Jeremiah 33:25-26

New English Translation

Footnotes

1. Jeremiah 33:25 tn Heb “Thus says the Lord.” See the translator’s note at the beginning of v. 20 for the style adopted here. Here the promise is in v. 26, following the contrary-to-fact condition in v. 25. The Hebrew text of vv. 25-26 reads, “Thus says the Lord, “If I have not established my covenant with day and night, statutes of heaven and earth, also the seed of Jacob and David my servant I could reject, from taking from his seed rulers over the seed of Abraham…” The syntax of the original is a little awkward because it involves the verbs “establish” and “reject” governing different objects, the first governing “my covenant,” with “statutes” in apposition, and the second governing two dissimilar objects, “the seed of Jacob” and “my servant David from taking [so as not to take].” The translation has sought to remove these awkward syntactical constructions and also break down the long, complex original sentence in such a way as to retain its original intent, i.e., the guarantee of the continuance of the seed of Jacob and of the rule of a line of David’s descendants over them, based on the fixed order of God’s creation decrees.
2. Jeremiah 33:26 tn The Hebrew particle כִּי (ki) is probably intensive here as it has been on a number of occasions in the book of Jeremiah (see BDB 472 s.v. כִּי 1.e for the category).
3. Jeremiah 33:26 tn Or “I will make them prosperous once again,” or “I will bring them back from captivity.”sn For the meaning of this idiom see the translator’s note on Jer 29:14 and compare the usage in 29:14; 30:3, 18; 31:23; 32:44; 33:7, 11. Restoration has been the emphasis in this section, which is called by some commentators “The Book of Consolation.” Jeremiah’s emphasis up until chapters 30-33 had been on judgment, but he was also called to be the prophet of restoration (cf. Jer 1:10). Promises of restoration, though rare up to this point, have, however, occurred on occasion (see, e.g., Jer 3:18; 23:5-7; 24:6-7; 29:10-14).