Jeremiah 48:26-28

New English Translation

Footnotes

1. Jeremiah 48:26 tn Heb “Make him drunk because he has magnified himself against the Lord.” The first person has again been adopted for consistency within a speech of the Lord. Almost all of the commentaries relate the figure of drunkenness to the figure of drinking the cup of God’s wrath spelled out in Jer 25, where reference is made at one point to the nations drinking, staggering, vomiting, and falling (25:27; see G. L. Keown, P. J. Scalise, T. G. Smothers, Jeremiah 26-52 [WBC], 316, for a full list of references to this figure, including this passage and 49:12-13; 51:6-10, 39, 57).
2. Jeremiah 48:26 tn The meaning of this word is uncertain. It is usually used of clapping the hands or the thigh in helpless anger or disgust. Hence J. Bright (Jeremiah [AB], 321) paraphrases, “shall vomit helplessly.” HALOT 722 s.v. II סָפַק relates this to an Aramaic word and sees a homonym meaning “vomit” or “spew out.” The translation here is that of BDB 706 s.v. סָפַק Qal.3, “splash (fall with a splash),” from the same root that refers to slapping or clapping the thigh.
3. Jeremiah 48:27 tn Heb “were they caught among thieves?”
4. Jeremiah 48:27 tn Heb “that you shook yourself.” But see the same verb in 18:16 in the active voice with the object “head” in a very similar context of contempt or derision.
5. Jeremiah 48:27 tc The reading here presupposes the emendation of דְבָרֶיךָ (d^evarekha, “your words”) to דַבֶּרְךָ (dabber^ekha, “your speaking”). BHS (cf. fn c) suggested the change on the basis of one of the Greek versions (Symmachus). For the idiom, compare BDB 191 s.v. דַּי 2.c.α.
6. Jeremiah 48:28 tn Heb “in the sides of the mouth of a pit/chasm.” The translation follows the suggestion of J. Bright, Jeremiah (AB), 321. The point of the simile is inaccessibility.