Yeremia 6:26

6:26 So I said, ¹  “Oh, my dear people, ²  put on sackcloth

and roll in ashes.

Mourn with painful sobs

as though you had lost your only child.

For any moment now ³  that destructive army ⁴ 

will come against us.”

Amos 8:10

8:10 I will turn your festivals into funerals, ⁵ 

and all your songs into funeral dirges.

I will make everyone wear funeral clothes ⁶ 

and cause every head to be shaved bald. ⁷ 

I will make you mourn as if you had lost your only son; ⁸ 

when it ends it will indeed have been a bitter day. ⁹ 

Zakharia 12:10

12:10 “I will pour out on the kingship ¹⁰  of David and the population of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and supplication so that they will look to me, ¹¹  the one they have pierced. They will lament for him as one laments for an only son, and there will be a bitter cry for him like the bitter cry for a firstborn. ¹² 

[6:26]  ¹ tn These words are not in the text but are implicit from the context.

[6:26]  ² tn Heb “daughter of my people.” For the translation given here see 4:11 and the translator’s note there.

[6:26]  ³ tn Heb “suddenly.”

[6:26]  ⁴ tn Heb “the destroyer.”

[8:10]  ⁵ tn Heb “mourning.”

[8:10]  ⁶ tn Heb “I will place sackcloth on all waists.”

[8:10]  sn Mourners wore sackcloth (funeral clothes) as an outward expression of grief.

[8:10]  ⁷ tn Heb “and make every head bald.” This could be understood in a variety of ways, while the ritual act of mourning typically involved shaving the head (although occasionally the hair could be torn out as a sign of mourning).

[8:10]  sn Shaving the head or tearing out one’s hair was a ritual act of mourning. See Lev 21:5; Deut 14:1; Isa 3:24; 15:2; Jer 47:5; 48:37; Ezek 7:18; 27:31; Mic 1:16.

[8:10]  ⁸ tn Heb “I will make it like the mourning for an only son.”

[8:10]  ⁹ tn Heb “and its end will be like a bitter day.” The Hebrew preposition כְּ (kaf) sometimes carries the force of “in every respect,” indicating identity rather than mere comparison.

[12:10]  ¹⁰ tn Or “dynasty”; Heb “house.”

[12:10]  ¹¹ tc Because of the difficulty of the concept of the mortal piercing of God, the subject of this clause, and the shift of pronoun from “me” to “him” in the next, many mss read אַלֵי אֵת אֲשֶׁר (’ale ’et ’asher, “to the one whom,” a reading followed by NAB, NRSV) rather than the MT’s אֵלַי אֵת אֲשֶׁר (’ela ’et ’asher, “to me whom”). The reasons for such alternatives, however, are clear – they are motivated by scribes who found such statements theologically objectionable – and they should be rejected in favor of the more difficult reading (lectio difficilior) of the MT.

[12:10]  tn Or “on me.”

[12:10]  ¹² tn The Hebrew term בְּכוֹר (bÿkhor, “firstborn”), translated usually in the LXX by πρωτότοκος (prwtotokos), has unmistakable messianic overtones as the use of the Greek term in the NT to describe Jesus makes clear (cf. Col 1:15, 18). Thus, the idea of God being pierced sets the stage for the fatal wounding of Jesus, the Messiah and the Son of God (cf. John 19:37; Rev 1:7). Note that some English translations supply “son” from the context (e.g., NIV, TEV, NLT).