Core Glossary
Core Glossary: Jeremiah (Full Book)
How to Read This Table
- Risk Tier follows the baseline’s four-tier framework (Critical / High / Medium / Low) and its three risk categories (false-friend drift, denominational contest, obsolescence/obscurity), extended for this OT curriculum with a fourth category: OT/NT collision risk (an Old Testament term or name is silently assumed identical to a New-Testament-trained reader’s existing category).
- Baseline Reuse marks terms that already exist in the Romans Language Package; for these, the English Rendering and base risk tier are reused exactly, per the hard rule. Where this glossary elevates the doctrine-level risk in Jeremiah’s context, that is noted separately and does not alter the underlying term-level baseline entry.
- Chapters lists first substantive occurrence plus major recurrences; it is representative, not exhaustive, for high-frequency terms (e.g., “word of the LORD,” “covenant”).
Glossary Table
| # | Term (English Rendering) | Original | Transliteration | Literal Meaning | Doctrine(s) | Risk Tier | Baseline Reuse? | Chapters | Key Risk Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | LORD (YHWH) | יְהוָה | YHWH | God’s personal covenant name | God’s Sovereign Plans; New Covenant | Critical | No (extends baseline “God”/“Lord” as a distinct entry) | Throughout | OT/NT collision: distinct from NT “Lord” (kyrios/Christ); must not be conflated with baseline’s Christ-lordship entry |
| 2 | God | אֱלֹהִים | Elohim | Deity, God | All doctrines | Critical | Yes — baseline “god” | Throughout | Reuse baseline exactly; guard against vague “higher power” substitutes |
| 3 | covenant | בְּרִית | berith | Binding relational pact, from “to cut” | New Covenant; Judgment | High (bible_term_registry: Critical) | Yes — baseline “covenant” | 3, 11, 22, 31, 32, 33, 34, 50 | Legal-contract false-friend drift; compounds with “new covenant” denominational contest |
| 4 | new covenant | בְּרִית חֲדָשָׁה | berith chadashah | A fresh/renewed covenant | New Covenant (core doctrine) | Critical | Extension of baseline “covenant” | 31:31 | Denominational contest: continuity (covenant theology) vs. discontinuity (dispensationalism) vs. supersessionism concerns |
| 5 | law | תּוֹרָה | torah | Instruction, teaching | New Covenant; Judgment | Medium | Yes — baseline “law” | 2, 6, 8, 9, 16, 26, 31, 32, 44 | Legalistic-culture false-friend risk; must show continuity of content with discontinuity of location (external → internal) |
| 6 | heart | לֵב / לֵבָב | lev / levav | Seat of mind, will, moral character (not primarily emotion) | New Covenant; Individual Responsibility | High | New (not in baseline) | 4, 5, 7, 9, 11, 12, 17, 23, 24, 29, 31, 32, 44 | False-friend drift: contemporary “heart” = feelings; Hebrew lev = mind/will/character |
| 7 | know [the LORD] | יָדַע | yada | Intimate, relational, experiential knowing | New Covenant | High | New | 2, 4, 9, 22, 24, 31 | False-friend drift: contemporary “know” = propositional fact-knowledge, not relational intimacy |
| 8 | forgive | סָלַח | salach | Judicial pardon (used only of God) | New Covenant | High | New | 31, 33, 36, 50 | Therapeutic-culture dilution into generic “letting go” |
| 9 | iniquity | עָוֹן | avon | Guilt/moral crookedness and its consequence | New Covenant; Judgment | Medium | New | 2, 3, 5, 11, 13, 14, 16, 25, 30, 31, 32, 33, 36, 50 | Obsolescence, not false-friend; needs definition but unlikely to be confidently misread |
| 10 | sin | חַטָּאת | chatta’ah | Moral failure, “missing the mark” | Individual Responsibility; Judgment | High | Yes — baseline “sin” | 2, 3, 5, 14, 16, 17, 18, 31, 36, 50 | Trivialization risk (“sinfully delicious”) per baseline |
| 11 | remember no more | לֹא אֶזְכָּר עוֹד | lo ezkor od | Covenantal non-action, not literal forgetting | New Covenant; Assurance of Salvation (baseline) | Critical | New (links to baseline “assurance of salvation”) | 31 | False-friend drift: readers imagine literal divine forgetfulness rather than a covenantal commitment not to act in judgment |
| 12 | holy / consecrated | קָדוֹשׁ / קָדַשׁ | qadosh / qadash | Set apart for God | Weeping Prophet/Ministry Call | Medium | Yes — baseline “holy” | 1 | Reuse baseline; extended to pre-natal prophetic commissioning |
| 13 | called / calling | (commissioning speech) | — | Sovereign divine summons | Weeping Prophet/Ministry Call | High | Yes — baseline “called”/“calling” | 1 | Reinforces baseline’s warning against “finding your calling” self-selection framing |
| 14 | prophet | נָבִיא | navi | God’s spokesperson | True Prophecy; Weeping Prophet | Medium (registry: Low) | Yes — baseline “prophet” | Throughout | Not a fortune-teller; carries delegated divine authority |
| 15 | word of the LORD | דְּבַר־יְהוָה | devar-YHWH | God’s specific spoken revelation | True Prophecy | High | Extension of baseline “prophecy” (Low) | 1 and throughout (structural formula) | Obsolescence/undervaluing risk: readers may skim past a load-bearing authenticating tag |
| 16 | false prophet | נִבְּאוּ בַשֶּׁקֶר / navi sheqer | nibbe’u vasheqer | One who prophesies falsehood, unsent by God | False Prophets vs. True Prophecy | Critical | New | 5, 6, 14, 23, 27-28, 29 | Risk of flattening into generic “dishonesty”; live continuationist/cessationist denominational sensitivity |
| 17 | peace / “peace, peace” | שָׁלוֹם | shalom | Total well-being, wholeness; ironic false assurance | False Prophets; Peace with God (baseline) | High (baseline “peace”: Medium) | Yes, extended | 6, 8, 14, 23, 28, 29, 33 | Idiom often quoted detached from its false-prophecy indictment context |
| 18 | dream | חֲלוֹם | chalom | A claimed vehicle of revelation, contrasted with genuine “word” | False Prophets | Medium | New | 23, 27, 29 | Distinguish claimed private revelation from authenticated prophetic word |
| 19 | burden / oracle | מַשָּׂא | massa | A weighty prophetic pronouncement | True Prophecy | Medium | New | 23 | Obsolescence; wordplay in Hebrew (also means literal “burden/load”) lost in English |
| 20 | idols / other gods | אֱלֹהִים אֲחֵרִים / פְּסִלִים | elohim acherim / pesilim | Rival deities/images | Judgment; Idolatry | Critical | New | 1, 2, 7, 8, 10, 11, 13, 16, 18, 19, 22, 25, 32, 35, 44 | Pop-culture dilution (“American Idol,” “my idol”) strips worship/allegiance content |
| 21 | harlotry / whoredom | זָנָה | zanah | Sexual/covenantal infidelity metaphor | Judgment; Idolatry | High | New | 2, 3, 5, 13, 23, 29 | Risk of shock/purity-culture misreading if covenant-relational point isn’t made explicit |
| 22 | backsliding / faithless | מְשֻׁבָה / בֹּגְדָה | meshuvah / bogedah | Apostasy, treachery | Judgment; Idolatry | Medium | New | 3, 5, 8, 14, 31, 49 | Related to shuv polysemy (#23) |
| 23 | return / repent / backslide | שׁוּב | shuv | To turn, turn back, turn away | Hope of Restoration; Judgment | Critical | New | 3, 4, 8, 15, 18, 23, 24, 25, 29, 30, 31, 34, 44, 49, 50 | Polysemy: same root, opposite moral directions depending on context; must disambiguate every occurrence |
| 24 | remnant | שְׁאֵרִית | she’erit | Surviving/preserved portion of a people | Hope of Restoration | High | New | 6, 8, 15, 23, 24, 25, 31, 40, 42, 44, 50 | Obsolescence + theological ambiguity (random survivors vs. divinely purposed remnant) |
| 25 | exile / captivity | גָּלָה / גּוֹלָה | galah / golah | Deportation, forced displacement | Hope of Restoration; Judgment | High | New | 1, 13, 20, 22, 24, 25, 27-30, 32, 40, 52 | Requires historical grounding (Babylonian conquest, 586 BC) against vague “exile” metaphor usage |
| 26 | restore the fortunes | שׁוּב שְׁבוּת | shuv shevut | Full reversal of national calamity | Hope of Restoration | Medium | New | 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 48, 49 | Idiom broader than mere geographic return; extended even to Gentile nations |
| 27 | seventy years | שִׁבְעִים שָׁנָה | shiv’im shanah | A specific predicted exile duration | Hope of Restoration; True Prophecy | Medium | New | 25, 29 | Guard against unrelated numerological speculation |
| 28 | weeping / lament | בְּכִי / קִינָה | bekhi / qinah | Grief; a specific funeral-poetry genre | Weeping Prophet | Medium | New | 3, 8, 9, 13, 14, 20, 22, 31, 48 | Obsolescence of “lament/dirge” as a literary-genre term |
| 29 | Jeremiah’s confessions (genre) | (lament-prayer genre) | — | Honest, sometimes accusatory prayer to God | Weeping Prophet | Medium | New | 11, 12, 15, 17, 18, 20 | Contemporary devotional culture may find raw complaint-to-God uncomfortable; should be affirmed as legitimate |
| 30 | potter and clay | יוֹצֵר / חֹמֶר | yotser / chomer | God shaping/reshaping a nation | God’s Sovereign Plans | High | New | 18, 19 | Denominational contest: unconditional sovereign decree vs. conditional, response-sensitive sovereignty |
