Jeremiah 23

Key Terms

Translator Notes

1. The term ro'im ('shepherds') is the standard ancient Near Eastern metaphor for kings and rulers. Jeremiah is not addressing literal herders but the Davidic monarchy and its appointed leaders. The double accusation — 'destroy and scatter' (me'abedim umefitsim) — summarizes the political and spiritual damage done by Judah's final kings. The word mar'iti ('my pasture') emphasizes divine ownership: these are God's sheep, not the shepherds' property.

Translator Notes

1. The verse plays on the verb paqad ('to attend to, visit, reckon with'). The shepherds have not 'attended to' (paqadtem) the flock, so God will 'attend to' (poqed) the shepherds — but in judgment rather than care. The same verb carries opposite force depending on its object: care when directed at sheep, punishment when directed at negligent rulers. This wordplay is impossible to replicate in English but we preserved the root by using 'attended' in both clauses.

Translator Notes

1. The emphatic 'I myself' (va'ani) contrasts divine action with the shepherds' failure — what the kings could not do, God will do personally. The language 'be fruitful and multiply' (paru veravu) deliberately echoes the creation blessing of Genesis 1:28, signaling that God's restoration of the scattered flock is an act of re-creation. The word she'erit ('remnant') introduces the theological concept of a surviving portion through whom God preserves his purposes.

Translator Notes

1. The verb paqad appears again — 'none will be missing' (lo yippaqedu). After the indictment that the shepherds did not 'attend to' (paqad) the flock, the promise is that under new leadership not a single sheep will go unaccounted for. The three negatives — 'no longer afraid, no longer terrified, none missing' — paint a complete reversal of the scattering described in verses 1-2.

Key Terms

Translator Notes

1. The messianic promise introduces tsemach ('branch, sprout'), a term that becomes a title for the coming Davidic king in Zechariah 3:8 and 6:12. The verb hiskil carries a double sense: 'to act wisely' and 'to prosper, succeed' — we chose 'act wisely' to foreground the intellectual and moral quality, with the implication that success follows. Mishpat utsedaqah ('justice and righteousness') is the standard pair describing ideal royal governance in the Hebrew Bible (cf. 2 Samuel 8:15, Isaiah 9:6, 32:1).

Key Terms

Translator Notes

1. The name YHWH Tsidqenu is a compound throne-name. We rendered it 'The LORD Is Our Righteousness' rather than transliterating, so the reader grasps the theological claim. The contrast with Zedekiah (Tsidqiyyahu) is deliberate — Zedekiah's name means roughly the same thing, but his reign proved the name hollow. The coming king will fulfill what Zedekiah's name only promised. The verb tivvasha ('will be saved') and yishkon labetach ('will live in safety') describe national salvation and security — themes that the current political crisis under Babylon has made urgent.

Translator Notes

1. The oath formula chai YHWH ('As the LORD lives') is used here as a marker of national memory. The exodus from Egypt has been the defining salvation-event for Israel's identity since Sinai. Jeremiah's oracle declares that a new act of divine rescue will be so great that it will supplant the exodus itself as the primary oath-reference. This passage parallels 16:14-15 almost verbatim.

Translator Notes

1. The 'northern land' (erets tsafonah) refers to Babylon, which though geographically east of Israel was approached from the north via the Fertile Crescent. The word zera ('seed, offspring, descendants') emphasizes biological continuity — the same family line that went into exile will return. The phrase 'their own soil' (admatam) uses adamah rather than erets, evoking the intimate connection between people and their particular ground — not just any land, but their ancestral earth.

Translator Notes

1. The speaker shifts — this is Jeremiah's own voice expressing his visceral response to what God has revealed about the false prophets. The physical symptoms (shattered heart, trembling bones, staggering like a drunk) describe the overwhelming effect of prophetic revelation on the body. The verb rachafu ('tremble, shake') describes involuntary trembling — the same root used for the Spirit hovering over the waters in Genesis 1:2, here applied to the prophet's bones shaking with divine disclosure. The comparison to drunkenness is not about intoxication but about loss of bodily control in the face of overwhelming divine reality.

Translator Notes

1. The word mena'afim ('adulterers') may refer to literal sexual immorality or metaphorical spiritual adultery (idolatry) — likely both, given the prophets' conduct described later in the chapter. The term alah ('curse') refers to the covenant curse that has fallen on the land because of covenant-breaking, causing agricultural devastation. The mourning land (avelah ha'arets) personifies the earth itself suffering the consequences of human sin — an ecological dimension to covenant violation that runs throughout the prophets (cf. Hosea 4:3).

