Yeremia 1:12

1:12 Then the Lord said, “You have observed correctly. This means ¹  I am watching to make sure my threats are carried out.” ² 

Yeremia 51:33

51:33 For the Lord God of Israel who rules over all says,

‘Fair Babylon ³  will be like a threshing floor

which has been trampled flat for harvest.

The time for her to be cut down and harvested

will come very soon.’ ⁴ 

Yehezkiel 7:2-12

7:2 “You, son of man – this is what the sovereign Lord says to the land of Israel: An end! The end is coming on the four corners of the land! ⁵  7:3 The end is now upon you, and I will release my anger against you; I will judge ⁶  you according to your behavior, ⁷  I will hold you accountable for ⁸  all your abominable practices. 7:4 My eye will not pity you; I will not spare ⁹  you. ¹⁰  For I will hold you responsible for your behavior, ¹¹  and you will suffer the consequences of your abominable practices. ¹²  Then you will know that I am the Lord!

7:5 “This is what the sovereign Lord says: A disaster ¹³  – a one-of-a-kind ¹⁴  disaster – is coming! 7:6 An end comes ¹⁵  – the end comes! ¹⁶  It has awakened against you ¹⁷  – the end is upon you! Look, it is coming! ¹⁸  7:7 Doom is coming upon you who live in the land! The time is coming, the day ¹⁹  is near. There are sounds of tumult, not shouts of joy, on the mountains. ²⁰  7:8 Soon now I will pour out my rage ²¹  on you; I will fully vent my anger against you. I will judge you according to your behavior. I will hold you accountable for all your abominable practices. 7:9 My eye will not pity you; I will not spare ²²  you. For your behavior I will hold you accountable, ²³  and you will suffer the consequences of your abominable practices. Then you will know that it is I, the Lord, who is striking you. ²⁴ 

7:10 “Look, the day! Look, it is coming! Doom has gone out! The staff has budded, pride has blossomed! 7:11 Violence ²⁵  has grown into a staff that supports wickedness. Not one of them will be left ²⁶  – not from their crowd, not from their wealth, not from their prominence. ²⁷  7:12 The time has come; the day has struck! The customer should not rejoice, nor the seller mourn; for divine wrath ²⁸  comes against their whole crowd.

Yehezkiel 12:22-23

12:22 “Son of man, what is this proverb you have in the land of Israel, ‘The days pass slowly, and every vision fails’? 12:23 Therefore tell them, ‘This is what the sovereign Lord says: I hereby end this proverb; they will not recite it in Israel any longer.’ But say to them, ‘The days are at hand when every vision will be fulfilled. ²⁹ 

Yehezkiel 12:27

12:27 “Take note, son of man, the house of Israel is saying, ‘The vision that he sees is for distant days; he is prophesying about the far future.’

Amos 8:2

8:2 He said, “What do you see, Amos?” I replied, “A basket of summer fruit.” Then the Lord said to me, “The end ³⁰  has come for my people Israel! I will no longer overlook their sins. ³¹ 

[1:12]  ¹ tn This represents the Hebrew particle (כִּי, ki) that is normally rendered “for” or “because.” The particle here is meant to give the significance of the vision, not the rationale for the statement “you have observed correctly.”

[1:12]  ² tn Heb “watching over my word to do it.”

[1:12]  sn There is a play on the Hebrew word for “almond tree” (שָׁקֵד, shaqed), which blossoms in January/February and is the harbinger of spring, and the Hebrew word for “watching” (שֹׁקֵד, shoqed), which refers to someone watching over someone or something in preparation for action. The play on words announces the certainty and imminence of the Lord carrying out the covenant curses of Lev 26 and Deut 28 threatened by the earlier prophets.

[51:33]  ³ sn Heb “Daughter Babylon.” See the study note at 50:42 for explanation.

[51:33]  ⁴ tn Heb “Daughter Babylon will be [or is; there is no verb and the tense has to be supplied from the context] like a threshing floor at the time one tramples it. Yet a little while and the time of the harvest will come for her.” It is generally agreed that there are two figures here: one of leveling the threshing floor and stamping it into a smooth, hard surface and the other of the harvest where the grain is cut, taken to the threshing floor, and threshed by trampling the sheaves of grain to loosen the grain from the straw, and finally winnowed by throwing the mixture into the air (cf., e.g., J. A. Thompson, Jeremiah [NICOT], 760). The translation has sought to convey those ideas as clearly as possible without digressing too far from the literal.

