Jeremiah 7:9

7:9 You steal. ¹  You murder. You commit adultery. You lie when you swear on oath. You sacrifice to the god Baal. You pay allegiance to ²  other gods whom you have not previously known.

Jeremiah 31:19

31:19 For after we turned away from you we repented.

After we came to our senses ³  we beat our breasts in sorrow. ⁴ 

We are ashamed and humiliated

because of the disgraceful things we did previously.’ ⁵ 

Jeremiah 44:3

44:3 This happened because of the wickedness the people living there did. ⁶  They made me angry ⁷  by worshiping and offering sacrifice to ⁸  other gods whom neither they nor you nor your ancestors ⁹  previously knew. ¹⁰ 

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¹ tn Heb “Will you steal…then say, ‘We are safe’?” Verses 9-10 are one long sentence in the Hebrew text.

² tn Heb “You go/follow after.” See the translator’s note at 2:5 for an explanation of the idiom involved here.

³ tn For this meaning of the verb see HAL 374 s.v. יָדַע Nif 5 or W. L. Holladay, Concise Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon, 129. REB translates “Now that I am submissive” relating the verb to a second root meaning “be submissive.” (See HALOT 375 s.v. II יָדַע and J. Barr, Comparative Philology and the Text of the Old Testament, 19-21, for evidence for this verb. Other passages cited with this nuance are Judg 8:16; Prov 10:9; Job 20:20.)

⁴ tn Heb “I struck my thigh.” This was a gesture of grief and anguish (cf. Ezek 21:12 [21:17 HT]). The modern equivalent is “to beat the breast.”

⁵ tn Heb “because I bear the reproach of my youth.” For the plural referents see the note at the beginning of v. 18.

sn The expression the disgraceful things we did in our earlier history refers to the disgrace that accompanied the sins that Israel did in her earlier years before she learned the painful lesson of submission to the Lord through the discipline of exile. For earlier references to the sins of her youth (i.e., in her earlier years as a nation) see 3:24-25; 22:21 and see also 32:29. At the time that these verses were written, neither northern Israel or Judah had expressed the kind of contrition voiced in vv. 18-19. As one commentator notes, the words here are both prophetic and instructive.

⁶ tn Heb “they.” The referent must be supplied from the preceding, i.e., Jerusalem and all the towns of Judah. “They” are those who have experienced the disaster and are distinct from those being addressed and their ancestors (44:3b).

⁷ tn Heb “thus making me angry.” However, this is a good place to break the sentence to create a shorter sentence that is more in keeping with contemporary English style.

⁸ tn Heb “by going to offer sacrifice in serving/worshiping.” The second לְ (lamed) + infinitive is epexegetical of the first (cf. IBHS 608-9 §36.2.3e).

⁹ tn Heb “fathers” (also in vv. 9, 10, 17, 21).

¹⁰ sn Compare Jer 19:4 for the same thought and see also 7:9.