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 5:27
Context5:27 Like a cage filled with the birds that have been caught, 5
their houses are filled with the gains of their fraud and deceit. 6
That is how they have gotten so rich and powerful. 7
Jeremiah 16:6
Context16:6 Rich and poor alike will die in this land. They will not be buried or mourned. People will not cut their bodies or shave off their hair to show their grief for them. 8
Jeremiah 51:13
Context51:13 “You who live along the rivers of Babylon, 9
the time of your end has come.
You who are rich in plundered treasure,
it is time for your lives to be cut off. 10
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 The words, “that have been caught” are not in the text but are implicit in the comparison.
6 tn Heb “are filled with deceit.” The translation assumes a figure of speech of cause for effect (metonymy). Compare the same word in the same figure in Zeph 1:9.
7 tn Heb “therefore they have gotten great and rich.”
8 sn These were apparently pagan customs associated with mourning (Isa 15:2; Jer 47:5) which were forbidden in Israel (Lev 19:8; 21:5) but apparently practiced anyway (Jer 41:5).
9 sn Babylon was situated on the Euphrates River and was surrounded by canals (also called “rivers”).
10 tn Heb “You who live upon [or beside] many waters, rich in treasures, your end has come, the cubit of your cutting off.” The sentence has been restructured and paraphrased to provide clarity for the average reader. The meaning of the last phrase is debated. For a discussion of the two options see W. L. Holladay, Jeremiah (Hermeneia), 2:423. Most modern commentaries and English versions see an allusion to the figure in Isa 38:12 where the reference is to the end of life compared to a tapestry which is suddenly cut off from the loom. Hence, NRSV renders the last line as “the thread of your life is cut” and TEV renders “its thread of life is cut.” That idea is accepted also in HALOT 141 s.v. בצע Qal.1.
