1. my brief I will speak against You. Even though the Hebrew word rendered as “against You” might be understood as “with you,” the metaphorical context of an adversarial legal argument invites one to construe it as “against You.”

2. Why does the way of the wicked prosper? This entire verse sounds rather like an early anticipation of Job, not only in its content but even in its language.

they spread out. The Hebrew verb here would usually mean “they go,” which is not right in context. The Septuagint, reading one consonant differently, shows, “they give birth.” The idea that the wicked are a deep-rooted, fruit-bearing tree is an exact reversal of the imagery in Psalms (see Psalm 1), where that is the state of the righteous whereas the wicked are wind-blown chaff.

their conscience. As before, the literal sense of the Hebrew is “their kidneys.”

3. Draw them out like sheep to the slaughter. These are the wicked, the prophet imploring God to reverse matters and bring retribution upon the wrongdoers. Since he has just implicitly invoked his own innocence (“You know me, You see me”), it may be that Jeremiah has in mind his own predicament with the wicked—the men of Anathoth who have sought to kill him.

4. He will not see our end. The implication of these words is that God will pay no attention to the future condition of the speakers, which is to say, will never bring them to judgment.

5. foot soldiers. This is what the Hebrew ragli (here in the plural, raglim) always means elsewhere. The image, then, is of battle: if you can’t keep up with foot soldiers on the battlefield, how will you contend with cavalry?

flee. The received text has boteaḥ, “trust,” which does not work in the a fortiori relation of the first verset to the second. An old exegetical tradition, going back to the Aramaic Targum and several medieval commentaries and picked up by some modern scholars, understands the verb to mean “fall,” which makes the meaning neat but for which there is slim philological evidence. This translation adopts a proposed emendation, reading boreaḥ, “flee,” instead of boteaḥ.

the Jordan’s thickets. The Hebrew says “Pride of the Jordan,” and this appears to be the name for a twisting stretch of the river where there is dense overgrowth and so where one can easily stumble. The phrase occurs twice elsewhere in Jeremiah in this sense, 49:19 and 50:44.

7. My house, / . . . My estate. The house is the Temple and the estate is the Land of Israel.

9. a blood-splattered vulture. This phrase is a famous crux. The word tsavuʿa does mean “painted,” as some understood it in later Hebrew, but is not used in this sense elsewhere in the Bible, and painting birds of prey would be a strange practice. Lundbom finesses this by translating it as “speckled.” Others link it with the Hebrew word for “finger” and suggest that it refers to sharp claws. This translation follows Rashi and Kimchi, assuming that the relentlessness of the bird as a scavenger is emphasized. In later Hebrew, the phrase became a term for “hypocrite,” with tsavuʿa by itself having that meaning. This usage was based on the idea that the bird was actually painted, passing itself off as something it was not.

10. Many shepherds. Elsewhere, “shepherds” refers to the leaders of the Judahite people, but some interpreters take it here as a reference to the generals of the allied armies that invaded Judah.

11. desolate / . . . desolate. Some form of this word is repeated four times in two verses in order to convey an emphatic sense of utter desolation.

13. Be shamed by your harvests. The harvests are metaphorical, in keeping with the wheat sown and the thorns reaped—they are the dire consequences of the people’s actions.

14. all My evil neighbors. These are the sundry nations bordering on Judah, many of whom collaborated with the invading Babylonians. God calls them “My neighbors” because the Land of Israel is God’s.

I am about to uproot them from their land, and the house of Judah I will uproot from their midst. These are opposite actions: the hostile “neighbors” will now suffer the fate of exile, and the exiled Judahites will be plucked up and returned to their land.

16. learn the ways of My people to swear by My name. What the prophet envisages is a turning of the cultic tables. Previously, the Judahites had learned from their neighbors to invoke the name of Baal. Now, if those nations are not to undergo continuing exile, they must learn to invoke the name of YHWH, which implies accepting the God of Israel as the legitimate God of all.