| 31 | plans / purposes | מַחֲשָׁבָה | machashavah | Deliberate thought, plan, or (negatively) scheme | God’s Sovereign Plans | High | New | 18, 29, 49, 51 | Bland English “plans” underweights the term; same word used of both divine and malicious human intent |
| 32 | plans for welfare, a future and a hope | מַחְשְׁבוֹת שָׁלוֹם…אַחֲרִית וְתִקְוָה | machshevot shalom…acharit vetiqvah | Corporate promise of eventual national well-being after the 70-year exile | God’s Sovereign Plans | Critical | New | 29:11 | Single most commonly decontextualized verse in the book — corporate/delayed promise routinely misapplied as an individual/near-term guarantee |
| 33 | seek the welfare of the city | דִּרְשׁוּ אֶת־שְׁלוֹם הָעִיר | dirshu et-shelom ha’ir | Actively pursue the good of one’s place of exile | Hope of Restoration | Medium | Extension of #17 | 29 | Radical command easily under-read at a glance |
| 34 | justice and righteousness | מִשְׁפָּט וּצְדָקָה | mishpat u-tzedaqah | Fair legal process plus right covenantal conduct | Judgment; Sovereign Plans | High | Yes — baseline “righteousness” | 5, 9, 22, 23, 33 | ”Justice” now dominated by legal-system/social-justice-movement associations distinct from the covenantal sense |
| 35 | righteousness | צְדָקָה | tzedaqah | Right standing/conduct, covenant faithfulness | New Covenant (Branch/Tzidqenu) | High (registry: Critical) | Yes — baseline “righteousness” | 23, 33 | Reused exactly; see also entries 36-37 for messianic extension |
| 36 | righteous Branch | צֶמַח צַדִּיק | tsemach tzadiq | Messianic royal shoot from David’s line | New Covenant; Hope of Restoration | High | Extension of baseline “David”/“Messiah”/“righteousness” | 23, 33 | ”Branch” risks reading as generic corporate metaphor without messianic-lineage sense made explicit |
| 37 | the LORD is our righteousness | יְהוָה צִדְקֵנוּ | YHWH Tzidqenu | Messianic throne-name: God himself as his people’s righteousness | New Covenant | Critical | Extension of baseline “God”/“righteousness”/“imputed righteousness” | 23, 33 | Direct OT anticipation of baseline’s “imputed righteousness” doctrine — righteousness given, not self-generated |
| 38 | steadfast love | חֶסֶד | chesed | Covenant-bonded loyal love/faithfulness | New Covenant (relational basis) | High | New | 9 | No single adequate English word; risk of reduction to sentimental affection |
| 39 | sour grapes proverb / individual responsibility | אָבוֹת יֹאכְלוּ בֹסֶר…אִישׁ בַּעֲוֹנוֹ יָמוּת | avot yokhlu voser…ish ba’avono yamut | Rejected fatalistic proverb; each dies for own sin | Individual Responsibility | High | New | 31:29-30 | Must not deny corporate/generational consequence elsewhere in Scripture; specific corrective point is personal accountability |
| 40 | I will give them a heart to know me | וְנָתַתִּי לָהֶם לֵב לָדַעַת אֹתִי | venatati lahem lev lada’at oti | Promise combining heart-transformation and relational knowledge | New Covenant | High | Combination of #6, #7 | 24 | Direct miniature forerunner of 31:33-34; should be cross-referenced explicitly |
| 41 | everlasting covenant | בְּרִית עוֹלָם | berith olam | A permanent, unbreakable covenant | New Covenant | High | Extension of baseline “covenant” | 32 | Permanence claim intersects with baseline’s Assurance of Salvation denominational-contest note |
| 42 | Sabbath | שַׁבָּת | shabbat | Weekly covenant rest-sign | Judgment (covenant obedience test case) | Medium | New | 17 | Denominational-contest-adjacent (Sabbatarian vs. non-Sabbatarian traditions); avoid unstated resolution |
| 43 | shepherds | רֹעִים | ro’im | Kings/leaders as caretakers of the people | False Prophets; Sovereign Plans | Medium | New | 2, 3, 10, 12, 23, 25, 31, 49, 50 | Requires brief pastoral/agrarian background; connects positively to NT “Good Shepherd” |
| 44 | fulfillment test for prophecy | בְּבֹא דְבַר הַנָּבִיא יִוָּדַע… | bevo devar hanavi yivvada… | Predictive accuracy as retrospective validation of a true prophet | True Prophecy | High | New | 27-28 | Necessary but only retrospectively available test; guard against misuse for unfalsifiable near-term claims |
| 45 | day of the LORD / day of calamity | יוֹם אֵיד | yom eid | A decisive day of divine judgment | Judgment (universal scope) | Medium | New | 46-51, 30 | Extends judgment doctrine to all nations, not Israel/Judah alone |
| 46 | vengeance of the LORD | נִקְמַת יְהוָה | niqmat YHWH | Righteous, judicial (not petty) retribution | Judgment | Medium | New | 50-51 | Contemporary “vengeance” = disproportionate personal retaliation; must distinguish judicial sense |
| 47 | cup of wrath | כּוֹס הַחֵמָה | kos hachemah | God’s judgment poured on all nations | Judgment | Medium | New | 25 | Guard against therapeutic-culture discomfort with guilt/wrath language flattening the claim |
| 48 | Israel / house of Israel / house of Judah | יִשְׂרָאֵל / בֵּית יִשְׂרָאֵל / בֵּית יְהוּדָה | Yisra’el / beit Yisra’el / beit Yehudah | The covenant people, historically divided into two kingdoms | New Covenant; Judgment | Medium | Yes — baseline “Israel” | 31 and throughout | Reuse baseline exactly; distinguish covenant people from the modern nation-state per baseline note |
| 49 | David | דָּוִד | David | King David; his royal covenant line | New Covenant; Hope of Restoration | Low | Yes — baseline “David” | 17, 21, 22, 23, 30, 33, 36 | Reuse baseline exactly; elevated here by direct covenant-perpetuity content (ch. 33) |
| 50 | glory | כָּבוֹד | kavod | God’s weighty, radiant presence/honor | Judgment; Idolatry | Medium/High | Yes — baseline “glory” | 2, 9, 13, 14 | Reuse baseline exactly; “exchanged their glory” for worthless idols |
| 51 | abomination | תּוֹעֵבָה | to’evah | Ritually/morally detestable act | Judgment; Idolatry | Medium | New | 2, 6, 7, 16, 32, 44 | Keep tied to Jeremiah’s idolatry context, not unrelated contemporary culture-war usage |
| 52 | den of robbers | מְעָרַת פָּרִצִים | me’arat paritzim | A hideout presumed safe between crimes | Judgment; Church as God’s People (baseline) | Medium | New (NT cross-reference) | 7 | Quoted by Jesus (Matt 21:13); original point is false institutional confidence, not theft |
| 53 | Queen of Heaven | מְלֶכֶת הַשָּׁמַיִם | malekhet hashamayim | A specific astral/fertility goddess | Judgment; Idolatry | Medium | New | 44 | Obscure ANE deity name; evidence that judgment alone (without New Covenant heart-change) does not produce repentance |
| 54 | Rachel weeping for her children | רָחֵל מְבַכָּה עַל־בָּנֶיהָ | Rachel mevakah al-baneha | Matriarch personified as grieving the exile | Weeping Prophet; Hope of Restoration | Medium | New (NT cross-reference, Matt 2:18) | 31 | Requires explicit connection between exile-grief and its NT fulfillment context |
| 55 | passing between the pieces | עָבְרוּ בֵין בִּתְרֵי הָעֵגֶל | avru bein bitrei ha’egel | Ancient covenant-ratification ritual | New Covenant (etymology); Judgment | Medium | New | 34 | Literal enactment of covenant “cutting” root meaning noted at 31:31 |
| 56 | fire shut up in my bones | אֵשׁ בֹּעֶרֶת עָצֻר בְּעַצְמֹתָי | esh bo’eret atzur be’atzmotai | Compulsion to proclaim God’s word despite cost | Weeping Prophet | Low | New | 20 | Vivid, largely self-explanatory; pair with 20:14-18’s honest anguish |
| 57 | way of life / way of death | דֶּרֶךְ הַחַיִּים / דֶּרֶךְ הַמָּוֶת | derekh hachayim / derekh hamavet | A binary, consequential choice | Individual Responsibility | Medium | New | 21 | Distinguish immediate historical referent (surrender to Babylon) from NT eternal-destiny usage |
| 58 | ”go out of her midst, my people” | צְאוּ מִתּוֹכָהּ עַמִּי | tze’u mitokhah ami | Call to flee a doomed system before judgment | Judgment; Hope of Restoration | Medium | New (NT cross-reference, Rev 18:4) | 51 | Cross-reference to Revelation 18:4 for full canonical pattern |
| 59 | lifted up his head (Jehoiachin) | נָשָׂא אֶת־רֹאשׁ יְהוֹיָכִין | nasa et-rosh Yehoyakhin | Restoring honor/status; release from imprisonment | Hope of Restoration | Low | New | 52 | Book’s intentional closing note of grace; easily overlooked |
Summary Statistics
| Risk Tier | Count | Requires |
|---|---|---|
| Critical | 8 | Human theologian review |
| High | 16 | Human theologian review |
| Medium | 26 | Native speaker review |
| Low | 9 | Automated review |
| Total glossary terms | 59 |
Baseline Terms Reused Exactly (per hard rule)
God, covenant, law, sin, holy, called/calling, prophet, prophecy (extended as “word of the LORD”), righteousness (extended as “justice and righteousness,” “righteous Branch,” “the LORD is our righteousness,” “imputed righteousness” cross-reference), Israel, David, glory, peace.
