Yeremia 24:9-10

24:9 I will bring such disaster on them that all the kingdoms of the earth will be horrified. I will make them an object of reproach, a proverbial example of disaster. I will make them an object of ridicule, an example to be used in curses. ¹  That is how they will be remembered wherever I banish them. ²  24:10 I will bring war, starvation, and disease ³  on them until they are completely destroyed from the land I gave them and their ancestors.’” ⁴ 

Yeremia 25:9-11

25:9 So I, the Lord, affirm that ⁵  I will send for all the peoples of the north ⁶  and my servant, ⁷  King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon. I will bring them against this land and its inhabitants and all the nations that surround it. I will utterly destroy ⁸  this land, its inhabitants, and all the nations that surround it ⁹  and make them everlasting ruins. ¹⁰  I will make them objects of horror and hissing scorn. ¹¹  25:10 I will put an end to the sounds of joy and gladness, to the glad celebration of brides and grooms in these lands. ¹²  I will put an end to the sound of people grinding meal. I will put an end to lamps shining in their houses. ¹³  25:11 This whole area ¹⁴  will become a desolate wasteland. These nations will be subject to the king of Babylon for seventy years.’ ¹⁵ 

Yeremia 39:10

39:10 But he ¹⁶  left behind in the land of Judah some of the poor people who owned nothing. He gave them fields and vineyards at that time.

Imamat 26:33-35

26:33 I will scatter you among the nations and unsheathe the sword ¹⁷  after you, so your land will become desolate and your cities will become a waste.

26:34 “‘Then the land will make up for ¹⁸  its Sabbaths all the days it lies desolate while you are in the land of your enemies; then the land will rest and make up its Sabbaths. 26:35 All the days of the desolation it will have the rest it did not have ¹⁹  on your Sabbaths when you lived on it.

Ulangan 4:26

4:26 I invoke heaven and earth as witnesses against you ²⁰  today that you will surely and swiftly be removed ²¹  from the very land you are about to cross the Jordan to possess. You will not last long there because you will surely be ²²  annihilated.

Ulangan 28:36

28:36 The Lord will force you and your king ²³  whom you will appoint over you to go away to a people whom you and your ancestors have not known, and you will serve other gods of wood and stone there.

Ulangan 28:64

28:64 The Lord will scatter you among all nations, from one end of the earth to the other. There you will worship other gods that neither you nor your ancestors have known, gods of wood and stone.

Ulangan 28:2

28:2 All these blessings will come to you in abundance ²⁴  if you obey the Lord your God:

Kisah Para Rasul 17:20

17:20 For you are bringing some surprising things ²⁵  to our ears, so we want to know what they ²⁶  mean.”

Kisah Para Rasul 17:23

17:23 For as I went around and observed closely your objects of worship, ²⁷  I even found an altar with this inscription: ²⁸  ‘To an unknown god.’ Therefore what you worship without knowing it, ²⁹  this I proclaim to you.

Kisah Para Rasul 23:27

23:27 This man was seized ³⁰  by the Jews and they were about to kill him, ³¹  when I came up ³²  with the detachment ³³  and rescued him, because I had learned that he was ³⁴  a Roman citizen. ³⁵ 

Kisah Para Rasul 25:21

25:21 But when Paul appealed to be kept in custody for the decision of His Majesty the Emperor, ³⁶  I ordered him to be kept under guard until I could send him to Caesar.” ³⁷ 

Yesaya 6:11-12

6:11 I replied, “How long, sovereign master?” He said,

“Until cities are in ruins and unpopulated,

and houses are uninhabited,

and the land is ruined and devastated,

6:12 and the Lord has sent the people off to a distant place,

and the very heart of the land is completely abandoned. ³⁸ 

Yesaya 24:3

24:3 The earth will be completely devastated

and thoroughly ransacked.

For the Lord has decreed this judgment. ³⁹ 

Yesaya 27:10

27:10 For the fortified city ⁴⁰  is left alone;

it is a deserted settlement

and abandoned like the desert.

Calves ⁴¹  graze there;

they lie down there

and eat its branches bare. ⁴² 

Yesaya 32:13-14

32:13 Mourn ⁴³  over the land of my people,

which is overgrown with thorns and briers,

and over all the once-happy houses ⁴⁴ 

in the city filled with revelry. ⁴⁵ 

32:14 For the fortress is neglected;

the once-crowded ⁴⁶  city is abandoned.

