Discovery BoxJeremiah 44:10 
Context44:10 To this day your people 1 have shown no contrition! They have not revered me nor followed the laws and statutes I commanded 2 you and your ancestors.’
Jeremiah 44:16-17
Context44:16 “We will not listen to what you claim the Lord has spoken to us! 3 44:17 Instead we will do everything we vowed we would do. 4 We will sacrifice and pour out drink offerings to the goddess called the Queen of Heaven 5 just as we and our ancestors, our kings, and our leaders previously did in the towns of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem. For then we had plenty of food, were well-off, and had no troubles. 6
1 tn Heb “they” but as H. Freedman (Jeremiah [SoBB], 284) notes the third person is used here to include the people just referred to as well as the current addressees. Hence “your people” or “the people of Judah.” It is possible that the third person again reflects the rhetorical distancing that was referred to earlier in 35:16 (see the translator’s note there for explanation) in which case one might translate “you have shown,” and “you have not revered.”
2 tn Heb “to set before.” According to BDB 817 s.v. פָּנֶה II.4.b(g) this refers to “propounding to someone for acceptance or choice.” This is clearly the usage in Deut 30:15, 19; Jer 21:8 and is likely the case here. However, to translate literally would not be good English idiom and “proposed to” might not be correctly understood, so the basic translation of נָתַן (natan) has been used here.
3 tn Heb “the word [or message] you have spoken to us in the name of the
4 tn Heb “that went out of our mouth.” I.e., everything we said, promised, or vowed.
5 tn Heb “sacrifice to the Queen of Heaven and pour out drink offerings to her.” The expressions have been combined to simplify and shorten the sentence. The same combination also occurs in vv. 18, 19.
sn See the translator’s note and the study note on 7:18 for the problem of translation and identification of the term translated here “the goddess called the Queen of Heaven.”
6 tn Heb “saw [or experienced] no disaster/trouble/harm.”
