Thus says Yahweh, This city shall surely be given into the hand of the army of the king of Babylon, and he shall take it.
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The same verse in 3 English versions, stacked beneath the original-language interlinear above. Click any original word for its lexicon entry.
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Thus says Yahweh, This city shall surely be given into the hand of the army of the king of Babylon, and he shall take it.
Thus saith the LORD, This city shall surely be given into the hand of the king of Babylon's army, which shall take it.
Yahweh says this: This city will be given into the hand of the army of the king of Babylon, and he will capture it.”
unfoldingWord Literal Text — © unfoldingWord, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Word-aligned USFM3 via Door43 (git.door43.org/unfoldingWord/en_ult).
Every available English version of this verse, each an independent rendering of the whole verse.
Thus says Yahweh, This city shall surely be given into the hand of the army of the king of Babylon, and he shall take it.
This is what the LORD says: This city will surely be delivered into the hands of the army of the king of Babylon, and he will capture it.”
This is what the LORD says: This city will surely be delivered into the hands of the army of the king of Babylon, and he will capture it.”
Thus saith the LORD, This city shall surely be given into the hand of the king of Babylon's army, which shall take it.
Thus saith Jehovah, This city shall surely be given into the hand of the army of the king of Babylon, and he shall take it.
Thus saith the LORD, This city shall surely be given into the hand of the army of the king of Babylon, and he shall take it.
Thus sayth the Lord, This citie shall surely be giuen into the hand of the King of Babels armie, which shall take it.
Thus saith the Lord: This city shall surely be delivered into the hand of the army of the king of Babylon, and he shall take it.
Thus said Jehovah: This city is certainly given into the hand of the force of the king of Babylon, and he hath captured it.'
Thus said YHWH: This city is certainly given into the hand of the force of the king of Babylon, and he has captured it.”
Yahweh says this: This city will be given into the hand of the army of the king of Babylon, and he will capture it.”
Yahweh says this: This city will be given into the hand of the army of the king of Babylon, and he will capture it.”
Thus saith Jehovah: This city shall certainly be given into the hand of the king of Babylon's army, and he shall take it.
The LORD says, ‘This city will surely be given into the hand of the army of the king of Babylon, and he will take it.’”
Thus saith the LORD, This city shall surely be given into the hand of the king of Babylon's army, which shall take it.
This is what the Lord says: Be sure of this—Jerusalem will be handed over to the army of the king of Babylon. He is going to capture it.
The Lord has said, This town will certainly be given into the hands of the army of the king of Babylon, and he will take it.
Thus saith the LORD: This city shall surely be given into the hand of the army of the king of Babylon, and he shall take it.'
Literal Standard Version (2020), Covenant Press — licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API (eBible.org). Unlocked Literal Bible (unfoldingWord) — licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API (eBible.org). unfoldingWord Literal Text — © unfoldingWord, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Word-aligned USFM3 via Door43 (git.door43.org/unfoldingWord/en_ult). Free Bible Version, Dr. Jonathan Gallagher — licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API (eBible.org).
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These counts appear in no published source. They are computed here, from the morphology-tagged text and Lemma’s own curated glosses. What Lemma adds →
Grammatical profile
Verb forms
Repetition
A word recurs within this verse — often emphatic in Hebrew:
Hebrew & Septuagint length
In the original languages it is 12 Hebrew tokens and 14 Greek tokens — but the two are counted differently (Hebrew bundles its prefixes and suffixes into one token; the Greek is in lemma form), so that isn’t a like-for-like length.
Topical passages linked to Jeremiah 38:3 in the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge — connected by theme and wording, ordered by reader-vote popularity; previews shown in the World English Bible.
Cross-references courtesy of OpenBible.info (CC BY 4.0).
The same verse in the two great witnesses to the Old Testament, shown verse-for-verse.
These are two independent witnesses, not word-aligned to each other, and the Septuagint is shown in lemma (dictionary) form.
כֹּ֖ה אָמַ֣ר יְהוָ֑ה הִנָּתֹ֨ן תִּנָּתֵ֜ן הָעִ֣יר הַזֹּ֗את בְּיַ֛ד חֵ֥יל מֶֽלֶךְ בָּבֶ֖ל וּלְכָדָֽהּ
Thus says Yahweh, This city shall surely be given into the hand of the army of the king of Babylon, and he shall take it.
World English Bible · Public Domain
In the Septuagint, Jeremiah is about an eighth shorter than the Hebrew and arranges its material differently — the Oracles Against the Nations (Hebrew chapters 46–51) appear in the middle of the Greek book, after 25:13. Because the chapter and verse boundaries do not line up, a verse-for-verse comparison with the Hebrew is not shown.
A verse-for-verse comparison isn’t shown here because the chapters and verses don’t line up. Switch to the LXX edition with the MT / LXX toggle above to read the Greek directly.
Hebrew: Westminster Leningrad Codex (CC BY 4.0). Greek: Septuagint (public domain); English from a public-domain English Septuagint. How the Septuagint differs from the Hebrew →
The Targum is the ancient Jewish Aramaic paraphrase of the Hebrew Scriptures — an interpretive translation, not the Hebrew text itself. Onkelos (literal) and Pseudo-Jonathan (expansive) render the Torah, and Jonathan the Prophets. Coverage is partial: where no permissively-licensed English translation exists for a verse, only the Aramaic is shown. This is verse-level text, not a word-by-word alignment to the Hebrew.
כִּדְנַן אֲמַר יְיָ אִתְמְסָרָא תִתְמְסַר קַרְתָּא הָדָא בְּיַד מַשִׁרְיַת מַלְכָּא דְבָבֶל וְיִכְבְּשִׁינָהּ:
(no public-domain English translation for this verse)
Targum Jonathan — Aramaic: “Mikraot Gedolot” (public domain). English: “Sefaria Community Translation” (CC0 1.0 (public-domain dedication)); “London "Chaldee Paraphrase," 1871” (public domain). Text via Sefaria.
Teaching starters — assembled from the data on this page, not authored interpretation. Every prompt links to the verse data it draws on. Edit before teaching.
Jeremiah, in the Prophets, opens this verse with 12 words (11 distinct Hebrew lemmas). Its most distinctive word is lâkad (“to capture”). A historical commentator’s framing appears above. Read the whole chapter for the surrounding context.
Commentary
Notes on Jeremiah 38:3 from classic Christian and Jewish commentators (each source and its license shown beneath its notes). The classic Christian expositions comment on the surrounding passage and are grouped to its opening verse, so a note may address several verses; the Jewish commentaries on the Tanakh (Rashi and others) are per-verse, so they appear only where the commentator wrote on this verse.
Lemma curates 59 commentaries, every one of them public domain or Creative Commons licensed, each selected and text-cleaned for this edition rather than reprinted as found. About our sources →
Trapp's Complete Commentary
John Trapp
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.
Adam Clarke's Commentary
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
John Calvin's Commentaries
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.
John Gill's Exposition
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.