Jeremiah 30:11-13

New English Translation

Footnotes

1. Jeremiah 30:11 tn Heb “Oracle of the Lord.”
2. Jeremiah 30:11 tn The translation “entirely unpunished” is intended to reflect the emphatic construction of the infinitive absolute before the finite verb.
3. Jeremiah 30:12 tn The particle כִּי (ki) here is parallel to the one in v. 5 that introduces the first oracle. See the discussion in the translator’s note there.
4. Jeremiah 30:12 tn The pronouns in vv. 10-17 are second feminine singular, referring to a personified entity. That entity is identified in v. 17 as Zion, which here stands for the people of Zion.
5. Jeremiah 30:12 sn The wounds to the body politic are those from incursions by the enemy from the north referred to in Jer 4:6; 6:1, over which Jeremiah and even God himself have lamented (Jer 8:21; 10:19; 14:17). The enemy from the north has been identified as Babylon and as the agent of God’s punishment of his disobedient people (Jer 1:15; 4:6; 25:9).
6. Jeremiah 30:13 tc The translation of these first two lines follows the redivision of the lines suggested in NIV and NRSV. The Masoretes read, “There is no one who pleads your cause with reference to [your] wound.”sn This verse exhibits a double metaphor: an advocate pleading someone’s case (cf., Jer 5:28; 22:18) and a physician applying medicine to wounds and sores resulting from them (see, e.g., Jer 8:18 for the latter metaphor). Zion’s sins are beyond defense and the wounds inflicted upon her beyond healing. However, God himself in his own time will forgive her sins (Jer 31:34; 33:8) and heal her wounds (Jer 30:17).