New Terms Requiring Fresh Registry Entries (not present in baseline Romans package)
LORD (YHWH) [distinct from baseline “Lord”], new covenant, heart, know [the LORD], forgive, iniquity, remember no more, false prophet, dream, burden/oracle, idols/other gods, harlotry/whoredom, backsliding, return/repent (shuv), remnant, exile/captivity, restore the fortunes, seventy years, weeping/lament, Jeremiah's confessions, potter and clay, plans/purposes, plans for welfare...future and a hope, seek the welfare of the city, steadfast love (chesed), sour grapes proverb/individual responsibility, everlasting covenant, Sabbath, shepherds, fulfillment test for prophecy, day of the LORD, vengeance of the LORD, cup of wrath, abomination, den of robbers, Queen of Heaven, Rachel weeping for her children, passing between the pieces, fire shut up in my bones, way of life/way of death, go out of her midst my people, lifted up his head.
These new terms must be added to a Jeremiah-specific extension of translation_memory.json and bible_term_registry.json in the next pipeline step, without altering any existing baseline Romans entries.
Critical Risk Terms
Lord
Approved rendering: Lord
Transliteration: Lord
Doctrine: Lordship of Christ
Rejected alternatives: boss / master (attempts at modernization that lose the term’s exclusivity and worship-worthiness), a British Lord (the aristocratic title sense, especially salient for British/Commonwealth readers)
CRITICAL: ‘Lord’ has nearly disappeared from ordinary spoken English outside this specific religious usage… this curriculum must actively restore its weight (total, exclusive, personal allegiance) rather than assume the English word still carries it. Inherited from Romans package. Jeremiah extension: this baseline entry renders kyrios/Christ’s title in the New Testament and must be held distinct from, yet in deliberate canonical continuity with, the new ‘LORD (YHWH)’ entry below, which renders God’s personal covenant name in Jeremiah. Teach both the distinction and the continuity (YHWH of Jeremiah 31 is the same God confessed as ‘Lord Jesus’ in Romans 10:9) explicitly.
Providence
Approved rendering: providence
Transliteration: providence
Doctrine: Providence
Rejected alternatives: everything happens for a reason (a common contemporary secular folk-spiritual idiom expressing impersonal fate rather than a personal, purposive God), Providence (the proper noun — the capital city of Rhode Island, USA)
CRITICAL: ‘providence’ is now a genuinely rare, archaic-sounding word… Inherited from Romans package. Jeremiah extension: Jeremiah 18’s potter-and-clay image and 29:11’s ‘plans for welfare’ are the Old Testament’s clearest statements of this doctrine and directly parallel Romans 9’s own potter/clay argument; Jeremiah 18:7-10’s explicit textual conditionality should be taught alongside this entry’s existing denominational-contest note.
Salvation
Approved rendering: salvation
Transliteration: salvation
Doctrine: Salvation
Rejected alternatives: being saved (contested denominational shorthand — see notes), rescue (too generic a gloss on its own)
CRITICAL DENOMINATIONAL CONTEST: English-speaking Christian traditions are themselves divided on ‘being saved’… Inherited from Romans package. Jeremiah extension: Jeremiah’s New Covenant promise of full, final forgiveness (31:34) and the book’s closing note of unexpected favor toward the exiled King Jehoiachin (52:31-34) both anticipate this doctrine’s hope-dimension; the baseline’s Assurance of Salvation denominational-contest note should be cross-referenced explicitly at Jeremiah 31:34 and 32:40.
Election
Approved rendering: election
Transliteration: election
Doctrine: Effectual Calling
Rejected alternatives: an election (the near-total dominant contemporary sense: a political vote, e.g. ‘the presidential election’)
CRITICAL FALSE-FRIEND DRIFT: in essentially all contemporary English usage outside specifically theological contexts, ‘election’ means a political vote. Inherited from Romans package. Jeremiah extension: Jeremiah 18’s potter/clay image and its explicit conditionality (18:7-10) sit inside the same Reformed-vs-Arminian/Wesleyan denominational fault line as this entry’s existing note on Romans 9; this curriculum should state its own reading explicitly at both texts, using a single consistent denominational-transparency statement.
Grace
Approved rendering: grace
Transliteration: grace
Doctrine: Grace
Rejected alternatives: elegance/poise (the dominant secular sense, e.g. ‘she moved with such grace’), a grace period (the dominant legal/financial sense, an extension of time, not unmerited favor)
CRITICAL FALSE-FRIEND DRIFT: ‘grace’ in ordinary contemporary English overwhelmingly means physical elegance or poise, or a ‘grace period.’ CRITICAL DENOMINATIONAL CONTEST: English-speaking Christian traditions disagree sharply on grace’s relationship to works. Inherited from Romans package. Jeremiah extension: the New Covenant’s internal transformation (31:33-34) is itself an act of pure divine initiative and favor toward a people who ‘broke’ the prior covenant (31:32) — this grace-not-merit logic should be named explicitly alongside the baseline’s existing ‘apart from works’ note.
Lord Yhwh
Approved rendering: LORD
Transliteration: LORD
Doctrine: The New Covenant
Rejected alternatives: Yahweh / Jehovah as the primary main-text rendering (departs from the destination language’s established Bible-translation convention), conflating with the baseline ‘Lord’ entry without comment (obscures a genuine referent distinction)
Original: יְהוָה
Category: God
OT/NT COLLISION RISK, distinct from the baseline’s ‘Lord’ entry (kyrios/Christ’s title): small-capitals ‘LORD’ renders God’s personal, self-revealed covenant name YHWH (Exodus 3:14-15), not a title. ‘Declares the LORD’ (ne’um-YHWH) occurs roughly 175 times in Jeremiah, more than any other book, so this collision risk recurs constantly. Must be explicitly distinguished on first substantive use per document, while also teaching the theologically loaded continuity between YHWH and the ‘Lord Jesus’ confession of Romans 10:9.
New Covenant
Approved rendering: new covenant
Transliteration: new covenant
Doctrine: The New Covenant
Rejected alternatives: a totally new, unrelated arrangement replacing Israel (a supersessionist misreading this curriculum must avoid), merely a renamed old covenant with no real change (understates the internalization claim of 31:33)
Original: בְּרִית חֲדָשָׁה
Category: Covenant
CRITICAL DENOMINATIONAL CONTEST: covenant theology (continuity, one covenant of grace), dispensationalism (distinct covenant administrations; debate over whether the referent is ethnic Israel, the church, or both), and supersessionist vs. non-supersessionist readings disagree sharply. This curriculum must state its own reading explicitly and note respectfully that other English-speaking Christian traditions read ‘new’ differently, per the baseline’s denominational-transparency rule. Compounds the existing Critical risk on ‘covenant’ itself.
