² tn Heb “The word that the Lord spoke concerning Babylon, concerning the land of the Chaldeans, by the hand of Jeremiah the prophet.”

¹ tn Heb “The word that the Lord spoke to the prophet Jeremiah about the coming of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon to attack the land of Egypt.”

¹ sn This is another of those symbolic prophecies of Jeremiah that involved an action and an explanation. Cf. Jer 19 and 27.

² sn Jehucal was one of the officials who later sought to have Jeremiah put to death for what they considered treason (38:1-4).

² tn Heb “This word came to Jeremiah from the Lord in the fourth year of Jehoiakim son of Josiah the king of Judah, saying.”

² tn Heb “The word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord in the days of Jehoiakim son of Josiah king of Judah, saying.”

¹ sn This is the resumption of the introduction in v. 8 after the lengthy description of the situation that had precipitated the Lord’s message to Jeremiah.

¹ tn Heb “So why have you not reprimanded Jeremiah…?” The rhetorical question functions as an emphatic assertion made explicit in the translation.

¹ tn Heb “Jeremiah said to all the leaders and all the people….” See the note on the word “said” in the preceding verse.

¹ tn The word “Jeremiah” is not in the text. It is supplied in the translation to make clear who is being addressed.

¹ tn Heb “And Jeremiah entered from Topheth, where the Lord had sent him to prophesy, and he stood in the courtyard of the Lord’s temple.”

¹ sn Heb “plant.” The terms “uproot,” “tear down,” “destroy,” “build,” and “plant” are the two sides of the ministry Jeremiah was called to fulfill (cf. Jer 1:10).

¹ tc The translation reads בִּפְרָתָה (bifratah) with 4QJer^a as noted in W. L. Holladay, Jeremiah (Hermeneia), 1:393 instead of בִּפְרָת (bifrat) in the MT.

⁴ sn Jeremiah is lamenting that though there is a remedy available for the recovery of his people, they have not availed themselves of it.

² tn Or “Make good your ways and your actions.” J. Bright’s translation (“Reform the whole pattern of your conduct”; Jeremiah [AB], 52) is excellent.

¹ sn The verbs are second plural here. Jeremiah, speaking for the Lord, addresses his people, calling on them to make the message further known.

² tn Heb “For….” This gives the explanation for the destruction envisaged in 4:20 to which Jeremiah responds in 4:19, 21.

³ tn The words “well enough for that” are implicit and are supplied in the translation for clarity. Jeremiah is not claiming an absolute inability to speak.

³ sn Tremper Longman (Jeremiah, Lamentations [New International Biblical Commentary], 384) notes that the priests are unclean by the blood on their garments, but blood from wounds did not make a person unclean. Murder made a person guilty but not ceremonially unclean. Jeremiah chose the vocabulary of ceremonial defilement to stress the wrongness of what they did.

³ tn The particle כִּי (ki) is probably asseverative here (so J. A. Thompson, Jeremiah [NICOT], 739, n. 13, and cf. BDB 472 s.v. כִּי 1.e for other examples). This has been a common use of this particle in the book of Jeremiah.