translation_id: net-engnet

book_id: JER

label: NET translator note

text: Heb “May he go back to her again?” The question is rhetorical and expects a negative answer. sn For the legal background for the illustration that is used here see Deut 24:1-4 .


text: Heb “Would the land not be utterly defiled?” The stative is here rendered actively to connect better with the preceding. The question is rhetorical and expects a positive answer.


text: Heb “But you have played the prostitute with many lovers.”


text: Heb “Returning to me.” The form is the bare infinitive which the KJV and ASV have interpreted as an imperative “Yet, return to me!” However, it is more likely that a question is intended, expressing surprise in the light of the law alluded to and the facts cited. For the use of the infinitive absolute in the place of a finite verb, cf. GKC 346 §113. ee . For the introduction of a question without a question marker, cf. GKC 473 §150. a .


text: Heb “and see.”


text: Heb “Where have you not been ravished?” The rhetorical question expects the answer “nowhere,” which suggests she has engaged in the worship of pagan gods on every one of the hilltops.


text: Heb “You sat for them [the lovers, i.e., the foreign gods] beside the road like an Arab in the desert.”


text: Heb “by your prostitution and your wickedness.” This is probably an example of hendiadys where, when two nouns are joined by “and,” one expresses the main idea and the other qualifies it.


text: Heb “you have the forehead of a prostitute.”


text: Heb “Have you not just now called out to me, ‘[you are] my father!’?” The rhetorical question expects a positive answer.


text: Heb “Will he keep angry forever? Will he maintain [it] to the end?” The questions are rhetorical and expect a negative answer. The change to direct address in the English translation is intended to ease the problem of the rapid transition, common in Hebrew style (but not in English), from second person direct address in the preceding lines to third person indirect address in these two lines. See GKC 462 §144. p .


text: Heb “You do the evil and you are able.” This is an example of hendiadys, meaning “You do all the evil that you are able to do.”


text: “Have you seen…” The question is rhetorical and expects a positive answer.


text: 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.


text: Or “I said to her, ‘Come back to me!’” The verb אָמַר (’ amar ) usually means “to say,” but here it means “to think,” of an assumption that turns out to be wrong (so HALOT 66.4 s.v. אמר ); 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.


text: The words “what she did” are not in the text but are implicit from the context and are supplied in the translation for clarification.


label: NET textual note

text: 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.


text: Heb “because she committed adultery.” The translation is intended to spell out the significance of the metaphor.


text: The words “Even after her unfaithful sister, Judah, had seen this” are not in the Hebrew text but are implicit in the connection and are supplied for clarification.


text: 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.


text: Heb “because of the lightness of her prostitution, she defiled the land and committed adultery with stone and wood.”


text: Heb “And even in all this.”


text: Heb “ has not turned back to me with all her heart but only in falsehood.”


text: 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.


text: 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.


text: Heb “I will not cause my face to fall on you.”


text: Heb “Only acknowledge your iniquity.”


text: 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.


text: MT reads דְּרָכַיִךְ ( dÿrakhayikh , “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.”


text: 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 .


text: The words, “If you do” are not in the text but are implicit in the connection of the Hebrew verb with the preceding.


text: Heb “shepherds.”


text: Heb “after/according to my [own] heart.”


text: Heb “you will become numerous and fruitful.”


text: Or “chest.”


text: 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 .


text: Or “Nor will another one be made”; Heb “one will not do/make [it?] again.”


text: For location see Map5-B1 ; Map6-F3 ; Map7-E2 ; Map8-F2 ; Map10-B3 ; JP1-F4 ; JP2-F4 ; JP3-F4 ; JP4-F4 .


text: Heb “will gather to the name of the Lord .”


text: Heb “the stubbornness of their evil hearts.”


text: Heb “In those days.”


text: Heb “the house of Judah will walk together with the house of Israel.”


text: Heb “I, myself, said.” See note on “I thought that she might come back to me” in 3:7 .


text: Heb “How I would place you among the sons.” Israel appears to be addressed here contextually as the Lord ’s wife (see the next verse). The pronouns of address in the first two lines are second feminine singular as are the readings of the two verbs preferred by the Masoretes (the Qere readings) in the third and fourth lines. The verbs that are written in the text in the third and fourth lines (the Kethib readings) are second masculine plural as is the verb describing Israel’s treachery in the next verse. sn The imagery here appears to be that of treating the wife as an equal heir with the sons and of giving her the best piece of property.


text: The words “What a joy it would be for me to” are not in the Hebrew text but are implied in the parallel structure.


text: Heb “the most beautiful heritage among the nations.”


text: Heb “my father.”


text: Heb “turn back from [following] after me.”


text: Heb “house of Israel.”


text: Heb “a wife unfaithful from her husband.”


text: 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 which 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; cf. BDB 472-73 s.v. כִּי 1.e and 3.c.


text: Heb “have forgotten the Lord their God,” but in the view of the parallelism and the context, the word “forget” (like “know” and “remember”) involves more than mere intellectual activity.


text: Or “I will forgive your apostasies.” Heb “I will [or want to] heal your apostasies.” For the use of the verb “heal” ( רָפָא , rafa ’) to refer to spiritual healing and forgiveness see Hos 14:4 .


text: 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 these are the response of the people to the Lord ’s invitation, a response which is said to be inadequate according to the continuation in 4:1-4 , or whether these are the Lord ’s model for Israel’s confession of repentance to which he adds further instructions about the proper heart attitude that should accompany it in 4:1-4 . The former implies a dialogue with an unmarked twofold shift in speaker between 3:22 b-25 and 4:1-4:4 while the latter assumes the same main speaker throughout with an unmarked instruction only in 3:22 b-25. This disrupts the flow of the passage less and appears more likely.


text: Heb “Truly in vain from the hills the noise/commotion [and from] the mountains.” The syntax of the Hebrew sentence is very elliptical here.


text: Heb “Truly in the Lord our God is deliverance for Israel.”


text: Heb “From our youth the shameful thing has eaten up…” The shameful thing is specifically identified as Baal in Jer 11:13 . Compare also the shift in certain names such as Ishbaal (“man of Baal”) to Ishbosheth (“man of shame”).


text: Heb “fathers” (also in v. 25 ).


text: Heb “Let us lie down in….”


text: Heb “Let us be covered with disgrace.”