2. this covenant. This word and this concept figure importantly in the prophecies of Jeremiah. It is possible that in this he is influenced by the Book of Deuteronomy, which is conceived as a kind of renewal of Israel’s covenant with God.

4. from the iron’s forge. This phrase appears in Deuteronomy 4:20, and Jeremiah is probably quoting that text.

5. Amen, O LORD. Since God has just been cited pronouncing the words of a solemn vow, the response of “amen”—that Hebrew term has the sense of “it is true”—is appropriate.

7. For I have surely warned your fathers. As elsewhere, Jeremiah sees the betrayal of the covenant as behavior that goes all the way back to the early generations of the nation.

8. And I brought upon them all the words of the covenant. Part of the covenant, as Deuteronomy spells out, is a series of disastrous outcomes if the covenant is violated, and it is this that is invoked in these words.

9. A plot. The Hebrew qesher usually refers to a political conspiracy, as in a plot to overthrow the legitimate king. Here it is the divine King whom the plotters scheme to displace with an alien god.

10. the crimes of their first fathers who refused to listen to My words. This amplifies the notion of the guilt of the early generations introduced in verse 7.

11. they will not be able to escape. The literal sense of the verb is “go out.”

13. you put up altars to the Shame. The Hebrew boshet, “shame,” is repeatedly used as a pejorative designation for Baal. Here this is especially clear because “the Shame” and “Baal” appear in apposition.

14. in the time of their evil. The Masoretic Text reads “for [beʿad] their evil,” but several Hebrew manuscripts a well as four ancient versions read “in the time of [beʿet]”. The scribal error was probably triggered by the use of beʿad earlier in the verse (“do not pray for this people”). “Evil” in this phrase suggests “disaster” but is worth retaining as “evil” because of the pointed reiteration of the term as the prophecy continues.

15. Why is My beloved in My house. The two lines of poetry that constitute this verse swarm with difficulties, and the text is almost certainly corrupt, so any translation is conjectural. As S. D. Luzatto, the eighteenth-century Italian Hebrew commentator wrote, “There are many interpretations of this text, and they are all strained and unlikely.” What can be said with confidence is that the “house” is the Temple, and the “beloved” is Israel. But “beloved” is masculine, whereas the rest of the line and the next line use feminine singular forms.

The many, despite sacral flesh, shall pass on from you. The translation is no more than a guess. The “sacral flesh” refers to the flesh of the animal sacrifices offered in the Temple. “Despite” does not appear in the Hebrew and has been added interpretively. The idea then would be that however many sacrifices you offer, crowds of your people will pass on from you—perhaps, in exile.

in your evil. There is no “evil” in the Hebrew, and it has been added in an attempt to give syntactic coherence to the phrase.

16. A lush olive tree, lovely in fruit and shape. This was Israel in its pristine state, or perhaps as God first wanted to imagine it.

17. Who planted you. The verb used harks back to the metaphor of the olive tree.

18. And the LORD informed me and I knew. These words begin a new prophecy, which is autobiographical in context, dealing with the hostility toward Jeremiah exhibited by the people of his hometown, Anathoth.

19. Let us destroy the tree with its sap. The received text reads laḥmo, “its bread,” which by a long stretch might be understood to refer to the fruit of the tree. It seems likely that the original reading was leiḥo, “its sap,” which involves the deletion of one consonant from the Masoretic version. We need not doubt that Jeremiah is registering here an actual scheme of the men of Anathoth to kill him. Anathoth was a town with a population of priests, and perhaps, as Lundbom has proposed, they resented Jeremiah’s upholding the exclusivity of the Jerusalem cult. Or, they may have been catering to the paganizing bent of this populace, which Jeremiah fiercely denounces.

20. the conscience. The literal sense of the Hebrew is “the kidneys,” which were thought to be the seat of the conscience.

to You I lay out my case. Having addressed God as “righteous Judge,” the prophet goes on to use the language of judicial process.