18:16 So their land will become an object of horror. 1
People will forever hiss out their scorn over it.
All who pass that way will be filled with horror
and will shake their heads in derision. 2
51:37 Babylon will become a heap of ruins.
Jackals will make their home there. 3
It will become an object of horror and of hissing scorn,
a place where no one lives. 4
27:36 The traders among the peoples hiss at you;
you have become a horror, and will be no more.’”
2:6 “But all these nations will someday taunt him 5
and ridicule him with proverbial sayings: 6
‘The one who accumulates what does not belong to him is as good as dead 7
(How long will this go on?) 8 –
he who gets rich by extortion!’ 9
1 tn There may be a deliberate double meaning involved here. The word translated here “an object of horror” refers both to destruction (cf. 2:15; 4:17) and the horror or dismay that accompanies it (cf. 5:30; 8:21). The fact that there is no conjunction or preposition in front of the noun “hissing” that follows this suggests that the reaction is in view here, not the cause.
2 tn Heb “an object of lasting hissing. All who pass that way will be appalled and shake their head.”
sn The actions of “shaking of the head” and “hissing” were obviously gestures of scorn and derision. See Lam 2:15-16.
3 tn Heb “a heap of ruins, a haunt for jackals.” Compare 9:11.
4 tn Heb “without an inhabitant.”
5 tn Heb “Will not these, all of them, take up a taunt against him…?” The rhetorical question assumes the response, “Yes, they will.” The present translation brings out the rhetorical force of the question by rendering it as an affirmation.
6 tn Heb “and a mocking song, riddles, against him? And one will say.”
7 tn Heb “Woe [to] the one who increases [what is] not his.” The Hebrew term הוֹי (hoy, “woe,” “ah”) was used in funeral laments and carries the connotation of death.
8 tn This question is interjected parenthetically, perhaps to express rhetorically the pain and despair felt by the Babylonians’ victims.
9 tn Heb “and the one who makes himself heavy [i.e., wealthy] [by] debts.” Though only appearing in the first line, the term הוֹי (hoy) is to be understood as elliptical in the second line.