Hill ⁴⁷  and watchtower

are permanently uninhabited. ⁴⁸ 

Wild donkeys love to go there,

and flocks graze there. ⁴⁹ 

Yehezkiel 33:28

33:28 I will turn the land into a desolate ruin; her confident pride will come to an end. The mountains of Israel will be so desolate no one will pass through them.

Mikha 4:10

4:10 Twist and strain, ⁵⁰  Daughter Zion, as if you were in labor!

For you will leave the city

and live in the open field.

You will go to Babylon,

but there you will be rescued.

There the Lord will deliver ⁵¹  you

from the power ⁵²  of your enemies.

[24:9]  ¹ tn Or “an object of reproach in peoples’ proverbs…an object of ridicule in people’s curses.” The alternate translation treats the two pairs which are introduced without vavs (ו) but are joined by vavs as examples of hendiadys. This is very possible here but the chain does not contain this pairing in 25:18; 29:18.

[24:9]  sn For an example of how the “example used in curses” worked, see Jer 29:22. Sodom and Gomorrah evidently function much that same way (see 23:14; 49:18; 50:40; Deut 29:23; Zeph 2:9).

[24:9]  ² tn Heb “I will make them for a terror for disaster to all the kingdoms of the earth, for a reproach and for a proverb, for a taunt and a curse in all the places which I banish them there.” The complex Hebrew sentence has been broken down into equivalent shorter sentences to conform more with contemporary English style.

[24:10]  ³ sn See Jer 14:12 and the study note there.

[24:10]  ⁴ tn Heb “fathers.”

[25:9]  ⁵ tn Heb “Oracle of the Lord.”

[25:9]  ⁶ sn The many allusions to trouble coming from the north are now clarified: it is the armies of Babylon which included within it contingents from many nations. See 1:14, 15; 4:6; 6:1, 22; 10:22; 13:20 for earlier allusions.

[25:9]  ⁷ sn Nebuchadnezzar is called the Lord’s servant also in Jer 27:6; 43:10. He was the Lord’s servant in that he was the agent used by the Lord to punish his disobedient people. Assyria was earlier referred to as the Lord’s “rod” (Isa 10:5-6) and Cyrus is called his “shepherd” and his “anointed” (Isa 44:28; 45:1). P. C. Craigie, P. H. Kelley, and J. F. Drinkard (Jeremiah 1-25 [WBC], 364) make the interesting observation that the terms here are very similar to the terms in v. 4. The people of Judah ignored the servants, the prophets, he sent to turn them away from evil. So he will send other servants whom they cannot ignore.

[25:9]  ⁸ tn The word used here was used in the early years of Israel’s conquest for the action of killing all the men, women, and children in the cities of Canaan, destroying all their livestock, and burning their cities down. This policy was intended to prevent Israel from being corrupted by paganism (Deut 7:2; 20:17-18; Josh 6:18, 21). It was to be extended to any city that led Israel away from worshiping God (Deut 13:15) and any Israelite who brought an idol into his house (Deut 7:26). Here the policy is being directed against Judah as well as against her neighbors because of her persistent failure to heed God’s warnings through the prophets. For further usage of this term in application to foreign nations in the book of Jeremiah see 50:21, 26; 51:3.

[25:9]  ⁹ tn Heb “will utterly destroy them.” The referent (this land, its inhabitants, and the nations surrounding it) has been specified in the translation for clarity, since the previous “them” referred to Nebuchadnezzar and his armies.

[25:9]  sn This is essentially the introduction to the “judgment on the nations” in vv. 15-29 which begins with Jerusalem and Judah (v. 18) and ultimately ends with Babylon itself (“Sheshach” in v. 26; see note there for explanation of the term).

[25:9]  ¹⁰ sn The Hebrew word translated “everlasting” is the word often translated “eternal.” However, it sometimes has a more limited time reference. For example it refers to the lifetime of a person who became a “lasting slave” to another person (see Exod 21:6; Deut 15:17). It is also used to refer to the long life wished for a king (1 Kgs 1:31; Neh 2:3). The time frame here is to be qualified at least with reference to Judah and Jerusalem as seventy years (see 29:10-14 and compare v. 12).

[25:9]  ¹¹ tn Heb “I will make them an object of horror and a hissing and everlasting ruins.” The sentence has been broken up to separate the last object from the first two which are of slightly different connotation, i.e., they denote the reaction to the latter.

