Jer 18:14:
Do foreign
waters dry up, / the cold flowing streams. This line has engendered
conflicting interpretations. The verb that appears in the received text, yinatshu,
“be smashed,” is scarcely appropriate for water and this translation accepts a
widely used emendation, yinashtu, which involves merely a reversal of
two consonants. The poet is evidently still thinking of Lebanon: its cold
mountain streams never dry up, just as the snow on these slopes never melts
from the rocks. One detects a polemic thrust in the idea that these foreign
waters continue to flow faithfully whereas Israel has betrayed its God. (Robert
Alter, The Hebrew Bible, 3 vols. [New York: W. W. Norton & Company,
2019], 2:922)
Jer 18:19:
my quarrel.
The Masoretic Text has yerivai, “my adversaries.” The reading of the
Septuagint, rivi, a difference of a single consonant, makes better
sense. (Robert Alter, The Hebrew Bible, 3 vols. [New York: W. W. Norton
& Company, 2019], 2:923)