Translator Notes

1. The verb chanefu ('are godless, profane') describes not atheism but the corruption of those who hold sacred office — they have made themselves common while claiming to be set apart. The phrase 'in my house' (beveti) indicates that the temple itself has become a site of their corruption, an accusation that echoes the temple sermon of chapter 7. The pairing of navi and kohen ('prophet and priest') indicts the entire religious establishment.

Translator Notes

1. The image of chalaqlaqqot ba'afelah ('slippery ground in darkness') combines two dangers: uncertain footing and zero visibility. The prophets who led others astray will themselves lose their way. The phrase shenat pequddatam ('year of their reckoning') uses paqad again — the same verb from verse 2, now applied to the false prophets. God's 'attending to' them means judgment.

Translator Notes

1. The word tiflah ('unseemliness, offensiveness, repulsive folly') is stronger than the KJV's 'folly' — it carries a sense of something tasteless, offensive, indecent. The prophets of Samaria (the fallen northern kingdom) serve as a comparison point: what happened in Samaria was bad, but what is happening in Jerusalem (v. 14) is worse. Prophesying 'by Baal' (ba-Ba'al) means claiming Baal as the source of prophetic authority.

Key Terms

Translator Notes

1. The word sha'arurah ('horrifying thing, something that causes shuddering') is even stronger than the tiflah of Samaria (v. 13) — an intentional escalation. Three charges are leveled: adultery (na'of), deception (halokh basheqer), and enabling evil (chizzequ yedei mere'im). The last charge is the most damning — the false prophets do not merely fail to condemn evil, they actively empower evildoers by removing the motivation to repent. Comparing Jerusalem to Sodom and Gomorrah invokes the ultimate paradigm of divine judgment (Genesis 19). The verb shuv ('turn, return, repent') appears here as the key verb of the book — the false prophets have prevented repentance.

Translator Notes

1. Wormwood (la'anah) is a bitter plant associated with suffering and divine punishment (cf. Deuteronomy 29:17, Lamentations 3:15, 19). 'Poisoned water' (mei rosh) literally means 'water of a poisonous plant' — the combination of wormwood and poison-water reverses the prophetic role of nourishing the people with God's word. Instead of feeding truth, these prophets have fed lies, so God will feed them bitterness and poison. The word chanuppah ('godlessness, profaneness') indicates that the corruption originating from Jerusalem's prophets has contaminated the whole land — the infection started at the center.

Translator Notes

1. The verb mahbilim ('make empty, fill with vanity') is from the root h-b-l, related to hevel ('vapor, breath, vanity') — the same word that dominates Ecclesiastes. The false prophets are pumping their audience full of insubstantial vapor. The contrast between 'their own hearts' (libbam) and 'the mouth of the LORD' (pi YHWH) is the diagnostic test for false prophecy: the source. True prophecy originates from God's mouth; false prophecy originates from the prophet's own imagination.

Translator Notes

1. The false prophets deliver two poisonous assurances: shalom ('peace') to those who despise God, and immunity from disaster to the stubborn-hearted. The phrase sheririut libbo ('stubbornness of his heart') is Jeremiah's signature phrase for willful rebellion (cf. 7:24, 9:13, 11:8, 13:10, 16:12, 18:12). The false prophets are telling the most rebellious people exactly what they want to hear — the opposite of prophetic responsibility. This is the 'Peace, peace, when there is no peace' theme from 6:14 and 8:11.

Key Terms

Translator Notes

1. The word sod ('council, counsel, secret assembly') refers to the divine council — the heavenly assembly where God deliberates and dispatches his decrees (cf. 1 Kings 22:19-23, Isaiah 6, Job 1-2). The rhetorical question implies that the false prophets have not been admitted to God's heavenly court, so they have no authentic message to relay. A true prophet is one who has 'stood in the council' and received divine communication firsthand. The distinction between seeing, hearing, and truly listening (hiqshiv) creates a hierarchy of attentiveness — mere hearing is insufficient.

Translator Notes

1. The word sa'arat ('storm, tempest') depicts divine judgment as an uncontrollable force of nature. The verb mitcholel ('whirling, swirling') intensifies the image — this is not a passing shower but a cyclonic force. The rendering 'burst upon' captures the violent impact of yachul ('to whirl, fall upon'). This storm image recurs in verse 19 and at the end of the chapter (v. 19), framing the false prophet material.

