Jeremiah 12:12-14 New English Translation

¹²A destructive army^[a] will come marching
over the hilltops in the wilderness.
For the Lord will use them as his destructive weapon^[b]
against^[c] everyone from one end of the land to the other.
No one will be safe.^[d]
¹³My people will sow wheat, but will harvest weeds.^[e]
They will work until they are exhausted, but will get nothing from it.
They will be disappointed in their harvests^[f]
because the Lord will take them away in his fierce anger.^[g]

¹⁴“I, the Lord, also have something to say concerning^[h] the wicked nations who surround my land^[i] and have attacked and plundered^[j] the land that I gave to my people as a permanent possession.^[k] I say: ‘I will uproot the people of those nations from their land and I will free the people of Judah who have been taken there.^[l]

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Footnotes

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.”
Jeremiah 12:13 sn Invading armies lived off the land, using up all the produce and destroying everything they could not consume.
Jeremiah 12:13 tn The pronouns here are actually second plural: Heb “Be ashamed/disconcerted because of your harvests.” Because the verb form (וּבֹשׁוּ, uvoshu) can either be Qal perfect third plural or Qal imperative masculine plural, many emend the pronoun on the noun to third plural (see, e.g., BHS). However, this is the easier reading and is not supported by either the Latin or the Greek, which have second plural. This is probably another case of the shift from description to direct address that has been met with several times already in Jeremiah (the figure of speech called apostrophe; for other examples see, e.g., 9:4; 11:13). As in other cases, the translation has been leveled to third plural to avoid confusion for the contemporary English reader. For the meaning of the verb here see BDB 101 s.v. בּוֹשׁ Qal.2 and compare the usage in Jer 48:13.
Jeremiah 12:13 tn Heb “be disappointed in their harvests from the fierce anger of the Lord.” The translation makes explicit what is implicit in the elliptical poetry of the Hebrew original.
Jeremiah 12:14 tn Heb “Thus says the Lord concerning….” This structure has been adopted to prevent a long, dangling introduction to what the Lord has to say, which does not begin until the middle of the verse in Hebrew. The first person address was adopted because the speaker is still the Lord, as in vv. 7-13.
Jeremiah 12:14 tn Heb “my wicked neighbors.”
Jeremiah 12:14 tn Heb “touched.” For the nuance of this verb here see BDB 619 s.v. נָגַע Qal.3 and compare the usage in 1 Chr 16:22, where it is parallel to “do harm to,” and in Zech 2:8, where it is parallel to “plundered.”
Jeremiah 12:14 tn Heb “the inheritance which I caused my people Israel to inherit.” Compare 3:18.
Jeremiah 12:14 tn Heb “I will uproot the house of Judah from their midst.”sn There appears to be an interesting play on the Hebrew word translated “uproot” in this verse. In the first instance it refers to “uprooting the nations from upon their lands,” i.e., to exiling them. In the second instance it refers to “uprooting the Judeans from the midst of them,” i.e., to rescuing them.

New English Translation (NET)