Ratapan 1:6

ו (Vav)

1:6 All of Daughter Zion’s ¹  splendor ² 

has departed. ³ 

Her leaders became like deer;

they found no pasture,

so they were too exhausted to escape ⁴ 

from the hunter. ⁵ 

Daniel 11:15

11:15 Then the king of the north will advance and will build siege mounds and capture a well-fortified city. ⁶  The forces of the south will not prevail, not even his finest contingents. ⁷  They will have no strength to prevail.

[1:6]  ¹ tn Heb “the daughter of Zion.” This phrase is used as an epithet for the city. “Daughter” may seem extraneous in English but consciously joins the various epithets and metaphors of Jerusalem as a woman, a device used to evoke sympathy from the reader.

[1:6]  ² tn Heb “all her splendor.” The 3rd person feminine singular pronominal suffix (“her”) functions as a subjective genitive: “everything in which she gloried.” The noun הָדָר (hadar, “splendor”) is used of personal and impersonal referents in whom Israel gloried: Ephraim (Deut 33:17), Jerusalem (Isa 5:14), Carmel (Isa 35:2). The context focuses on the exile of Zion’s children (1:5c) and leaders (1:6bc). The departure of the children and leaders of Jerusalem going away into exile suggested to the writer the departure of the glory of Israel.

[1:6]  ³ tn Heb “It has gone out from the daughter of Zion, all her splendor.”

[1:6]  ⁴ tn Heb “they fled with no strength” (וַיֵּלְכוּ בְלֹא־כֹחַ, vayelÿkhu bÿlo’-khoakh).

[1:6]  ⁵ tn Heb “the pursuer” or “chaser.” The term רָדַף (“to chase, pursue”) here refers to a hunter (e.g., 1 Sam 26:20). It is used figuratively (hypocatastasis) of military enemies who “hunt down” those who flee for their lives (e.g., Gen 14:15; Lev 26:7, 36; Judg 4:22; Ps 7:6; 69:27; 83:16; 143:3; Isa 17:13; Lam 5:5; Amos 1:11).

[11:15]  ⁶ sn This well-fortified city is apparently Sidon. Its capture from the Ptolemies by Antiochus the Great was a strategic victory for the Seleucid kingdom.

[11:15]  ⁷ tn Or “choice troops” (BDB 104 s.v. מִבְחָר), or “elite troops” (HALOT 542 s.v. מִבְחָר).