6:8 So 1 take warning, Jerusalem,
or I will abandon you in disgust 2
and make you desolate,
a place where no one can live.”
22:8 “‘People from other nations will pass by this city. They will ask one another, “Why has the Lord done such a thing to this great city?”
30:13 There is no one to plead your cause.
There are no remedies for your wounds. 14
There is no healing for you.
49:33 “Hazor will become a permanent wasteland,
a place where only jackals live. 19
No one will live there.
No human being will settle in it.” 20
50:3 For a nation from the north 21 will attack Babylon.
It will lay her land waste.
People and animals will flee out of it.
No one will inhabit it.’
1 tn This word is not in the text but is supplied in the translation. Jeremiah uses a figure of speech (enallage) where the speaker turns from talking about someone to address him/her directly.
2 tn Heb “lest my soul [= I] becomes disgusted with you.”
sn The wordplay begun with “sound…in Tekoa” in v. 1 and continued with “they will pitch” in v. 3 is concluded here with “turn away” (וּבִתְקוֹעַ תִּקְעוּ [uvitqoa’ tiq’u] in v. 1, תָּקְעוּ [taq’u] in v. 3 and תֵּקַע [teqa’] here).
3 tn Heb “Is it I whom they provoke?” The rhetorical question expects a negative answer which is made explicit in the translation.
4 tn Heb “Is it not themselves to their own shame?” The rhetorical question expects a positive answer which is made explicit in the translation.
5 tn Heb “There will be no survivors for/among them.”
6 tn Heb “the men of Anathoth.” For the rationale for adding the qualification see the notes on v. 21.
7 tn Heb “I will bring disaster on…, the year of their punishment.”
8 sn For the argumentation here compare Jer 7:23-26.
9 tn Heb “Oracle of the
10 tn Heb “who are stealing my words from one another.” However, context shows that it is their own word which they claim is from the
11 tn Heb “Hananiah, ‘Thus says the
12 tn The Greek version reads “I have made/put” rather than “you have made/put.” This is the easier reading and is therefore rejected.
13 tn Heb “the yoke bars of wood you have broken, but you have made in its stead yoke bars of iron.”
sn This whole incident (and the preceding one in Jer 28) is symbolic. Jeremiah’s wearing of the yoke was symbolic of the
14 tc The translation of these first two lines follows the redivision of the lines suggested in NIV and NRSV rather than that of the Masoretes who read, “There is no one who pleads your cause with reference to [your] wound.”
sn This verse exhibits a mixed metaphor of an advocate pleading someone’s case (cf., Jer 5:28; 22:18) and of a physician applying medicine to wounds and sores resulting from them (see, e.g., Jer 8:18 for the latter metaphor). Zion’s sins are beyond defense and the wounds inflicted upon her beyond healing. However, God, himself, in his own time will forgive her sins (Jer 31:34; 33:8) and heal her wounds (Jer 30:17).
15 tn There is some uncertainty about the precise meaning of the phrases translated “the order of transfer and the regulations.” The translation follows the interpretation suggested by J. Bright, Jeremiah (AB), 237; J. A. Thompson, Jeremiah (NICOT), 586, n. 5; and presumably BDB 349 s.v. חֹק 7, which defines the use of חֹק (khoq) here as “conditions of the deed of purchase.”
16 tn Heb “after King Zedekiah made a covenant…to proclaim liberty to them [the slaves mentioned in the next verse] so that each would send away free his male slave and his female slave, the Hebrew man and the Hebrew woman, so that a man would not hold them in bondage, namely a Judean, his brother [this latter phrase is explicative of “them” because it repeats the preposition in front of “them”].” The complex Hebrew syntax has been broken down into shorter English sentences but an attempt has been made to retain the proper subordinations.
sn Through economic necessity some of the poorer people of the land had on occasion to sell themselves or their children to wealthier Hebrew landowners. The terms of their servitude were strictly regulated under Hebrew law (cf. Exod 21:2-11; Lev 25:39-55; Deut 15:12-18). In brief, no Hebrew was to serve a fellow Hebrew for any longer than six years. In the seventh year he or she was to go free. The period could even be shortened if the year of jubilee intervened since all debts were to be canceled, freedom restored, and indentured property returned in that year. Some see the covenant here coming in conjunction with such a jubilee year since it involved the freedom of all slaves regardless of how long they had served. Others see this covenant as paralleling an old Babylonian practice of a king declaring liberty for slaves and canceling all debts generally at the beginning of his reign (but also at other significant times within it) in order to ingratiate himself with his subjects.
17 tn Heb “the house of the Rechabites.” “House” is used here in terms of “household” or “family” (cf. BDB 109 s.v. בַּיִת 5.a, b).
sn Nothing is known about the Rechabite community other than what is said about them in this chapter. From vv. 7-8 it appears that they were a nomadic tribe that had resisted settling down and taking up farming. They had also agreed to abstain from drinking wine. Most scholars agree in equating the Jonadab son of Rechab mentioned as the leader who had instituted these strictures as the same Jonadab who assisted Jehu in his religious purge of Baalism following the reign of Ahab (2 Kgs 10:15, 23-24). If this is the case, the Rechabites followed these same rules for almost 250 years because Jehu’s purge of Baalism and the beginning of his reign was in 841
18 sn This refers to one of the rooms built on the outside of the temple that were used as living quarters for the priests and for storage rooms (cf. Neh 13:4-5; 1 Kgs 6:5; 1 Chr 28:12; 2 Chr 31:11 and compare Ezek 41:1-14).
19 sn Compare Jer 9:11.
20 sn Compare Jer 49:18 and 50:40 where the same thing is said about Edom and Babylon.
21 sn A nation from the north refers to Medo-Persia which at the time of the conquest of Babylon in 539