Jeremiah 23:39

Jer 23:39 Therefore, behold, I, even I, will utterly forget you, and I will forsake you, and the city that I gave you and your fathers, [and cast you] out of my presence:

Ver. 39. Therefore, behold, I, even I, will utterly forget you.] I nunc ergo, lude pasquillis et putidis dicteriis, saith one. Go thy ways now, thou that thinkest it a goodly thing to gibe and jeer at God’s ministers and their messages. Consider of this dreadful denunciation, and thereby conceive aright of the heinousness of thy sin; for God doth not use to kill flies upon men’s foreheads with beetles, to threaten heavy punishments for light offences.

John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Jer 23:39. Therefore, behold, I will utterly forget you — The Vulgate renders this clause, Propterea ecce ego tolam vos portans, Therefore, behold, I will take you away removing you, (taking the verb נשׁה, nashah, in the sense of נשׂא, nasa, as words of a like sound are often of a promiscuous signification,) which makes the sense more pertinent to the foregoing verses. The LXX. interpret the clause to the same purpose, Δια τουτο ιδου εγω λαμβανω και ρασσω υμας, &c. Therefore, behold I take you, and cast you down, or, dash you, to the ground, and the city which I gave to you and to your fathers.

Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Or, take you away.

Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain. Text via Bolls.life.

I will . . . forget you--just retribution for their forgetting Him (Hos 4:6). But God cannot possibly forget His children (Isa 49:15). Rather for "forget" translate, "I will altogether lift you up (like a 'burden,' alluding to their mocking term for God's messages) and cast you off." God makes their wicked language fall on their own head [CALVIN]. Compare Jer 23:36 : "every man's word shall be his burden."

Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Verse 39. I will utterly forget you, and I will forsake you and the city] Dr. Blayney translates: - I will both take you up altogether, and will cast you off together with the city. Ye are a burden to me: but I will take you up, and then cast you off. I will do with you as a man weary with his burden will do; cast it off his shoulders, and bear it no more.

Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

If ye shall say, even when I warn you not to speak in this manner; if then ye persevere in this obstinacy, Behold I, etc.; God here declares that he would take vengeance. As to this sentence, most interpreters derive the verb from נשה, nushe, making ה, he, the final letter; but I doubt the correctness of this; yet if this explanation be adopted, we must still hold that the Prophet alludes to the verb, to take away, which immediately follows. But I am disposed to take another view, that God would by removing remove them. It must be noticed that the word משא, mesha, which has often been mentioned, comes from the same root; משא, mesha, a burden, is derived from נשא, nusha, to remove or take away. As therefore this proverb was commonly used, that prophetic doctrine ever brought some burden and trouble, God answers, “I will take you away;” that is, “ye shall find by experience how grievous and burdensome your wickedness is to me, it shall rebound on your heads; ye have burdened and treated with indignity my word, and I will treat you with indignity,” but in what manner? I will take you away even by taking you away. If any one approves more of the sense of forgetting, let him follow his own judgment; but that explanation appears to me unmeaning, “I will forget you,” except נשא, nusha, be taken in the second place as signifying to take away. “I will forget you, that I may take you away.”

He adds, And I will pluck you up; which some render, “I will forsake you,” but they seem not to understand what the Prophet intended; for he declares something more grievous and more dreadful than before, when he says, I will pluck you up; and yet this sense does not satisfy me. The verb נטש, nuthash, means to extend, and metaphorically to cast far off; and casting off or away seems to suit the passage best. God then would not only remove or take away the Jews from their own place, but would also cast them far off into distant countries. He thus denounces on them an exile, by which they were to be driven as it were into another world. For had they dwelt in the neighborhood, it would have been more tolerable to them, but as they were to be driven away, as by a violent storm to the farthest and remotest regions, it was much more grievous.

He afterwards says, And the city also which I gave to you and to your fathers The verbs, to cast away and to pluck up, do not well suit stones; but as to the sense, it may rightly be said that God would take away the city with its inhabitants, as though they were driven away by the wind. And this was added designedly, for the Jews relying on this promise, “This is my rest for ever, here will I dwell,” thought it impossible that the sanctuary of God would ever be destroyed. As then this vain confidence deceived them, that the city which God had chosen as his habitation would stand always, the Prophet expressly adds that the city itself would perish.

