Jeremiah 12:10-12 New English Translation
10 Many foreign rulers[a] will ruin the land where I planted my people.[b]
They will trample all over my chosen land.[c]
They will turn my beautiful land
into a desolate wilderness.
11 They will lay it waste.
It will lie parched[d] and empty before me.
The whole land will be laid waste,
but no one living in it will pay any heed.[e]
12 A destructive army[f] will come marching
over the hilltops in the wilderness.
For the Lord will use them as his destructive weapon[g]
against[h] everyone from one end of the land to the other.
No one will be safe.[i]
Footnotes
- Jeremiah 12:10 tn Heb “Many shepherds.” For the use of the term “shepherd” as a figure for rulers see the notes on 10:21.
- Jeremiah 12:10 tn Heb “my vineyard.” To translate literally would presuppose an unlikely familiarity with this figure on the part of some readers. Some translate as “vineyards,” but that is misleading because it misses the figurative nuance altogether.sn The figures of Israel as God’s vine and the land as God’s vineyard are found several times in the Bible. The best known of these is the extended metaphor in Isa 5:1-7. This figure also appears in Jer 2:20.
- Jeremiah 12:10 tn Heb “my portion.”
- Jeremiah 12:11 tn For the use of this verb see the notes on 12:4. Some understand the homonym here as meaning “it [the desolated land] will mourn to me.” However, the only other use of the preposition עַל (ʿal) with this root means “to mourn over” not “to” (cf. Hos 10:5). For the use of the preposition here see BDB 753 s.v. עַל II.1.b and compare the use in Gen 48:7.
- Jeremiah 12:11 tn Heb “But there is no man laying it to heart.” For the idiom here see BDB 525 s.v. לֵב II.3.d and compare the usage in Isa 42:25; 47:7.sn There is a very interesting play on words and sounds in this verse that paints a picture of desolation and the pathos it evokes. Part of this is reflected in the translation. The same Hebrew word referring to a desolation or a waste (שְׁמֵמָה, shememah) is repeated three times at the end of three successive lines (the first is the last line of v. 10), and the related verb is found at the beginning of the fourth (נָשַׁמָּה, nashammah). A similar sounding word is found in the second of the three successive lines (שָׁמָהּ, shamah = “he [they] will make it”). This latter word is part of a further play because it is repeated in a different form (שָׁם, sham = “laying”) in the last two lines of the verse: they lay it waste, but no one lays it to heart. There is also an interesting contrast between the sorrow the Lord feels and the inattention of the people.
- Jeremiah 12:12 tn Heb “destroyers.”
- Jeremiah 12:12 tn Heb “It is the Lord’s consuming sword.”
- Jeremiah 12:12 tn Heb “For a sword of the Lord will devour.” The sword is often symbolic for destructive forces of all kinds. Here and in Isa 34:6; Jer 47:6, it is symbolic of the enemy armies that the Lord uses to carry out destructive punishment against his enemies, hence the translation “his destructive weapon.” A similar figure is use in Isa 10:5, where the figure is more clearly identified; Assyria is the rod/club that the Lord will use to discipline unfaithful Israel.
- Jeremiah 12:12 tn Heb “There is no peace to all flesh.”
New English Translation (NET)
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