Remember No More
Approved rendering: remember no more
Transliteration: remember no more
Doctrine: The New Covenant
Rejected alternatives: literal divine forgetfulness (a philosophically confused reading contemporary ‘remember’ as a purely cognitive verb invites)
Original: לֹא אֶזְכָּר־עוֹד
Category: New Covenant
FALSE-FRIEND DRIFT specific to English theology-of-mind assumptions: readers will likely (and wrongly) imagine an omniscient God experiencing literal forgetfulness. In Hebrew covenant/legal usage ‘to remember’ often means ‘to act upon,’ so ‘not remembering’ means ‘not acting in judgment.’ Must be reframed as a covenantal commitment never to hold the sin against the sinner again, directly connecting to the baseline’s Assurance of Salvation doctrine (Romans 8:1, ‘no condemnation’).
False Prophet
Approved rendering: false prophet
Transliteration: false prophet
Doctrine: False Prophets versus True Prophecy
Rejected alternatives: generic liar / spin doctor (flattens the specific claim of unauthorized divine authorization into ordinary dishonesty)
Original: נִבְּאוּ בַשֶּׁקֶר
Category: Covenant
CRITICAL FALSE-FRIEND DRIFT: contemporary readers, saturated with ‘fake news’/misinformation rhetoric, are likely to flatten this into a generic charge of dishonesty rather than grasp the specific claim — someone genuinely asserting direct divine authorization for a message God did not give (Jeremiah 23:16, 21-22). Also a live, sensitive topic across charismatic/continuationist vs. cessationist traditions regarding ongoing prophetic gifting; requires denominational transparency, not a one-sided resolution.
Idols Other Gods
Approved rendering: idols / other gods
Transliteration: idols / other gods
Doctrine: Judgment for Covenant Unfaithfulness and Idolatry
Rejected alternatives: idol in the pop-culture sense (a celebrity, ‘American Idol,’ ‘she’s my idol’ — stripped of any worship/allegiance content)
Original: אֱלֹהִים אֲחֵרִים / פְּסִלִים
Category: Idolatry
CRITICAL FALSE-FRIEND DRIFT: contemporary secular English overwhelmingly uses ‘idol’ in its diluted pop-culture sense. This curriculum must explicitly restore ‘idol’ to mean an object or being given the loyalty and worship owed exclusively to God — the central term for this doctrine across the whole book (chs. 1-2, 7-8, 10-11, 13, 16, 18-19, 22, 25, 32, 35, 44).
Return Repent
Approved rendering: return / repent
Transliteration: return / repent (shuv)
Doctrine: Hope of Restoration after Exile
Rejected alternatives: turn over a new leaf (generic contemporary self-improvement idiom lacking a specific covenantal object)
Original: שׁוּב
Category: Idolatry
CRITICAL POLYSEMY RISK: a single English word family (‘return’/‘turn’) must do heavy, sometimes opposite duty depending on context — turning back to God in repentance versus turning away from God in apostasy, sometimes within the same passage. This curriculum must state clearly in each occurrence whether ‘turning toward’ or ‘turning away’ is meant.
Plans For Welfare
Approved rendering: plans for welfare, a future and a hope
Transliteration: plans for welfare, a future and a hope
Doctrine: God’s Sovereign Plans for His People
Rejected alternatives: an individual, near-term, unconditional personal guarantee (the dominant contemporary misapplication — graduation cards, décor, social media)
Original: מַחְשְׁבוֹת שָׁלוֹם וְלֹא לְרָעָה… אַחֲרִית וְתִקְוָה
Category: God’s Sovereign Plans
CRITICAL DECONTEXTUALIZATION RISK: the single most commonly misapplied verse in the book — routinely quoted alone, detached from its corporate scope (addressed to the whole exiled community), its seventy-year delayed timeline (29:10), and the accompanying command to seek the welfare of the city of present exile (29:7). Must restore both the corporate scope and the delayed timeline explicitly every time this verse is used.
The Lord Is Our Righteousness
Approved rendering: The LORD is our righteousness
Transliteration: The LORD is our righteousness (YHWH Tzidqenu)
Doctrine: Messianic Promise and the Davidic Covenant
Rejected alternatives: generic royal praise language (misses the title’s precise doctrinal weight — righteousness given, not self-generated)
Original: יְהוָה צִדְקֵנוּ
Category: Christology
OT/NT COLLISION RISK in a positive, doctrinal-continuity sense: this royal/messianic throne-name (Jeremiah 23:6; 33:16) anticipates the baseline’s Critical-risk ‘imputed righteousness’ doctrine with unusual precision. Must be connected explicitly to Romans 3:21-26 rather than left as an unglossed ancient title.
Husband Master Ambiguity
Approved rendering: though I was their husband
Transliteration: ba’alti bam
Doctrine: The New Covenant
Rejected alternatives: master (contemporary English carries slavery-era and unrelated BDSM-adjacent secular connotations that must be avoided as a primary rendering), silently picking one of the two textual traditions without comment (violates the ambiguity-handling rule)
TEXTUAL AMBIGUITY + WORDPLAY RISK at Jeremiah 31:32: the Masoretic Hebrew reads ‘though I was their husband/master’ (ba’alti bam, from the same root as the divine name Baal — a deliberate, painful wordplay English cannot reproduce), while the Septuagint reads ‘and I disregarded them.’ Both readings are defended by serious English translations. This curriculum must note both readings and their doctrinal implications rather than silently resolve the ambiguity, per the baseline’s ambiguity-handling rule.
High Risk Terms
Covenant
Approved rendering: covenant
Transliteration: covenant
Doctrine: Davidic Covenant
Rejected alternatives: a restrictive covenant (the dominant contemporary legal sense: a binding clause in a property deed, employment contract, or loan agreement)
Original: διαθήκη / בְּרִית
Category: Covenant
Most contemporary English speakers now encounter ‘covenant’ chiefly in real estate or contract law… This should be actively distinguished, not assumed understood. Inherited from Romans package. Jeremiah extension: berith derives from a root meaning ‘to cut,’ reflected literally in Jeremiah 34:18’s covenant-ratification ritual (‘passing between the pieces’); this etymology should be taught explicitly and this entry must be specified every time as to WHICH covenant is meant (Sinai/broken, new, everlasting/Davidic) rather than left as a generic religious-sounding word.
Sin
Approved rendering: sin
Transliteration: sin
Doctrine: Universal Human Accountability
Rejected alternatives: sinfully delicious / my one sin (trivialized marketing and joking usage, e.g. dessert advertising)
Original: ἁμαρτία / חַטָּאת
Category: Sin
Contemporary marketing and casual speech have trivialized ‘sin’ into a jokey synonym for a harmless indulgence… Inherited from Romans package. Jeremiah extension: the same trivialization risk and guilt-averse therapeutic-culture resistance apply directly to Jeremiah’s oracles of judgment (2:35; 3:13; 5:25) and to the New Covenant’s climactic promise that sin will be fully forgiven and not remembered (31:34).
Called
Approved rendering: called
Transliteration: called
Doctrine: Divine Calling
Original: κλητός
Category: Salvation
Context-sensitive: in Romans, ranges across apostleship, sainthood, and effectual calling to salvation. Inherited from Romans package. Jeremiah extension: in Jeremiah 1:4-10 the sense is a specific, sovereign, pre-natal appointment to prophetic ministry, reinforcing the baseline’s warning against modern ‘finding your calling’ self-selection framing with even more force, since Jeremiah has no capacity to choose before he is formed.
Calling
Approved rendering: calling
Transliteration: calling
Doctrine: Divine Calling
Rejected alternatives: finding your calling (the dominant contemporary secular sense: career vocation or personal passion, discovered through self-reflection rather than received from God)
Original: κλῆσις
Category: Salvation
Modern self-actualization culture has repurposed ‘calling’ as career vocation discovered through introspection… Inherited from Romans package. Jeremiah extension: Jeremiah’s protest (‘I do not know how to speak, for I am only a child,’ 1:6) shows the summons preceding and overriding his own sense of readiness, directly reinforcing the direction-of-agency point.
Righteousness
Approved rendering: righteousness
Transliteration: righteousness
Doctrine: Salvation
Rejected alternatives: self-righteous / holier-than-thou (the dominant connotation ‘righteous’ now carries in casual usage — smug, judgmental superiority)
Original: δικαιοσύνη / צְדָקָה
Category: Salvation
In contemporary usage, ‘righteous’ and especially ‘self-righteous’ carry a strongly negative, sanctimonious connotation… Inherited from Romans package. Jeremiah extension: chapters 23 and 33 apply this term to a coming king’s royal throne-name (‘The LORD is our righteousness’), a direct Old Testament anticipation of the baseline’s Critical-risk ‘imputed righteousness’ doctrine that must be taught in explicit connection to Romans 3:21-26.
