Discovery BoxJeremiah 2:7 
Context2:7 I brought you 1 into a fertile land
so you could enjoy 2 its fruits and its rich bounty.
But when you entered my land, you defiled it; 3
you made the land I call my own 4 loathsome to me.
Jeremiah 12:10
Context12:10 Many foreign rulers 5 will ruin the land where I planted my people. 6
They will trample all over my chosen land. 7
They will turn my beautiful land
into a desolate wasteland.
1 sn Note how contemporary Israel is again identified with her early ancestors. See the study note on 2:2.
2 tn Heb “eat.”
3 sn I.e., made it ceremonially unclean. See Lev 18:19-30; Num 35:34; Deut 21:23.
4 tn Heb “my inheritance.” Or “the land [i.e., inheritance] I gave you,” reading the pronoun as indicating source rather than possession. The parallelism and the common use in Jeremiah of the term to refer to the land or people as the
sn The land belonged to the
5 tn Heb “Many shepherds.” For the use of the term “shepherd” as a figure for rulers see the notes on 10:21.
6 tn Heb “my vineyard.” To translate literally would presuppose an unlikely familiarity of this figure on the part of some readers. To translate as “vineyards” as some do would be misleading because that would miss the figurative nuance altogether.
sn The figure of Israel as God’s vine and the land as God’s vineyard is found several times in the Bible. The best known of these is the extended metaphor in Isa 5:1-7. This figure also appears in Jer 2:20.
7 tn Heb “my portion.”
