Yesaya 5:17

5:17 Lambs ¹  will graze as if in their pastures,

amid the ruins the rich sojourners will graze. ² 

Ulangan 28:33

28:33 As for the produce of your land and all your labor, a people you do not know will consume it, and you will be nothing but oppressed and crushed for the rest of your lives.

Ulangan 28:43

28:43 The foreigners ³  who reside among you will become higher and higher over you and you will become lower and lower.

Ulangan 28:48-52

28:48 instead in hunger, thirst, nakedness, and poverty ⁴  you will serve your enemies whom the Lord will send against you. They ⁵  will place an iron yoke on your neck until they have destroyed you. 28:49 The Lord will raise up a distant nation against you, one from the other side of the earth ⁶  as the eagle flies, ⁷  a nation whose language you will not understand, 28:50 a nation of stern appearance that will have no regard for the elderly or pity for the young. 28:51 They ⁸  will devour the offspring of your livestock and the produce of your soil until you are destroyed. They will not leave you with any grain, new wine, olive oil, calves of your herds, ⁹  or lambs of your flocks ¹⁰  until they have destroyed you. 28:52 They will besiege all of your villages ¹¹  until all of your high and fortified walls collapse – those in which you put your confidence throughout the land. They will besiege all your villages throughout the land the Lord your God has given you.

Ratapan 5:2

5:2 Our inheritance ¹²  is turned over to strangers;

foreigners now occupy our homes. ¹³ 

Yehezkiel 30:12

30:12 I will dry up the waterways

and hand the land over to ¹⁴  evil men.

I will make the land and everything in it desolate by the hand of foreigners.

I, the Lord, have spoken!

Hosea 7:9

7:9 Foreigners are consuming what his strenuous labor produced, ¹⁵ 

but he does not recognize it!

His head is filled with gray hair,

but he does not realize it!

Hosea 8:7

The Fertility Cultists Will Become Infertile

8:7 They sow the wind,

and so they will reap the whirlwind!

The stalk does not have any standing grain;

it will not produce any flour.

Even if it were to yield grain,

foreigners would swallow it all up.

[5:17]  ¹ tn Or “young rams”; NIV, NCV “sheep”; NLT “flocks.”

[5:17]  ² tc The Hebrew text reads literally, “and ruins, fatlings, resident aliens, will eat.” This part of the verse has occasioned various suggestions of emendation. The parallelism is tighter if the second line refers to animals grazing. The translation, “amid the ruins the fatlings and young sheep graze,” assumes an emendation of “resident aliens” (גָּרִים, garim) to “young goats/sheep” (גְּדַיִם, gÿdayim) – confusion of dalet and resh is quite common – and understands “fatlings” and “young sheep” taken as a compound subject or as in apposition as the subject of the verb. However, no emendations are necessary if the above translation is correct. The meaning of מֵחִים (mekhim) has a significant impact on one’s textual decision and translation. The noun can refer to a sacrificial (“fat”) animal as it does in its only other occurrence (Ps 66:15). However, it could signify the rich of the earth (“the fat ones of the earth”; Ps 22:29 [MT 30]) using a different word for “fatness” (דָּשֶׁן, dashen). If so, it serves a figurative reference to the rich. Consequently, the above translation coheres with the first half of the verse. Just as the sheep are out of place grazing in these places (“as in their pasture”), the sojourners would not have expected to have the chance to eat in these locations. Both animals and itinerant foreigners would eat in places not normal for them.

[5:17]  sn The image completes the picture begun in v. 14 and adds to the irony. When judgment comes, Sheol will eat up the sinners who frequent the feasts; then the banqueting halls will lie in ruins and only sheep will eat there.

[28:43]  ³ tn Heb “the foreigner.” This is a collective singular and has therefore been translated as plural; this includes the pronouns in the following verse, which are also singular in the Hebrew text.

[28:48]  ⁴ tn Heb “lack of everything.”

[28:48]  ⁵ tn Heb “he” (also later in this verse). The pronoun is a collective singular referring to the enemies (cf. CEV, NLT). Many translations understand the singular pronoun to refer to the Lord (cf. NAB, NASB, NIV, NCV, NRSV, TEV).

[28:49]  ⁶ tn Heb “from the end of the earth.”

[28:49]  ⁷ tn Some translations understand this to mean “like an eagle swoops down” (e.g., NAB, NASB, NIV, NRSV, NLT), comparing the swift attack of an eagle to the attack of the Israelites’ enemies.

[28:51]  ⁸ tn Heb “it” (so NRSV), a collective singular referring to the invading nation (several times in this verse and v. 52).

[28:51]  ⁹ tn Heb “increase of herds.”

[28:51]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “growth of flocks.”

[28:52]  ¹¹ tn Heb “gates,” also in vv. 55, 57.

[5:2]  ¹² tn Heb “Our inheritance”; or “Our inherited possessions/property.” The term נַחֲלָה (nakhalah) has a range of meanings: (1) “inheritance,” (2) “portion, share” and (3) “possession, property.” The land of Canaan was given by the Lord to Israel as its inheritance (Deut 4:21; 15:4; 19:10; 20:16; 21:23; 24:4; 25:19; 26:1; Josh 20:6) and distributed among the tribes, clans and families (Num 16:14; 36:2; Deut 29:7; Josh 11:23; 13:6; 14:3, 13; 17:4, 6, 14; 19:49; 23:4; Judg 18:1; Ezek 45:1; 47:22, 29). Through the family, the family provided an inheritance (property) to its children with the first-born receiving pride of position (Gen 31:14; Num 27:7-11; 36:3, 8; 1 Kgs 21:3, 4; Job 42:15; Prov 19:14; Ezek 46:16). Here, the parallelism between “our inheritance” and “our homes” would allow for the specific referent of the phrase “our inheritance” to be (1) land or (2) material possessions, or given the nature of the poetry in Lamentations, to carry both meanings at the same time.

[5:2]  ¹³ tn Heb “our homes [are turned over] to foreigners.”

[30:12]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “and I will sell the land into the hand of.”

[7:9]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “foreigners consume his strength”; NRSV “devour (sap NIV) his strength.”