Faith
Approved rendering: faith
Transliteration: faith
Doctrine: Faith
Rejected alternatives: faith in humanity / a leap of faith (secularized idioms meaning generic optimism or an unsupported gamble, not trust in a specific person)
Contemporary English has largely detached ‘faith’ from any specific object… Romans’ sense of specific, personal trust in Christ must be made explicit in context every time. Inherited from Romans package. Jeremiah extension: Jeremiah 17:5-8’s contrast between ‘trust in man’ and ‘trust in the LORD’ (batach, a near-synonym of pistis) reinforces the baseline’s insistence that trust must have a specific, correct object, not generic optimism.
Imputed Righteousness
Approved rendering: imputed righteousness
Transliteration: imputed righteousness
Doctrine: Justification by Faith
Rejected alternatives: earned righteousness / good-person status (the explicit rejected opposite — righteousness achieved by good behavior)
‘Imputed’ is a rare, technical, almost exclusively theological/legal word in contemporary English… Inherited from Romans package. Jeremiah extension: the royal throne-name ‘The LORD is our righteousness’ (Jeremiah 23:6; 33:16) is a direct Old Testament anticipation of this doctrine — the coming king does not merely teach or model righteousness but IS his people’s righteousness, credited rather than self-generated; this connection must be made explicit, not left implicit.
Word Of The Lord
Approved rendering: word of the LORD
Transliteration: word of the LORD
Doctrine: False Prophets versus True Prophecy
Rejected alternatives: a generic narrative transition tag (‘and then…’) that erases the formula’s authenticating function
Original: דְּבַר־יְהוָה
Category: Covenant
OBSOLESCENCE/UNDERVALUING RISK: this formula structures nearly every chapter transition in Jeremiah, but contemporary readers accustomed to skimming repeated narrative tags may read past it rather than register its authenticating, legal-oracular claim of divine authorship. Must be actively flagged as a formal claim each time it recurs, not treated as filler.
Heart
Approved rendering: heart
Transliteration: heart
Doctrine: The New Covenant
Rejected alternatives: follow your heart (contemporary self-authenticity idiom that inverts agency — God writes the law on the heart; the heart does not generate its own law)
Original: לֵב / לֵבָב
Category: New Covenant
FALSE-FRIEND DRIFT: contemporary English ‘heart’ overwhelmingly connotes emotion, whereas Hebrew lev denotes the whole inner person — mind, will, and moral character. Jeremiah 17:9 (‘the heart is deceitful above all things’) is frequently quoted in isolation as generic cynicism about human nature; it must be taught together with Jeremiah 31:33 (the law written on the heart) as diagnosis and remedy.
Know The Lord
Approved rendering: know
Transliteration: know (yada)
Doctrine: The New Covenant
Rejected alternatives: yada (transliteration rejected — collides with the unrelated ‘yada yada’ idiom for dismissive, content-free filler speech, the near-opposite of the intended meaning), know about (propositional/informational sense that misses the relational intimacy intended)
Original: יָדַע
Category: New Covenant
FALSE-FRIEND DRIFT: contemporary English ‘know’ defaults to propositional/informational knowledge. Jeremiah 31:34 promises intimate, relational, covenantal knowledge of God available to ‘the least’ and ‘the greatest’ alike. This is the same root Jeremiah uses to indict Israel for NOT knowing the LORD (2:8; 4:22; 9:3, 6); the contrast is the whole rhetorical point and must be made explicit.
Forgive
Approved rendering: forgive
Transliteration: forgive
Doctrine: The New Covenant
Rejected alternatives: let go / move on (therapeutic self-help substitutes that dilute the specifically judicial, God-to-sinner sense)
Original: סָלַח
Category: New Covenant
Full judicial pardon removing guilt, used in the Hebrew Bible exclusively of God forgiving, never of one human forgiving another. Contemporary therapeutic culture uses ‘forgive’ loosely for interpersonal reconciliation or ‘letting go,’ diluting the specifically judicial sense Jeremiah 31:34 requires — the legal-relational basis making the New Covenant’s internal transformation possible.
Harlotry
Approved rendering: harlotry
Transliteration: harlotry
Doctrine: Judgment for Covenant Unfaithfulness and Idolatry
Rejected alternatives: a softened modern synonym alone, e.g. ‘unfaithfulness,’ without retaining the severe original-register term (loses Jeremiah’s deliberate rhetorical shock)
Original: זָנָה
Category: Idolatry
To prostitute oneself; covenant-breaking idolatry figured as marital infidelity. Contemporary readers may find the sexualized judgment language shocking or collapse it into a purity-culture register unless the covenant-relational point (spiritual infidelity to a specific covenant God, not sexual shame) is made explicit. Directly informs the disputed ‘husband’ language of Jeremiah 31:32 (see husband_master_ambiguity below).
Remnant
Approved rendering: remnant
Transliteration: remnant
Doctrine: Hope of Restoration after Exile
Rejected alternatives: survivors (purely descriptive gloss that misses the theologically loaded, purposed sense the book gives it in key passages)
Original: שְׁאֵרִית
Category: Hope of Restoration
OBSOLESCENCE RISK compounded by a genuine theological ambiguity Jeremiah resolves differently across contexts: chapter 24’s two baskets of figs distinguishes a hopeful remnant (the exiles) from a doomed one (those remaining in the land or fleeing to Egypt) — a reversal of the natural reading that must be explicitly flagged.
Exile Captivity
Approved rendering: exile / captivity
Transliteration: exile / captivity
Doctrine: Hope of Restoration after Exile
Rejected alternatives: a vague metaphorical ‘feeling like an outsider’ usage (strips the specific, datable historical referent)
Original: גָּלָה / גּוֹלָה
Category: Judgment
Deportation, forced displacement — in Jeremiah, the Babylonian deportations of 605, 597, and 586 BC. Requires explicit historical grounding against a vague, metaphorical contemporary usage that would strip the term of its specific, historically datable referent central to the Judgment and Hope of Restoration doctrines.
Potter And Clay
Approved rendering: potter and clay
Transliteration: potter and clay
Doctrine: God’s Sovereign Plans for His People
Rejected alternatives: a purely unconditional-decree reading that silently overrides the passage’s own explicit conditionality (18:7-10), a purely conditional reading that silently denies God’s shaping freedom
Original: יוֹצֵר / חֹמֶר
Category: God’s Sovereign Plans
DENOMINATIONAL CONTEST: a key text in the Reformed (unconditional sovereign decree) vs. Arminian/Wesleyan (conditional, response-sensitive sovereignty) debate, directly parallel to the baseline’s ‘grace’/‘election’ notes. The passage itself explicitly ties God’s freedom to shape nations to their conditional response (18:7-10); this curriculum should state its own reading while noting the range of views.
Plans Purposes
Approved rendering: plans / purposes
Transliteration: plans / purposes (machashavah)
Doctrine: God’s Sovereign Plans for His People
Rejected alternatives: casual scheduling language (‘my plans for today’ — underweights the deliberate, weighty sense of machashavah)
Original: מַחֲשָׁבָה
Category: God’s Sovereign Plans
The same Hebrew word describes both God’s benevolent purposes and human malicious scheming (used of both within Jeremiah 18 alone, 18:11 and 18:18). Bland contemporary English ‘plans’ underweights this deliberate weight and must be distinguished from casual scheduling.
Justice And Righteousness
Approved rendering: justice and righteousness
Transliteration: justice and righteousness (mishpat u-tzedaqah)
Doctrine: Judgment for Covenant Unfaithfulness and Idolatry
Rejected alternatives: contemporary criminal-justice-system or social-justice-movement usage alone (crowds out the specifically covenantal, God-oriented sense)
Original: מִשְׁפָּט וּצְדָקָה
Category: Judgment
A fixed word-pair throughout the Prophets denoting right social and covenantal order: fair legal process (mishpat) plus right relational conduct (tzedaqah). The specifically covenantal sense must be made explicit alongside, not instead of, the personal/forensic sense inherited from the baseline ‘righteousness’ entry.
Righteous Branch
Approved rendering: the righteous Branch
Transliteration: the righteous Branch (tsemach tzadiq)
Doctrine: Messianic Promise and the Davidic Covenant
Rejected alternatives: a merely botanical image or corporate-org-chart metaphor (‘branch office’ — misses the messianic-lineage sense)
Original: צֶמַח צַדִּיק
Category: Christology
A messianic botanical metaphor — a new, legitimate growth from the apparently cut-down Davidic royal line, who will ‘reign wisely and do justice and righteousness’ (Jeremiah 23:5; 33:15). Must be connected explicitly to the baseline’s ‘David’ and ‘Messiah’ entries.
