on the words “stomach” and “heart”).