Translator Notes

1. The phrase be'acharit hayyamim ('in the latter days, in the days to come') carries eschatological weight — it looks forward to a time when current events will make sense in retrospect. The verb titbonenu ('you will understand, comprehend') promises future clarity: what now seems incomprehensible will become plain. The 'purposes of his heart' (mezimmot libbo) attributes intentionality to God's anger — this is not blind rage but deliberate execution of planned consequences.

Translator Notes

1. The parallelism is devastating in its simplicity. Two paired denials — 'not sent / they ran' and 'not spoken / they prophesied' — expose the entire false prophetic enterprise in two lines. The verb ratsu ('they ran') implies eager, zealous activity — they were enthusiastic about delivering messages they had never received. The contrast between divine commissioning and self-appointment is the heart of the false prophecy problem.

Translator Notes

1. The conditional 'if they had stood' (im amdu) uses the divine council language from verse 18. The logic is clear: access to God's true council produces authentic words, and authentic words produce repentance (shuv — 'turning'). The false prophets failed at the first step (no divine access), which guaranteed failure at every subsequent step. The verb veyashivu ('would have turned them') uses the hiphil of shuv — the causative form, meaning 'caused to repent.' True prophecy causes people to turn; false prophecy prevents it (v. 14).

Translator Notes

1. This rhetorical question challenges the false prophets' operating assumption — that God is limited in spatial awareness. If God were only 'near' (miqarov), he could be avoided by distance. But as a God who is also 'far off' (merachoq), nothing is beyond his sight. The question anticipates the next verse's expansion. The structure is a self-predication — God defining himself against inadequate conceptions — similar to 'I AM WHO I AM' (Exodus 3:14) in form.

Translator Notes

1. The verb yissater ('hide oneself') in the mistrim ('hidden places, concealed spots') creates an emphatic double use of the root s-t-r ('to hide'). God's response is not merely that he sees hidden things but that his presence fills (male') all of heaven and earth — there is nowhere outside his awareness. This is one of the most explicit statements of divine omnipresence in the Hebrew Bible, rivaling Psalm 139:7-12. The false prophets operate as if God cannot observe their conduct; this verse demolishes that assumption.

Translator Notes

1. The repeated chalamti chalamti ('I dreamed, I dreamed!') mimics the eager, breathless claims of the false prophets. Dreams were considered a legitimate channel of divine revelation (cf. Genesis 37, 40-41; Numbers 12:6), but the false prophets have turned dream-claims into a tool of deception. God emphasizes that he has heard (shamati) their claims — returning to the omniscience theme of verses 23-24. They cannot hide their lies from the one who fills heaven and earth.

Translator Notes

1. The phrase nevi'ei tarmit libbam ('prophets of their heart's deceit') defines false prophecy precisely: these men are prophets of their own deception, not prophets of God. The word tarmit ('deceit, fraud') comes from the root r-m-h, implying deliberate misleading rather than innocent error. The exasperated 'How long?' (ad matay) voices God's impatience with the continuing fraud.

Translator Notes

1. The verb lehashkiach ('to cause to forget') is a hiphil (causative) — the false prophets are actively engineering the erasure of God's name from Israel's memory. The parallel to the ancestors who 'forgot my name because of Baal' (shakechu avotam et shemi ba-Ba'al) draws a direct line between the current prophetic fraud and the old Baal worship. The method has changed (dreams instead of altars), but the result is the same: displacement of YHWH from Israel's consciousness.

Translator Notes

1. God draws a sharp distinction: dream-prophets may report their dreams, but they must not confuse dreams with God's direct word (devari). The question 'What does straw have in common with grain?' (mah latteven et habbar) is a riddle with an obvious answer: nothing. Straw (teven) is the worthless husk; grain (bar) is the nutritious kernel. The false prophets' dreams are straw; God's word is grain. The two should never be confused or mixed.

Translator Notes

1. The two metaphors — fire and hammer — work together but on different registers. Fire (esh) purifies and destroys simultaneously; a hammer (pattish) breaks through resistant material. The verb yefotsetz ('shatters, breaks apart') is intensive, describing not a tap but a violent fragmentation. The sela ('rock, cliff, crag') represents the most unyielding material imaginable. God's word overcomes what nothing else can penetrate. This verse has become one of the most frequently quoted descriptions of God's word in both Jewish and Christian tradition.

