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Jeremiah 50:3-5
New English Translation
Jeremiah 50:3-5
New English Translation
3 For a nation from the north[a] will attack Babylon;
it will lay her land waste.
People and animals will flee out of it.
No one will inhabit it.’
4 “When that time comes,” says the Lord,[b]
“the people of Israel and Judah will return to the land together.
They will come back with tears of repentance
as they seek the Lord their God.[c]
5 They will ask the way to Zion;
they will turn their faces toward it.
They will come[d] and bind themselves to the Lord
in a lasting covenant that will never be forgotten.[e]
Footnotes
- Jeremiah 50:3 sn A nation from the north refers to Medo-Persia, which at the time of the conquest of Babylon in 539 b.c. had conquered all the nations to the north, the northwest, and the northeast of Babylon, forming a vast empire to the north and east of Babylon. Contingents of these many nations were included in her army, and reference is made to them in 50:9 and 51:27-28. There is also some irony involved here because the “enemy from the north” referred to so often in Jeremiah (cf. 1:14; 4:6; 6:1) has been identified with Babylon (cf. 25:9). Here in a kind of talionic justice Judah’s nemesis from the north will be attacked and devastated by an enemy from the north.
- Jeremiah 50:4 tn Heb “oracle of the Lord.”
- Jeremiah 50:4 tn Heb “and the children of Israel will come, they and the children of Judah together. They shall go, weeping as they go, and they will seek the Lord their God.” The concept of “seeking” the Lord often has to do with seeking the Lord in worship (by sacrifice [Hos 5:6; 2 Chr 11:16]; by prayer [Zech 8:21, 22; 2 Sam 12:16; Isa 65:1; 2 Chr 15:4]). In Hos 7:10 it is in parallel with returning to the Lord. In Ps 69:6 it is in parallel with hoping in or trusting in the Lord. Perhaps the most helpful parallels here, however, are Hos 3:5 (in comparison with Jer 30:9) and 2 Chr 15:15, where it is in the context of a covenant commitment to be loyal to the Lord, which is similar to the context here (see the next verse). The translation is admittedly paraphrastic, but “seeking the Lord” here does not mean looking for God as though he were merely a person to be found.
- Jeremiah 50:5 tc The translation here assumes that the Hebrew בֹּאוּ (boʾu; a Qal imperative masculine plural) should be read בָּאוּ (baʾu; a Qal perfect third plural). This reading is presupposed by the Greek version of Aquila, the Latin version, and the Targum (see BHS note a, which mistakenly assumes that the form must be imperfect).
- Jeremiah 50:5 sn See Jer 32:40 and the study note there for the nature of this lasting agreement.
New English Translation (NET)
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