Kejadian 10:4-5

10:4 The sons of Javan were Elishah, ¹  Tarshish, ²  the Kittim, ³  and the Dodanim. ⁴  10:5 From these the coastlands of the nations were separated into their lands, every one according to its language, according to their families, by their nations.

Yeremia 2:10

2:10 Go west ⁵  across the sea to the coasts of Cyprus ⁶  and see.

Send someone east to Kedar ⁷  and have them look carefully.

See if such a thing as this has ever happened:

Yeremia 31:10

31:10 Hear what the Lord has to say, O nations.

Proclaim it in the faraway lands along the sea.

Say, “The one who scattered Israel will regather them.

He will watch over his people like a shepherd watches over his flock.”

Yehezkiel 27:6

27:6 They made your oars from oaks of Bashan;

they made your deck ⁸  with cypresses ⁹  from the Kittean isles. ¹⁰ 

Zefanya 2:11

2:11 The Lord will terrify them, ¹¹ 

for ¹²  he will weaken ¹³  all the gods of the earth.

All the distant nations will worship the Lord in their own lands. ¹⁴ 

[10:4]  ¹ sn The descendants of Elishah populated Cyprus.

[10:4]  ² sn The descendants of Tarshish settled along the southern coast of what is modern Turkey. However, some identify the site Tarshish (see Jonah 1:3) with Sardinia or Spain.

[10:4]  ³ sn The name Kittim is associated with Cyprus, as well as coastlands east of Rhodes. It is used in later texts to refer to the Romans.

[10:4]  ⁴ tc Most of the MT mss read “Dodanim” here, but 1 Chr 1:7 has “Rodanim,” perhaps referring to the island of Rhodes. But the Qere reading in 1 Chr 1:7 suggests “Dodanim.” Dodona is one of the most ancient and revered spots in ancient Greece.

[2:10]  ⁵ tn Heb “For go west.”

[2:10]  ⁶ tn Heb “pass over to the coasts of Kittim.” The words “west across the sea” in this line and “east of” in the next are implicit in the text and are supplied in the translation to give geographical orientation.

[2:10]  sn The Hebrew term translated Cyprus (“Kittim”) originally referred to the island of Cyprus but later was used for the lands in the west, including Macedonia (1 Macc 1:1; 8:5) and Rome (Dan 11:30). It is used here as part of a figure called merism to denote the lands in the west as opposed to Kedar which was in the east. The figure includes polar opposites to indicate totality, i.e., everywhere from west to east.

[2:10]  ⁷ sn Kedar is the home of the Bedouin tribes in the Syro-Arabian desert. See Gen 25:18 and Jer 49:38. See also the previous note for the significance of the reference here.

[27:6]  ⁸ tn Or “hull.”

[27:6]  ⁹ tc The Hebrew reads “Your deck they made ivory, daughter of Assyria.” The syntactically difficult “ivory” is understood here as dittography and omitted, though some construe this to refer to ivory inlays. “Daughter of Assyria” is understood here as improper word division and the vowels repointed as “cypresses.”

[27:6]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “from the coastlands (or islands) of Kittim,” generally understood to be a reference to the island of Cyprus, where the Phoenicians had a trading colony on the southeast coast. Many modern English versions have “Cyprus” (CEV, TEV), “the coastlands of Cyprus” (NASB), “the coasts of Cyprus” (NIV, NRSV), or “the southern coasts of Cyprus” (NLT).

[27:6]  sn The Kittean isles is probably a reference to southeast Cyprus where the Phoenicians had a colony.

[2:11]  ¹¹ tn Heb “will be awesome over [or, “against”] them.”

[2:11]  ¹² tn Or “certainly.”

[2:11]  ¹³ tn The meaning of this rare Hebrew word is unclear. If the meaning is indeed “weaken,” then this line may be referring to the reduction of these gods’ territory through conquest (see Adele Berlin, Zephaniah [AB 25A], 110-11). Cf. NEB “reduce to beggary”; NASB “starve”; NIV “when he destroys”; NRSV “shrivel.”

[2:11]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “and all the coastlands of the nations will worship [or, “bow down”] to him, each from his own place.”