Jeremiah 3:21-23

New English Translation

Footnotes

1. Jeremiah 3:21 tn Heb “A sound is heard on the hilltops, the weeping of the supplication of the children of Israel because [or indeed] they have perverted their way.” At issue here is whether the supplication is made to Yahweh in repentance because of what they have done or whether it is supplication to the pagan gods that is evidence of their perverted ways. The reference in this verse to the hilltops, where idolatry was practiced according to 3:2, and the reference to Israel’s unfaithfulness in the preceding verse make the latter more likely. For the asseverative use of the Hebrew particle (here rendered “indeed”) where the particle retains some of the explicative nuance, see BDB 472-73 s.v. כִּי 1.e and 3.c.
2. Jeremiah 3:21 tn Heb “have forgotten the Lord their God.” But in view of the parallelism and the context, the word “forget” (like “know” and “remember”) involves more than mere intellectual activity.
3. Jeremiah 3:22 tn Or “I will forgive your apostasies.” Heb “I will [or want to] heal your apostasies.” For the use of the verb “heal” (רָפָא, rafaʾ) to refer to spiritual healing and forgiveness, see Hos 14:4.
4. Jeremiah 3:22 tn Or “They say.” There is an obvious ellipsis of a verb of saying here since the preceding words are those of the Lord and the following are those of the people. However, there is debate about whether the people’s words are a response to the Lord’s invitation, a response which is said to be inadequate according to the continuation in 4:1-4, or whether they are the Lord’s model for Israel’s confession of repentance, to which 4:1-4 adds further instructions about the proper heart attitude that should accompany it. The former implies a dialogue with an unmarked, twofold shift in speaker between 3:22b-25 and 4:1-4, while the latter assumes the same main speaker throughout, with an unmarked instruction only in 3:22b-25. The latter disrupts the flow of the passage less and appears more likely.
5. Jeremiah 3:23 tn Heb “Truly in vain from the hills the noise/commotion [and from] the mountains.” The syntax of the Hebrew sentence is very elliptical here.
6. Jeremiah 3:23 tn Heb “Truly in the Lord our God is deliverance for Israel.”