Yesaya 22:3

22:3 ¹ All your leaders ran away together –

they fled to a distant place;

all your refugees ²  were captured together –

they were captured without a single arrow being shot. ³ 

Yeremia 38:23

38:23 “All your wives and your children will be turned over to the Babylonians. ⁴  You yourself will not escape from them but will be captured by the ⁵  king of Babylon. This city will be burned down.” ⁶ 

[22:3]  ¹ tn Verse 3 reads literally, “All your leaders ran away, apart from a bow they were captured, all your found ones were captured together, to a distant place they fled.” J. N. Oswalt (Isaiah [NICOT], 1:403, n. 3) suggests that the lines of the verse are arranged chiastically; lines 1 and 4 go together, while lines 2 and 3 are parallel. To translate the lines in the order they appear in the Hebrew text is misleading to the English reader, who is likely unfamiliar with, or at least insensitive to, chiastic parallelism. Consequently, the translation above arranges the lines as follows: line 1 (Hebrew) = line 1 (in translation); line 2 (Hebrew) = line 4 (in translation); line 3 (Hebrew) = line 3 (in translation); line 4 (Hebrew) = line 2 (in translation).

[22:3]  ² tn Heb “all your found ones.” To achieve tighter parallelism (see “your leaders”) some prefer to emend the form to אַמִּיצַיִךְ (’ammitsayikh, “your strong ones”) or to נֶאֱמָצַיִךְ (ne’ematsayikh, “your strengthened ones”).

[22:3]  ³ tn Heb “apart from [i.e., without] a bow they were captured”; cf. NAB, NRSV “without the use of a bow.”

[38:23]  ⁴ tn Heb “Chaldeans.” See the study note on 21:4 for explanation.

[38:23]  ⁵ tn Heb “you yourself will not escape from their hand but will be seized by [caught in] the hand of the king of Babylon.” Neither use of “hand” is natural to the English idiom.

[38:23]  ⁶ tc This translation follows the reading of the Greek version and a few Hebrew mss. The majority of the Hebrew mss read “and you will burn down this city.” This reading is accepted by the majority of modern commentaries and English versions. Few of the commentaries, however, bother to explain the fact that the particle אֶת (’et), which normally marks the accusative object, is functioning here as the subject. For this point of grammar see BDB 85 s.v. I אֵת 1.b. Or this may be another case where אֵת introduces a new subject (see BDB 85 s.v. אֵת 3.α and see usage in 27:8; 36:22).