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The Greek Septuagint version of Jeremiah 21, which is likely the original, says God will not spare Jerusalem’s survivors. The Hebrew Masoretic version attributes this to Nebuchadnezzar, rewriting the language to make God look less violent.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Jeremiah 21:7
Hebrew Bible
6 I will kill everything living in Jerusalem, people and animals alike. They will die from terrible diseases. 7 Then I, the Lord, promise that I will hand over King Zedekiah of Judah, his officials, and any of the people who survive the war, starvation, and disease. I will hand them over to King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon and to their enemies who want to kill them. He will slaughter them with the sword. He will not show them any mercy, compassion, or pity.’ 8 “But tell the people of Jerusalem that the Lord says, ‘I will give you a choice between two courses of action. One will result in life; the other will result in death.
Date: 500–401 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
LXX Jeremiah 21:7
Septuagint
6 And I will strike all the dwellers in this city, both men and cattle, with severe pestilence: and they shall die. 7 And after this, thus says the Lord; I will give Zedekiah king of Judah, and his servants, and the people that is left in this city from the pestilence, and from the famine, and from the sword, into the hands of their enemies, that seek their lives: and they shall cut them in pieces with the edge of the sword: I will not spare them, and I will not have compassion upon them. 8 And you shall say to this people, Thus says the Lord; Look, I have set before you the way of life, and the way of death.
Date: 100–1 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
"... Sometimes, the Septuagint may attest to an older reading, which involves divine acts of retribution, whereas in the Masoretic text this motif is mitigated. LXX Jeremiah 21:7 reads “I (God) will not be sparing toward them.” In the Masoretic text, the king of Babylon is responsible. Perhaps the Septuagint reading is, however, a secondary harmonization with Jeremiah 13:14 ..."
Martin Meiser, The Septuagint and Its Reception: Collected Essays (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2022), 22.
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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