Steadfast Love
Approved rendering: steadfast love
Transliteration: steadfast love (chesed)
Doctrine: The New Covenant
Rejected alternatives: sentimental affection alone (chesed has no single adequate English word; reduction to feeling loses the covenant-bonded loyalty dimension)
Original: חֶסֶד
Category: New Covenant
Covenant-bonded, loyal, faithful love — combined with mishpat and tzedaqah in Jeremiah 9:23-24 as the qualities God delights in and in which his people should truly ‘boast.’ Direct conceptual bridge to Jeremiah 31:34’s ‘know the LORD.‘
Sour Grapes Proverb
Approved rendering: the sour grapes proverb
Transliteration: the sour grapes proverb
Doctrine: Individual Responsibility
Rejected alternatives: a blanket denial of any corporate/generational consequence of sin (overcorrects against Exodus 20:5 and other Scripture)
Original: הָאָבוֹת יֹאכְלוּ בֹסֶר… אִישׁ בַּעֲוֹנוֹ יָמוּת
Category: Individual Responsibility
A rejected popular proverb implying children merely suffer for their parents’ sins with no personal accountability of their own; Jeremiah 31:29-30 states instead that each will die for his own iniquity. Must be balanced against the New Covenant’s equally emphasized corporate ‘people of God’ identity (31:1, 31:33).
Everlasting Covenant
Approved rendering: everlasting covenant
Transliteration: everlasting covenant (berith olam)
Doctrine: The New Covenant
Original: בְּרִית עוֹלָם
Category: Covenant
A covenant explicitly marked as permanent, unlike the broken, conditional Sinai covenant of Jeremiah 31:32 (Jeremiah 32:40). The permanence claim intersects directly with the baseline’s Assurance of Salvation denominational-contest note (unconditional-permanent vs. conditional vs. process-oriented views of assurance).
Fulfillment Test For Prophecy
Approved rendering: the fulfillment test for prophecy
Transliteration: the fulfillment test for prophecy
Doctrine: False Prophets versus True Prophecy
Rejected alternatives: an indefinite-deferral loophole for unfalsifiable near-term claims (a misuse this curriculum must warn against)
Original: בְּבֹא דְבַר הַנָּבִיא יִוָּדַע הַנָּבִיא אֲשֶׁר־שְׁלָחוֹ יְהוָה בֶּאֱמֶת
Category: False Prophets and True Prophecy
The Deuteronomy 18:22-rooted criterion for distinguishing true from false prophecy: predictive accuracy, tested over time (Jeremiah 28:9, confirmed when Hananiah dies within the year, 28:16-17). Must be explicitly presented as necessary but only retrospectively available.
Circumcise Your Heart
Approved rendering: circumcise your heart
Transliteration: circumcise your heart
Doctrine: The New Covenant
Rejected alternatives: a purely ritual/ceremonial reading detached from moral-spiritual transformation
Metaphorical extension of the physical covenant sign (Genesis 17) to inward moral/spiritual reality (Jeremiah 4:4). Anticipates Deuteronomy 30:6 and Romans 2:29’s ‘circumcision of the heart’ — the same inward-transformation theme that culminates in 31:33’s law written on the heart; requires care in a mixed general-audience setting but should not be skipped.
Medium Risk Terms
God
Approved rendering: God
Transliteration: God
Doctrine: Deity of Christ
Rejected alternatives: a higher power (a common, deliberately vague contemporary substitute, e.g. in recovery-program language), the universe (a New-Age-influenced impersonal substitute, e.g. ‘the universe has a plan for you’)
Original: θεός / אֱלֹהִים / יהוה
Category: God
Contemporary spiritual-but-not-religious culture often substitutes deliberately vague or impersonal alternatives (‘a higher power,’ ‘the universe’) for a personal, specific, self-revealing God; Romans’ God is not a placeholder concept but the specific God who raised Jesus from the dead (1:4) and is personally engaged with creation (1:19-20). Inherited from Romans package. Jeremiah extension: Jeremiah 10’s polemic against lifeless idols (‘the living God’ vs. wood and metal, 10:3-9) gives this term unusual apologetic weight in this curriculum and must be taught alongside the new ‘LORD (YHWH)’ entry below, not treated as interchangeable with it without comment.
Law
Approved rendering: law
Transliteration: law
Doctrine: Fulfillment of Prophecy
Original: νόμος / תּוֹרָה
Category: Covenant
Contemporary Western readers live in a highly legalistic, litigious culture where ‘the law’ primarily evokes civil and criminal law… Inherited from Romans package. Jeremiah extension: Jeremiah 31:33 promises the very same torah once written on stone tablets will be written on the heart; the radical claim that the same law becomes internal (continuity of content, discontinuity of location) requires active teaching, not passive reuse of the Romans-context gloss alone.
Holy
Approved rendering: holy
Transliteration: holy
Doctrine: Sanctification
Rejected alternatives: holier-than-thou (negative idiom for sanctimonious superiority), holy cow / holy moly (mere exclamations, entirely secularized)
Original: ἅγιος / קָדוֹשׁ
Category: Sanctification
‘Holy’ survives mainly in negative idiom or as a content-free exclamation… must be actively re-taught rather than assumed familiar. Inherited from Romans package. Jeremiah extension: Jeremiah 1:5’s ‘I consecrated you’ (hiqdashtikha) applies this same root to a pre-natal prophetic commissioning, foundational for the Weeping Prophet doctrine — the call precedes and outlasts Jeremiah’s own willingness (1:6).
Prophet
Approved rendering: prophet
Transliteration: prophet
Doctrine: Inspiration of Scripture
Rejected alternatives: a tech prophet / prophet of doom (secular usage for a confident forecaster or a pessimistic commentator)
Original: προφήτης / נָבִיא
Category: Covenant
Secular usage applies ‘prophet’ loosely to any confident public forecaster… diluting the specific sense of one who speaks God’s own revealed word. Inherited from Romans package. Jeremiah extension: Jeremiah 1:5 extends the office to ‘a prophet to the nations,’ anchoring the Oracles Against the Nations (chs. 46-51) as integral to, not a digression from, Jeremiah’s commission.
Prophecy
Approved rendering: prophecy
Transliteration: prophecy
Doctrine: Fulfillment of Prophecy
Rejected alternatives: a self-fulfilling prophecy (a common secular psychological/sociological idiom unrelated to divine revelation)
‘A self-fulfilling prophecy’ is a well-known secular idiom describing a belief that causes its own fulfillment through behavior, unrelated to God-inspired predictive prophecy. Inherited from Romans package. Jeremiah extension: Jeremiah’s ‘seventy years’ prediction (25:11-12; 29:10) is a concrete, falsifiable test case later confirmed historically (2 Chronicles 36:21; Ezra 1:1), grounding this doctrine in verifiable history rather than vague future hope.
Israel
Approved rendering: Israel
Transliteration: Israel
Doctrine: Unity of Jews and Gentiles
Original: יִשְׂרָאֵל
Category: Covenant
Standard proper name; note the modern nation-state of Israel is a live, politically contested contemporary topic… context should clarify when the biblical covenant people, not contemporary geopolitics, is meant. Inherited from Romans package. Jeremiah extension: Jeremiah 31:31’s ‘house of Israel and house of Judah’ signals the New Covenant’s scope as reunifying the whole covenant people, its two historic divided kingdoms, not one surviving fragment alone.
Glory
Approved rendering: glory
Transliteration: glory
Doctrine: Deity of Christ
Rejected alternatives: glory days (nostalgic secular usage for past success), a glory hound (a pejorative term for self-seeking attention)
Original: δόξα / כָּבוֹד
Category: God
‘Glory’ survives mainly in nostalgic or self-seeking, even pejorative secular usage — nearly inverted from God’s radiant, worship-worthy glory. Inherited from Romans package. Jeremiah extension: Jeremiah 2:11 laments that Israel ‘exchanged their glory for that which does not profit’ — the same nostalgic/self-seeking secular drift documented in the baseline applies directly to this indictment of idolatry.
Peace
Approved rendering: peace
Transliteration: peace
Doctrine: Peace with God
Rejected alternatives: world peace / inner peace (the dominant secular senses: political non-conflict or psychological calm)
Original: εἰρήνη / שָׁלוֹם
Category: Salvation
‘Peace’ is heavily used in political and therapeutic senses in contemporary English. Inherited from Romans package. Jeremiah extension: the ironic indictment ‘peace, peace, when there is no peace’ (6:14; 8:11) is often quoted in contemporary English completely detached from its original false-prophecy context; the specifically religious charge — prophets lying about God’s actual verdict — must be restored every time this idiom is used.