[25:9]  sn Compare Jer 18:16 and 19:8 and the study note at 18:16.

[25:10]  ¹² sn Compare Jer 7:24 and 16:9 for this same dire prediction limited to Judah and Jerusalem.

[25:10]  ¹³ sn The sound of people grinding meal and the presence of lamps shining in their houses were signs of everyday life. The Lord is going to make these lands desolate (v. 11) destroying all signs of life. (The statement is, of course, hyperbolic or poetic exaggeration; even after the destruction of Jerusalem many people were left in the land.) For these same descriptions of everyday life applying to the end of life see the allegory in Eccl 12:3-6.

[25:11]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “All this land.”

[25:11]  ¹⁵ sn It should be noted that the text says that the nations will be subject to the king of Babylon for seventy years, not that they will lie desolate for seventy years. Though several proposals have been made for dating this period, many ignore this fact. This most likely refers to the period beginning with Nebuchadnezzar’s defeat of Pharaoh Necho at Carchemish in 605 b.c. and the beginning of his rule over Babylon. At this time Babylon became the dominant force in the area and continued to be so until the fall of Babylon in 538 b.c. More particularly Judah became a vassal state (cf. Jer 46:2; 2 Kgs 24:1) in 605 b.c. and was allowed to return to her homeland in 538 when Cyrus issued his edict allowing all the nations exiled by Babylon to return to their homelands. (See 2 Chr 36:21 and Ezra 1:2-4; the application there is made to Judah but the decree of Cyrus was broader.)

[39:10]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “Nebuzaradan, the captain of the royal guard.” However, the subject is clear from the preceding and contemporary English style would normally avoid repeating the proper name and title.

[26:33]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “and I will empty sword” (see HALOT 1228 s.v. ריק 3).

[26:34]  ¹⁸ tn There are two Hebrew roots רָצָה (ratsah), one meaning “to be pleased with; to take pleasure” (HALOT 1280-81 s.v. רצה; cf. “enjoy” in NASB, NIV, NRSV, and J. E. Hartley, Leviticus [WBC], 452), and the other meaning “to restore” (HALOT 1281-82 s.v. II רצה; cf. NAB “retrieve” and B. A. Levine, Leviticus [JPSTC], 189).

[26:35]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “it shall rest which it did not rest.”

[4:26]  ²⁰ sn I invoke heaven and earth as witnesses against you. This stock formula introduces what is known form-critically as a רִיב (riv) or controversy pattern. It is commonly used in the ancient Near Eastern world in legal contexts and in the OT as a forensic or judicial device to draw attention to Israel’s violation of the Lord’s covenant with them (see Deut 30:19; Isa 1:2; 3:13; Jer 2:9). Since court proceedings required the testimony of witnesses, the Lord here summons heaven and earth (that is, all creation) to testify to his faithfulness, Israel’s disobedience, and the threat of judgment.

[4:26]  ²¹ tn Or “be destroyed”; KJV “utterly perish”; NLT “will quickly disappear”; CEV “you won’t have long to live.”

[4:26]  ²² tn Or “be completely” (so NCV, TEV). It is not certain here if the infinitive absolute indicates the certainty of the following action (cf. NIV) or its degree.

[28:36]  ²³ tc The LXX reads the plural “kings.”

[28:2]  ²⁴ tn Heb “come upon you and overtake you” (so NASB, NRSV); NIV “come upon you and accompany you.”

[17:20]  ²⁵ tn BDAG 684 s.v. ξενίζω 2 translates the substantival participle ξενίζοντα (xenizonta) as “astonishing things Ac 17:20.”

[17:20]  ²⁶ tn Grk “these things”; but since the referent (“surprising things”) is so close, the repetition of “these things” sounds redundant in English, so the pronoun “they” was substituted in the translation.

[17:23]  ²⁷ tn Or “your sanctuaries.” L&N 53.54 gives “sanctuary” (place of worship) as an alternate meaning for the word σεβάσματα (sebasmata).

[17:23]  ²⁸ tn Grk “on which was written,” but since it would have been carved in stone, it is more common to speak of an “inscription” in English. To simplify the English the relative construction with a passive verb (“on which was inscribed”) was translated as a prepositional phrase with a substantive (“inscription”).