[51:33]  sn There are two figures involved here: one of the threshing floor being leveled and stamped down hard and smooth and the other of the harvest. At harvest time the stalks of grain were cut down, gathered in sheaves, taken to the harvest floor where the grain was loosened from the husk by driving oxen and threshing sleds over them. The grain was then separated from the mixture of grain, straw and husks by repeatedly throwing it in the air and letting the wind blow away the lighter husks and ground-up straw. The figure of harvest is often used of judgment in the OT. See, e.g., Joel 3:13 (4:13 Hebrew text) and Hos 6:11 and compare also Mic 4:12-13 and Jer 51:2 where different steps in this process are also used figuratively in connection with judgment. Babylon will be leveled to the ground and its people cut down in judgment.

[7:2]  ⁵ tn Or “earth.” Elsewhere the expression “four corners of the earth” figuratively refers to the whole earth (Isa 11:12).

[7:3]  ⁶ tn Or “punish” (cf. BDB 1047 s.v. שָׁפַט 3.c).

[7:3]  ⁷ tn Heb “ways.”

[7:3]  ⁸ tn Heb “I will place on you.”

[7:4]  ⁹ tn The meaning of the Hebrew term is primarily emotional: “to pity,” which in context implies an action, as in being moved by pity in order to spare them from the horror of their punishment.

[7:4]  ¹⁰ tn The pronoun “you” is not in the Hebrew text, but is implied.

[7:4]  ¹¹ tn “I will set your behavior on your head.”

[7:4]  ¹² tn Heb “and your abominable practices will be among you.”

[7:5]  ¹³ tn The Hebrew term often refers to moral evil (see Ezek 6:10; 14:22), but in many contexts it refers to calamity or disaster, sometimes as punishment for evil behavior.

[7:5]  ¹⁴ tc So most Hebrew mss; many Hebrew mss read “disaster after disaster” (cf. NAB, NCV, NRSV, NLT).

[7:6]  ¹⁵ tn Or “has come.”

[7:6]  ¹⁶ tn Or “has come.”

[7:6]  ¹⁷ tc With different vowels the verb rendered “it has awakened” would be the noun “the end,” as in “the end is upon you.” The verb would represent a phonetic wordplay. The noun by virtue of repetition would continue to reinforce the idea of the end. Whether verb or noun, this is the only instance to occur with this preposition.

[7:6]  ¹⁸ tc For this entire verse, the LXX has only “the end is come.”

[7:6]  tn In each of the three cases of the verb translated with forms of “to come,” the form may either be a participle (“comes/is coming”) or a perfect (“has come”). Either form would indicate that the end is soon to arrive. This last form appears also to be feminine, although “end” is masculine. This shift may be looking ahead to the next verse, whose first noun (“Doom”) is feminine.

[7:7]  ¹⁹ sn The day refers to the day of the Lord, a concept which, beginning in Amos 5:18-20, became a common theme in the OT prophetic books. It refers to a time when the Lord intervenes in human affairs as warrior and judge.

[7:7]  ²⁰ tc The LXX reads “neither tumult nor birth pains.” The LXX varies at many points from the MT in this chapter. The context suggests that one or both of these would be present on a day of judgment, thus favoring the MT. Perhaps more significant is the absence of “the mountains” in the LXX. If the ר (resh) in הָרִים (harim, “the mountains” not “on the mountains”) were a ד (dalet), which is a common letter confusion, then it could be from the same root as the previous word, הֵד (hed), meaning “the day is near – with destruction, not joyful shouting.”

[7:8]  ²¹ tn The expression “to pour out rage” also occurs in Ezek 9:8; 14:19; 20:8, 13, 21; 22:31; 30:15; 36:18.

[7:9]  ²² tn The meaning of the Hebrew term is primarily emotional: “to pity,” which in context implies an action, as in being moved by pity in order to spare them from the horror of their punishment.

[7:9]  ²³ tn Heb “According to your behavior I will place on you.”

[7:9]  ²⁴ tn The MT lacks “you.” It has been added for clarification.

[7:11]  ²⁵ tn Heb “the violence.”

[7:11]  ²⁶ tc The LXX reads “he will crush the wicked rod without confusion or haste.”

[7:11]  tn The verb has been supplied for the Hebrew text to clarify the sense.

[7:11]  ²⁷ tn The Hebrew word occurs only here in the OT.

[7:12]  ²⁸ tn Heb “wrath.” Context clarifies that God’s wrath is in view.

[12:23]  ²⁹ tn Heb “the days draw near and the word of every vision (draws near).”

[8:2]  ³⁰ tn There is a wordplay here. The Hebrew word קֵץ (qets, “end”) sounds like קָיִץ (qayits, “summer fruit”). The summer fruit arrived toward the end of Israel’s agricultural year; Israel’s national existence was similarly at an end.

[8:2]  ³¹ tn Heb “I will no longer pass over him.”