Messiah
Approved rendering: Messiah
Transliteration: Messiah
Doctrine: Messianic Promise
Rejected alternatives: a messiah complex (a pop-psychology pejorative term for grandiose self-importance)
‘A messiah complex’ is a common mild pop-psychology pejorative… the term’s specific, positive, Jewish-messianic-fulfillment sense should be actively restated. Inherited from Romans package. Jeremiah extension: Jeremiah 23:5-6 and 33:14-18’s ‘righteous Branch’ and ‘the LORD is our righteousness’ are among the Old Testament’s clearest messianic royal-title texts and should be taught as direct anticipations of this doctrine.
Sanctification
Approved rendering: sanctification
Transliteration: sanctification
Doctrine: Sanctification
OBSOLESCENCE RISK rather than false-friend risk: ‘sanctification’ is essentially unused in ordinary contemporary English outside specifically religious contexts. Inherited from Romans package. Jeremiah extension: the New Covenant’s promise of an internalized, Spirit-enabled law (31:33) is the Old Testament conceptual root of this New Testament doctrine and should be taught as diagnosis (17:9, the deceitful heart) and remedy (31:33, the transformed heart) held together.
Seed Of David
Approved rendering: seed of David
Transliteration: seed of David
Doctrine: Davidic Covenant
Rejected alternatives: descendant of David (an acceptable modern-register gloss)
‘Seed’ in the sense of ‘offspring/lineage’ is archaic in ordinary modern English… ‘descendant of David’ is an acceptable plain-language gloss, but the older phrase is worth retaining given its familiarity in English hymnody. Inherited from Romans package. Jeremiah extension: Jeremiah 22:30 and 33:17-22 both directly engage the apparent jeopardy and ultimate perpetuity of David’s line during and after the exile, providing the historical crisis this baseline term’s New Testament fulfillment answers.
Iniquity
Approved rendering: iniquity
Transliteration: iniquity
Doctrine: The New Covenant
Original: עָוֹן
Category: Sin
OBSOLESCENCE RISK rather than false-friend risk: rare, formal, archaic-sounding English, requiring definition but unlikely to be confidently misread, a lower-risk profile than ‘sin.’ Denotes the sinful act, its guilt, or its resulting punishment, all three senses bound together (a state of liability before God).
Dream
Approved rendering: dream
Transliteration: dream
Doctrine: False Prophets versus True Prophecy
Rejected alternatives: meaningful personal guidance (contemporary spiritual-but-not-religious casual treatment of dreams, which blurs Jeremiah’s contrast)
Original: חֲלוֹם
Category: Covenant
A claimed vehicle of revelation, explicitly contrasted in Jeremiah 23:28 with the authenticated ‘word’ of God. Readers must distinguish claimed private revelation (dreams cited by false prophets, 23:25-32) from the authenticated prophetic word.
Oracle Burden
Approved rendering: oracle / burden
Transliteration: oracle / burden (massa)
Doctrine: False Prophets versus True Prophecy
Rejected alternatives: an obscure technical label with no explained wordplay (loses Jeremiah’s deliberate double meaning)
Original: מַשָּׂא
Category: Covenant
A weighty prophetic pronouncement; the same Hebrew word also means a literal physical ‘burden/load,’ a deliberate wordplay in Jeremiah 23:33-38 lost in English translation and requiring explicit explanation rather than assumption.
Backsliding
Approved rendering: faithless / backsliding
Transliteration: faithless / backsliding
Doctrine: Judgment for Covenant Unfaithfulness and Idolatry
Original: מְשֻׁבָה / בֹּגְדָה
Category: Idolatry
Apostasy, treachery — covenant unfaithfulness personified as an unfaithful spouse. Names the moral character behind the divorce metaphor of chapters 2-3; related to the shuv (‘turn’) root’s polysemy risk documented in the return_repent entry below.
Restore The Fortunes
Approved rendering: restore the fortunes
Transliteration: restore the fortunes (shuv shevut)
Doctrine: Hope of Restoration after Exile
Rejected alternatives: merely ‘bring back the exiles’ (too narrow; misses the fuller social, economic, relational, spiritual reversal intended)
Original: שׁוּב שְׁבוּת
Category: Hope of Restoration
A fixed idiomatic phrase used roughly ten times in Jeremiah meaning the full reversal of a nation’s calamity. Risk of narrowing it to geographic return alone; also applied even to Judah’s historic enemies (Moab, Ammon, Elam), showing God’s restorative purposes extending beyond the covenant people alone.
Seventy Years
Approved rendering: seventy years
Transliteration: seventy years
Doctrine: Hope of Restoration after Exile
Rejected alternatives: unrelated numerological speculation (a genuine risk given contemporary popular prophecy-focused media)
Original: שִׁבְעִים שָׁנָה
Category: Covenant
A specific, predicted, and later historically fulfilled length of Babylonian exile (cf. Daniel 9:2; 2 Chronicles 36:21; Ezra 1:1). This curriculum should keep the number tied to its specific, historically fulfilled referent as a key fulfillment-test case.
Weeping Lament
Approved rendering: weeping / lament
Transliteration: weeping / lament (qinah)
Doctrine: The Weeping Prophet and the Cost of Faithful Ministry
Rejected alternatives: mere sadness/mood (misses qinah as a specific, technical funeral-poetry genre)
Original: בְּכִי / קִינָה
Category: Ministry
OBSOLESCENCE RISK: ‘lament’/‘dirge’ as literary-genre terms are unfamiliar to most contemporary readers and need to be introduced as a specific poetic form (not merely a mood), foundational to this doctrine — Jeremiah grieves coming judgment personally rather than announcing it dispassionately.
Jeremiahs Confessions
Approved rendering: Jeremiah’s confessions
Transliteration: Jeremiah’s confessions
Doctrine: The Weeping Prophet and the Cost of Faithful Ministry
Rejected alternatives: confession of personal sin (a false-friend collision with the Catholic sacramental sense of ‘confession’)
Original: no single Hebrew term; scholarly genre label
Category: Ministry
Honest, sometimes accusatory prayer addressed directly to God (11:18-23; 12:1-6; 15:10-21; 17:14-18; 18:18-23; 20:7-18). Contemporary devotional culture may find raw complaint to God theologically uncomfortable; this curriculum should explicitly affirm it as a legitimate, faithful biblical prayer form.
Seek The Welfare Of The City
Approved rendering: seek the welfare of the city
Transliteration: seek the welfare of the city
Doctrine: Hope of Restoration after Exile
Rejected alternatives: generic civic-mindedness (under-reads the radical nature of the command — pray for the pagan power that conquered and exiled you)
Original: דִּרְשׁוּ אֶת־שְׁלוֹם הָעִיר
Category: Hope of Restoration
The command to actively pursue the flourishing, including in prayer, of the pagan, foreign city of exile (Jeremiah 29:7). Directly relevant to how contemporary Christians relate to surrounding non-covenant society.
Sabbath
Approved rendering: Sabbath
Transliteration: Sabbath
Doctrine: Judgment for Covenant Unfaithfulness and Idolatry
Rejected alternatives: an unstated denominational resolution on New Covenant applicability (avoid silently favoring Sabbatarian or non-Sabbatarian positions)
Original: שַׁבָּת
Category: Covenant
The weekly covenant sign of rest commanded in the Law, made a concrete test case of covenant obedience in Jeremiah 17:19-27. Note the historical practice and its argumentative role in Jeremiah without importing an unstated denominational resolution.
Shepherds
Approved rendering: shepherds
Transliteration: shepherds
Doctrine: False Prophets versus True Prophecy
Original: רֹעִים
Category: Leadership
Standard ancient-Near-Eastern metaphor for kings/leaders responsible for the people’s welfare (Jeremiah 23:1-4, ‘woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter’). Requires brief pastoral/agrarian explanation; positive resonance with the New Testament’s ‘Good Shepherd’ (John 10) should be taught as fulfillment, not assumed automatically recognized.
Day Of The Lord
Approved rendering: the day of the LORD / day of calamity
Transliteration: the day of the LORD / day of calamity (yom eid)
Doctrine: Judgment for Covenant Unfaithfulness and Idolatry
Rejected alternatives: judgment restricted to Israel/Judah alone (misses the universal scope of chs. 46-51)
Original: יוֹם אֵיד
Category: Judgment
A fixed prophetic formula for a decisive moment of divine judgment, applied in Jeremiah 46-51 to Egypt, Philistia, Moab, Ammon, Edom, Damascus, Elam, and climactically Babylon — extends the Judgment doctrine to all nations, not Israel/Judah alone.
