from Jack Lundbom, Jeremiah 1-20, in the Anchor Bible (1999).
(I have used the word order of Hebrew. )
11 Thus shall ye say unto them,
The gods that the heavens and the earth not have made ,
shall perish from the earth and from under the heavens these.
Lundbom says, that this single verse in Aramaic is the only Aramaic in the whole prophecy. There is actually a double chiasmus:
1. heavens/earth/earth/heavens/ and
2. gods/make/perish/gods.
There is a pun on abadu (make) and yebadu (perish).
He says, “the pun may explain why this verse is untranslated”.
Absolutely untranslated to maintain the wordplay – something I suddenly noticed the significance of in 1988 in a grad school course Biblical Aramaic exam that including translating this verse…. could find it in NO commentaries at the time, so happy to see someone has noticed it since.
Added note: the Aramaic is ALSO a fit language for this little message to the NATIONS, using what was the lingua franca of the Near East at that time (even the Babylonians would use a form of Aramaic instead of their own Semitic language [Akkadian/Assyro-Babylonian] for many official documents).
I use blb.org when trying to relate to the original Hebrew as my understanding of Hebrew is not extensive. It is my understanding that when trying to be conscious of the original Hebrew word order, that it is better to use Reverse Interlinear (or Reverse Transliteration) than Forward Transliteration. The result is a parallelism rather than a chiasm.
11 Thus shall ye say unto them,
A. The gods H426
B. that have not made H5648 (ăḇaḏ)
C. the heavens and the earth,
A’ They
B’ shall perish H7 (ăḇaḏ)
C’ from the earth, and from under these heavens.
There are a couple of mistakes and misses in the above. Here’s a fuller breakdown of the chiasm with transliteration of the Aramaic + translation. Note that there is NO actual word “they” in the middle (that is supplied for translation purposes), that as part of the chiasm “heavens” and “earth are reversed in the two halves, and that you need to separate out the FINAL word “these” (‘elleh, which sound very like the word for “gods” at the start)
btw, though this all matches the original post, I have no idea why anyone would break out pieces of it and label it a *double* chiasm. It is just a one very simple A to D then D’ to A’ chiasm.
A ‘elahayya (the gods)
B di-shmayya (that the heavens)
C w’arqa (and the earth)
D l’ `abadu (have not made)
D’ y’bdu (shall perish)
C’ me’ar`a (from the earth)
B’ umin techot shmayya (and from under heavens)
A’ ‘elleh (these)