For the hurt of the
daughter of my people am I hurt; I am black; astonishment hath taken hold on
me. (Jer 8:21 | KJV)
Because my people is
shattered I am shattered; I am dejected; seized by desolation. (Jer 8:21 1985 |
JPS Tanakh)
Commenting on this verse (which he himself
renders as "The wounds of my people have wounded me, I am in deep
mourning, desolation has seized me"), William McKane wrote:
The brokenness of Judah
is not a condition of which he has a spectator’s view; it is a suffering and
sickness in which he is immersed. His heart is sick and his spirit dissolves;
he is shattered, enveloped in darkness and seized with desolation. Or, perhaps,
קדרתי is
rather an indication that he is afflicted by the sadness of a mourner and wears
a mourner’s garb (so NEB, ‘I go like a mourner’). השׁברתי (v. 21) is not represented by Sept. and
Pesh. and חיל
כיולדה is
represented by Sept. (ὠδῖνες ὡς τικτούσης). Both Ziegler (Beiträge, pp. 91f.) and Janzen (pp. 31, 63) suppose that חיל כיולדה is an
insertion from 6:24. (William McKane, A Critical and Exegetical
Commentary on Jeremiah, Volume 1: Introduction and Commentary on Jeremiah I-XXV
[International Critical Commentary; Edinburgh: T&T Clark International,
1986], 195-96)