Vengeance Of The Lord
Approved rendering: the vengeance of the LORD
Transliteration: the vengeance of the LORD (niqmat YHWH)
Doctrine: Judgment for Covenant Unfaithfulness and Idolatry
Rejected alternatives: disproportionate personal retaliation (the dominant contemporary secular sense of ‘vengeance,’ e.g. revenge-narrative tropes)
Original: נִקְמַת יְהוָה
Category: Judgment
Righteous, judicial retribution, particularly prominent in the Babylon oracle (Jeremiah 50-51) as payback for Babylon’s own cruelty to God’s people. The specifically judicial, proportionate sense must be distinguished, paralleling the baseline’s caution about secular ‘power’ discourse.
Cup Of Wrath
Approved rendering: cup of wrath
Transliteration: cup of wrath (kos hachemah)
Doctrine: Judgment for Covenant Unfaithfulness and Idolatry
Rejected alternatives: capricious anger (misses the morally serious, justly proportionate character of the judgment described)
Original: כּוֹס הַחֵמָה
Category: Judgment
Vivid image of divine judgment poured out on all nations, not Judah alone (Jeremiah 25:15-29). Contemporary readers may find ‘wrath’ language jarring against a therapeutic-culture default resistant to guilt/wrath language; should be presented as morally serious and just.
Abomination
Approved rendering: abomination
Transliteration: abomination (to’evah)
Doctrine: Judgment for Covenant Unfaithfulness and Idolatry
Rejected alternatives: unrelated contemporary culture-war usage (should not be imported into Jeremiah’s specific idolatry context)
Original: תּוֹעֵבָה
Category: Idolatry
A ‘detestable thing,’ ritually and morally repulsive to God — ranges across idolatry and other forbidden practices. This curriculum should keep the term’s use anchored to its Jeremiah context (idolatry, chs. 2, 6-7, 16, 32, 44).
Den Of Robbers
Approved rendering: den of robbers
Transliteration: den of robbers
Doctrine: Judgment for Covenant Unfaithfulness and Idolatry
Rejected alternatives: the Temple being literally robbed (misses the original point: false institutional confidence in ritual/slogan religion)
Original: מְעָרַת פָּרִצִים
Category: Judgment
A hideout where criminals feel safe between crimes; Jeremiah 7:11’s charge against the Temple as a false refuge presumed safe despite ongoing covenant violation. Quoted by Jesus (Matthew 21:13; Mark 11:17; Luke 19:46); readers familiar with the NT quotation may not know its Jeremiah origin or original point.
Queen Of Heaven
Approved rendering: the Queen of Heaven
Transliteration: the Queen of Heaven (malekhet hashamayim)
Doctrine: Judgment for Covenant Unfaithfulness and Idolatry
Original: מְלֶכֶת הַשָּׁמַיִם
Category: Idolatry
A specific astral/fertility goddess whom Judean refugees in Egypt openly continued to worship, defiantly citing her supposed past benefits (Jeremiah 44:17-18). Evidence that judgment/trauma alone did not produce genuine repentance, underscoring why the New Covenant’s internal heart-transformation is God’s actual solution to persistent idolatry.
Rachel Weeping For Her Children
Approved rendering: Rachel weeping for her children
Transliteration: Rachel weeping for her children
Doctrine: The Weeping Prophet and the Cost of Faithful Ministry
Original: רָחֵל מְבַכָּה עַל־בָּנֶיהָ
Category: Hope of Restoration
The matriarch Rachel personified as weeping over the exile of her descendants (Jeremiah 31:15). Quoted in Matthew 2:18 of Herod’s slaughter of the infants; this curriculum should explicitly cross-reference the move from national exile-grief to its specific historical fulfillment.
Passing Between The Pieces
Approved rendering: passing between the pieces
Transliteration: passing between the pieces
Doctrine: The New Covenant
Original: עָבְרוּ בֵין בִּתְרֵי הָעֵגֶל
Category: Covenant
The ancient covenant-ratification ritual (cf. Genesis 15) of walking between the halves of a slaughtered animal, symbolically invoking a similar fate on covenant-breakers (Jeremiah 34:18-20). Connects directly back to the ‘cut a covenant’ root meaning behind berith.
Way Of Life Way Of Death
Approved rendering: the way of life and the way of death
Transliteration: the way of life and the way of death
Doctrine: Individual Responsibility
Rejected alternatives: a purely spiritual/eternal-destiny formula (misses the immediate historical referent — surrender to or resistance against Babylon)
Original: דֶּרֶךְ הַחַיִּים… דֶּרֶךְ הַמָּוֶת
Category: Individual Responsibility
A binary-choice formula (cf. Deuteronomy 30:15, 19) presented to King Zedekiah and the people regarding the Babylonian siege (Jeremiah 21:8-10). Both the immediate historical sense and any later NT-influenced eternal-destiny usage should be explicitly distinguished.
Go Out Of Her Midst My People
Approved rendering: “go out of her midst, my people”
Transliteration: “go out of her midst, my people”
Doctrine: Judgment for Covenant Unfaithfulness and Idolatry
Original: צְאוּ מִתּוֹכָהּ עַמִּי
Category: Judgment
Command to God’s people still resident in Babylon to flee before its judgment falls (Jeremiah 51:45), echoing the Exodus pattern. Direct link to Revelation 18:4, which quotes this nearly verbatim of eschatological ‘Babylon’ — should be explicitly cross-referenced.
Certificate Of Divorce
Approved rendering: certificate of divorce
Transliteration: certificate of divorce (sefer keritut)
Doctrine: Idolatry as Covenant Infidelity (Marriage Metaphor)
A legal instrument formally ending a marriage (cf. Deuteronomy 24:1); God’s shocking claim (Jeremiah 3:8) that he has legally ‘divorced’ faithless Israel (the northern kingdom) dramatizes the gravity of covenant rupture, later reversed by the New Covenant promise. Requires brief legal/cultural background for readers unfamiliar with ancient Near Eastern divorce procedure.
Yoke
Approved rendering: yoke
Transliteration: yoke
Doctrine: False Prophets versus True Prophecy
Rejected alternatives: the gentler NT idiom ‘my yoke is easy’ (Matthew 11:30) substituted without distinguishing Jeremiah’s political-submission-to-judgment sense
Farming implement worn by Jeremiah as a sign-act (chs. 27-28) symbolizing submission to Babylonian rule as God’s appointed, temporary judgment. Submitting to God’s ordained judgment, even via a pagan empire, is framed as wisdom, not faithlessness, provoking Hananiah’s false counter-prophecy.
Sign Act Genre
Approved rendering: sign-act
Transliteration: sign-act
Doctrine: False Prophets versus True Prophecy
Rejected alternatives: mere theatrical illustration (misses the genre’s status as authoritative, embodied revelation, not merely a teaching aid)
Scholarly genre label for a prophet’s symbolic enacted parable (the ruined loincloth, ch. 13; the broken flask, ch. 19; the yoke, chs. 27-28; the field purchase, ch. 32), establishing that True Prophecy in this book includes enacted, not only spoken, revelation. Should be explicitly introduced as a category the first time it appears.
Low Risk Terms
David
Approved rendering: David
Transliteration: David
Doctrine: Davidic Covenant
Original: דָּוִד
Category: Covenant
Standard proper name; comparatively stable, though most contemporary readers’ independent knowledge of David likely comes from the David-and-Goliath narrative alone. Inherited from Romans package. Jeremiah extension: Jeremiah 33:17-22 reaffirms the perpetual Davidic covenant even amid the monarchy’s apparent collapse, anchoring the messianic hope realized in Christ (Luke 1:32-33).
Fire Shut Up In My Bones
Approved rendering: fire shut up in my bones
Transliteration: fire shut up in my bones
Doctrine: The Weeping Prophet and the Cost of Faithful Ministry
Rejected alternatives: romanticized compulsion without honoring the genuine anguish of 20:14-18
Original: אֵשׁ בֹּעֶרֶת עָצֻר בְּעַצְמֹתָי
Category: Ministry
Jeremiah’s compulsion to speak God’s word despite personal cost, even after trying to stop prophesying (Jeremiah 20:9). Vivid and largely self-explanatory; should be paired with 20:14-18’s honest anguish so the cost is not romanticized.
Lifted Up His Head
Approved rendering: lifted up his head
Transliteration: lifted up his head
Doctrine: Hope of Restoration after Exile
Original: נָשָׂא אֶת־רֹאשׁ יְהוֹיָכִין
Category: Hope of Restoration
Idiom for restoring someone’s honor and status, applied to the exiled King Jehoiachin’s unexpected favor at the Babylonian court (Jeremiah 52:31-34). Easily overlooked; should be explicitly connected to this doctrine as the book’s intentional final word of grace.
Referenced passages