Translator Notes

1. The verb meganevei ('stealing') accuses the false prophets of plagiarism — they copy phrases from each other rather than receiving words directly from God. The image is of prophets who cobble together convincing-sounding oracles by borrowing God-language from other prophets, creating a circular echo chamber of stolen terminology with no divine origin. This is the first of three 'I am against' (hineni al) declarations (vv. 30, 31, 32) forming a triple indictment.

Translator Notes

1. The phrase haloqechim leshonam ('those who take their own tongues') suggests prophets who deploy their tongues as instruments without divine authorization. The biting irony of vayyine'amu ne'um ('and they declare a declaration') is that they use the very formula ne'um YHWH ('declares the LORD') without having received any declaration from God. They mimic the authentic prophetic formula as a stamp of false authority. We rendered 'He declares!' to capture the audacity of claiming divine speech.

Translator Notes

1. The word pachazutam ('recklessness, wantonness, boastfulness') describes the false prophets' cavalier attitude toward truth. They treat prophecy as performance rather than solemn divine commission. The triple denial — 'never sent, never commanded, no benefit' — builds to a comprehensive dismissal. The emphatic construction ho'il lo yo'ilu ('they absolutely do not benefit') uses the infinitive absolute for emphasis: these prophets are utterly useless to the people they claim to serve.

Key Terms

Translator Notes

1. The massa wordplay is the most difficult translation challenge in the chapter. The word simultaneously means 'oracle/utterance' (the prophetic sense, from nasa, 'to lift up' the voice) and 'burden/load' (the physical sense, from nasa, 'to carry'). We rendered it as 'burden' throughout to preserve the pun: the people ask for an 'oracle' (massa) and God responds that they themselves are the 'burden' (massa) he will cast off. The verb natashti ('I will cast off, abandon') extends the burden metaphor — God will drop the weight they have become.

Translator Notes

1. God bans the use of the phrase massa YHWH ('the burden of the LORD') as a prophetic formula. The verb paqadti ('I will punish, attend to, reckon with') continues the paqad theme from earlier in the chapter. The punishment extends to the household (beto), indicating corporate consequences for individual prophetic fraud.

Translator Notes

1. God prescribes acceptable language: instead of the loaded massa formula, the people should ask neutral questions — 'What has the LORD answered?' (meh anah YHWH) and 'What has the LORD spoken?' (mah dibber YHWH). These questions focus on content rather than claiming the prophetic authority that the massa formula implies. The replacement language is deliberately plain, stripping away the pretension that accompanied the original terminology.

Translator Notes

1. The massa wordplay reaches its climax: the phrase itself is now banned because the people have corrupted it. The ironic reversal — 'each person's own word becomes his burden' — means that the false prophets' own fabricated oracles will become the weight that crushes them. The title 'the living God' (Elohim chayyim) contrasts sharply with the dead words of the false prophets. The verb hafaktem ('you have twisted, overturned, perverted') comes from the same root used for the 'overturning' of Sodom (Genesis 19:25), linking the vocabulary corruption to the Sodom comparison in verse 14.

Translator Notes

1. The prescribed language from verse 35 is repeated specifically for addressing prophets. The instruction forces the prophet to claim direct divine communication ('answered you') rather than hiding behind the vague massa formula. This puts the prophet on record — he must either claim he has received a direct answer from God or fall silent.

Translator Notes

1. The syntax becomes complex as the massa ban is reiterated. The conditional 'if you say' (im...tomeru) sets up the threat: continued use of the banned phrase after explicit prohibition constitutes defiance of a direct divine command. The sentence structure — an extended protasis awaiting its apodosis in the next verse — mirrors the building tension of the ultimatum.

Translator Notes

1. The verb nashiti ('I will lift up') creates a final devastating massa pun: God 'lifts up' (nasa) the people as one lifts a burden (massa) — only to throw them away. The same root that gave them the prophetic word now describes their expulsion. The verb natashti ('I will cast off, abandon') completes the judgment. The city (Jerusalem) is included in the exile — God gave both the people and the city, and both will be removed from his presence (me'al panay, literally 'from before my face').

Key Terms

Translator Notes

1. The closing verse pairs two synonyms for public disgrace: cherpah ('reproach, disgrace, taunting') and kelimmut ('shame, humiliation, dishonor'). Both are modified by olam ('everlasting, perpetual'), and the final clause 'which will not be forgotten' (lo tishshakech) drives home the permanence. The irony is pointed: the prophets who wanted to make the people forget God's name (v. 27) will themselves be remembered — but only for their shame. The chapter ends not with restoration but with judgment, leaving the weight of the false prophecy indictment standing.