Jeremiah 3:6-18

New English Translation

Footnotes

1. Jeremiah 3:6 tn “Have you seen…” The question is rhetorical and expects a positive answer.
2. Jeremiah 3:6 tn Heb “she played the prostitute there.” This is a metaphor for Israel’s worship; she gave herself to the worship of other gods like a prostitute gives herself to her lovers. There seems no clear way to completely spell out the metaphor in the translation.
3. Jeremiah 3:7 tn Or “I said to her, ‘Come back to me!’” The verb אָמַר (ʾamar) usually means “to say,” but here it means “to think,” of an assumption that turns out to be wrong (so HALOT 66 s.v. אמר 4) (cf. Gen 44:28; Jer 3:19; Pss 82:6; 139:11; Job 29:18; Ruth 4:4; Lam 3:18).sn Open theists suggest that passages such as this indicate God has limited foreknowledge; however, more traditional theologians view this passage as an extended metaphor in which God presents himself as a deserted husband, hoping against hope that his adulterous wife might return to him. The point of the metaphor is not to make an assertion about God’s foreknowledge, but to develop the theme of God’s heartbreak due to Israel’s unrepentance.
4. Jeremiah 3:7 tn The words “what she did” are not in the text but are implicit from the context and are supplied in the translation for clarification.
5. Jeremiah 3:8 tc Heb “she [‘her sister, unfaithful Judah’ from the preceding verse] saw” with one Hebrew ms, some Greek mss, and the Syriac version. The MT reads, “I saw,” which may be a case of attraction to the verb at the beginning of the previous verse.
6. Jeremiah 3:8 tn Heb “because she committed adultery.” The translation is intended to spell out the significance of the metaphor.
7. Jeremiah 3:8 tn Heb “she played the prostitute there.” This is a metaphor for Israel’s worship; she gave herself to the worship of other gods like a prostitute gives herself to her lovers. There seems no clear way to completely spell out the metaphor in the translation.
8. Jeremiah 3:9 tc The translation reads the form as a causative (Hiphil, תַּהֲנֵף, tahanef) with some of the versions in place of the simple stative (Qal, תֶּחֱנַף, tekhenaf) in the MT.
9. Jeremiah 3:9 tn Heb “because of the lightness of her prostitution, she defiled the land and committed adultery with stone and wood.”
10. Jeremiah 3:10 tn Heb “And even in all this.”
11. Jeremiah 3:10 tn Heb “has not turned back to me with all her heart but only in falsehood.”
12. Jeremiah 3:11 tn Heb “Wayward Israel has proven herself to be more righteous than unfaithful Judah.”sn A comparison is drawn here between the greater culpability of Judah, who has had the advantage of seeing how God disciplined her sister nation for having sinned and yet ignored the warning and committed the same sin, and the culpability of Israel, who had no such advantage.
13. Jeremiah 3:12 tn Heb “Go and proclaim these words to the north.” The translation assumes that the message is directed toward the exiles of northern Israel who have been scattered in the provinces of Assyria to the north.
14. Jeremiah 3:12 tn Heb “I will not cause my face to fall on you.”
15. Jeremiah 3:13 tn Heb “Only acknowledge your iniquity.”
16. Jeremiah 3:13 tn The words “You must confess” are repeated to convey the connection. The Hebrew text has an introductory “that” in front of the second line and a coordinative “and” in front of the next two lines.
17. Jeremiah 3:13 tc MT reads דְּרָכַיִךְ (d^erakhayikh, “your ways”), but the BHS editors suggest דּוֹדַיִךְ (dodayikh, “your breasts”) as an example of orthographic confusion. While the proposal makes sense, it remains a conjectural emendation since it is not supported by any actual manuscripts or ancient versions.tn Heb “scattered your ways with foreign [gods]” or “spread out your breasts to strangers.”
18. Jeremiah 3:14 tn Or “I am your true husband.”sn There is a wordplay between the term “true master” and the name of the pagan god Baal. The pronoun “I” is emphatic, creating a contrast between the Lord as Israel’s true master/husband versus Baal as Israel’s illegitimate lover/master. See 2:23-25.
19. Jeremiah 3:14 tn The words “If you do” are not in the text but are implicit in the connection of the Hebrew verb with the preceding.
20. Jeremiah 3:15 tn Heb “shepherds.”
21. Jeremiah 3:15 tn Heb “after/according to my [own] heart.”
22. Jeremiah 3:16 tn Heb “you will become numerous and fruitful.”
23. Jeremiah 3:16 tn Or “chest.”
24. Jeremiah 3:16 tn Heb “the ark of the covenant.” It is called this because it contained the tables of the law, which in abbreviated form constituted their covenant obligations to the Lord (cf. Exod 31:18; 32:15; 34:29).
25. Jeremiah 3:16 tn Or “Nor will another one be made”; Heb “one will not do/make [it?] again.”
26. Jeremiah 3:17 tn Heb “will gather to the name of the Lord.”
27. Jeremiah 3:17 tn Heb “the stubbornness of their evil hearts.”
28. Jeremiah 3:18 tn Heb “In those days.”
29. Jeremiah 3:18 tn Heb “the house of Judah will walk together with the house of Israel.”