[17:23]  ²⁹ tn BDAG 13 s.v. ἀγνοέω 1.b has “Abs. ὅ ἀγνοοῦντες εὐσεβεῖτε what you worship without knowing it (on the subject matter Maximus Tyr. 11, 5e: all sorts of philosophers ἴσασιν οὐκ ἑκόντες καὶ λέγουσιν ἄκοντες sc. τὸ θεῖον = they know and name God without intending to do so) Ac 17:23.” Paul, in typical Jewish Christian style, informs them of the true God, of whom their idols are an ignorant reflection.

[23:27]  ³⁰ tn The participle συλλημφθέντα (sullhmfqenta) has been translated as a finite verb due to requirements of contemporary English style. The remark reviews events of Acts 21:27-40.

[23:27]  ³¹ tn Grk “and was about to be killed by them.” The passive construction has been converted to an active one in the translation for stylistic reasons.

[23:27]  ³² tn Or “approached.”

[23:27]  ³³ tn Normally this term means “army,” but according to BDAG 947 s.v. στράτευμα, “Of a smaller detachment of soldiers, sing. Ac 23:10, 27.” In the plural it can be translated “troops,” but it is singular here.

[23:27]  ³⁴ tn In Greek this is a present tense retained in indirect discourse.

[23:27]  ³⁵ tn The word “citizen” is supplied here for emphasis and clarity.

[23:27]  sn The letter written by the Roman commander Claudius Lysias was somewhat self-serving. He made it sound as if the rescue of a Roman citizen had been a conscious act on his part. In fact, he had made the discovery of Paul’s Roman citizenship somewhat later. See Acts 21:37-39 and 22:24-29.

[25:21]  ³⁶ tn A designation of the Roman emperor (in this case, Nero). BDAG 917 s.v. σεβαστός states, “ὁ Σεβαστός His Majesty the Emperor Ac 25:21, 25 (of Nero).” It was a translation into Greek of the Latin “Augustus.”

[25:21]  ³⁷ tn Or “to the emperor” (“Caesar” is a title for the Roman emperor).

[6:12]  ³⁸ tn Heb “and great is the abandonment in the midst of the land.”

[24:3]  ³⁹ tn Heb “for the Lord has spoken this word.”

[27:10]  ⁴⁰ sn The identity of this city is uncertain. The context suggests that an Israelite city, perhaps Samaria or Jerusalem, is in view. For discussions of interpretive options see J. N. Oswalt, Isaiah (NICOT), 1:496-97, and Paul L. Redditt, “Once Again, the City in Isaiah 24-27,” HAR 10 (1986), 332.

[27:10]  ⁴¹ tn The singular form in the text is probably collective.

[27:10]  ⁴² tn Heb “and destroy her branches.” The city is the antecedent of the third feminine singular pronominal suffix. Apparently the city is here compared to a tree. See also v. 11.

[32:13]  ⁴³ tn “Mourn” is supplied in the translation for stylistic reasons. In the Hebrew text vv. 12-13 are one long sentence.

[32:13]  ⁴⁴ tn Heb “indeed, over all the houses of joy.” It is not certain if this refers to individual homes or to places where parties and celebrations were held.

[32:13]  ⁴⁵ sn This same phrase is used in 22:2.

[32:14]  ⁴⁶ tn Or “noisy” (NAB, NIV, NCV).

[32:14]  ⁴⁷ tn Hebrew עֹפֶל (’ofel), probably refers here to a specific area within the city of Jerusalem. See HALOT 861 s.v. II עֹפֶל.

[32:14]  ⁴⁸ tn The Hebrew text has בְעַד מְעָרוֹת (vÿ’ad mÿ’arot). The force of בְעַד, which usually means “behind, through, round about,” or “for the benefit of,” is uncertain here. HALOT 616 s.v. *מְעָרָה takes מְעָרוֹת (mÿ’arot) as a homonym of “cave” and define it here as “cleared field.” Despite these lexical problems, the general point of the statement seems clear – the city will be uninhabited.

[32:14]  ⁴⁹ tn Heb “the joy of wild donkeys, a pasture for flocks.”

[4:10]  ⁵⁰ tn Or perhaps “scream”; NRSV, TEV, NLT “groan.”

[4:10]  ⁵¹ tn Or “redeem” (KJV, NASB, NIV, NRSV, NLT).

[4:10]  ⁵² tn Heb “hand.” The Hebrew idiom is a metonymy for power or control.