And it is also added, that it was given to them and their fathers He anticipates all objections, and shakes off from the Jews the vain hope by which they were inebriated, even that the city was given perpetually to them, and that God resided there to defend them; “This donation,” he says, “will not keep you nor the city itself from destruction.” He adds, From my presence; for it was customary for them to pretend God’s name, when they sought to harden their hearts against the threatenings of the prophets; but God here answers them and says, from my presence; as though he had said, “In vain do ye harbor the thought respecting the perpetuity of the city and the Temple; for this depends on my will and good pleasure. As ye then stand or fall as it seems right to me, I now declare that ye shall be ejected and wholly removed from my presence.” It follows, —

John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.

(39) I, even I, will utterly forget you . . .—A very slight alteration in a single letter of the Hebrew verb gives a rendering which was followed by the LXX. and Vulgate, and is adopted by many modern commentators, and connects it with the root of the word translated “burden”—I will take you up as a burden, and cast you off. The words in italics, and cast you, in the latter clause have nothing corresponding to them in the Hebrew, but show that some at least of the translators felt that this was the true meaning of the words. This “everlasting reproach” was to be the outcome of these big swelling words of vanity in which they claimed prophetic inspiration.

A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

39. utterly forget you] The alternative in mg. lift you up, as rendering the Hebrew verb from which “burden” is derived, is clearly right, that substantive being the key-word of the passage, and the two verbs being very similar. So LXX, Syr., Vulg. The difficulty which we feel now in understanding why the punishment for the use of the word was to be so terrible doubtless did not exist when the passage was composed.

The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Therefore, behold, I, even I, will utterly forget you,.... That is, so behave towards them, as though they were entirely out of his sight and mind; show no affection to them; take no care of them; bestow no favours upon them; and no more have them under his protection. In the word here used, and rendered "forget", and the word before used for a "burden", there is an elegant play on words (w), which another language will not easily express; no doubt there is an allusion to that word in this;

and I will forsake you; neither vouchsafe them his gracious presence, nor his powerful protecting presence, but give them up to the enemy:

and the city that I gave you and your fathers; the city of Jerusalem, which he had given to them to dwell in, and their fathers before them; but now they having sinned against him, and provoked him; therefore, notwithstanding this grant of the place to them, and which is mentioned that they might not depend upon it, and buoy up themselves with hopes that they should be in safety on that account; as he had forsaken them, he would forsake that, and the temple in it, and give it up into the hand of the Chaldeans:

and cast you out of my presence; as useless and loathsome. The Targum is,

"I will remove you far away, and the city which I save you and your fathers from my word.''

it signifies their going into captivity.

(w) "forgetting I will forget", and "a burden".

John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Translate, “Therefore, behold, I will even take you up (or will burden you), and I will cast you, and the city which I gave you and your fathers, out of my presence.”

Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

Take. Hebrew of the Masorets, (Calmet) "I, even I, will utterly forget (Protestants; Haydock) or abandon you." (Chaldean) But the sense of the Septuagint and Vulgate seems preferable. (Calmet)

George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).

I will forget you as to my affection, and that is more than if all your friends forgot you. There is a great emphasis in the doubling of the pronoun,

I, even I. I will forsake you as to the presence of my special gracious providence. And do not flatter yourselves that I will not do it, because of your fathers, or because I gave this city to your fathers, for that very city I will withdraw my special providence from, and that land, which heretofore was called the land which the Lord thy God careth for, upon which the eyes of the Lord are always, from the beginning of the year even to the end of the year, Deu 11:12. And I will cast both city and people out of my gracious presence; so as I will no longer do them good as I have done.

Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

39. I…

will utterly forget you — As you have forgotten me. Another reading of this text is preferred by many, but without sufficient reason.

Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

I, even I, will utterly forget you; rather, I will even take you up, and east you off. This involves a slight difference in the pronunciation of the text from that adopted by the Massoretes, but is adopted by the Septuagint, Peshito, Vulgate, a few manuscripts, and most critics; it is, in fact, almost required by the figure which fills the verse. And cast you out of my presence. "And cast you" is not in the Hebrew; nor is it necessary to supply the words, if the preceding clauses be rightly translated.

The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

and I will exile an expression of “the sinew that was dislocated (גִיד הַנָֹּשֶה)” (Gen. 32:33), and an expression of “their might has failed (נָֹשְתָה),” it jumps and moves from place to place.

Rashi on the Tanakh — English translations: “The Judaica Press complete Tanach with Rashi, translated by A. J. Rosenberg” (CC BY 4.0); “Pentateuch with Rashi's commentary by M. Rosenbaum and A.M. Silbermann, 1929-1934” (public domain); “The Metsudah Tanach series, Lakewood, N.J” (CC BY 4.0); and “The Book of Joshua, Metsudah Publications, 1997” (CC BY 4.0). Text via Sefaria.