Yeremia 51:13

51:13 “You who live along the rivers of Babylon, ¹ 

the time of your end has come.

You who are rich in plundered treasure,

it is time for your lives to be cut off. ² 

Yehezkiel 7:2-6

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! ³  7:3 The end is now upon you, and I will release my anger against you; I will judge ⁴  you according to your behavior, ⁵  I will hold you accountable for ⁶  all your abominable practices. 7:4 My eye will not pity you; I will not spare ⁷  you. ⁸  For I will hold you responsible for your behavior, ⁹  and you will suffer the consequences of your abominable practices. ¹⁰  Then you will know that I am the Lord!

7:5 “This is what the sovereign Lord says: A disaster ¹¹  – a one-of-a-kind ¹²  disaster – is coming! 7:6 An end comes ¹³  – the end comes! ¹⁴  It has awakened against you ¹⁵  – the end is upon you! Look, it is coming! ¹⁶ 

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 ¹⁷  has come for my people Israel! I will no longer overlook their sins. ¹⁸ 

Amos 8:1

More Visions and Messages of Judgment

8:1 The sovereign Lord showed me this: I saw ¹⁹  a basket of summer fruit. ²⁰ 

Pengkhotbah 4:7

Labor Motivated by Greed

4:7 So ²¹  I again considered ²²  another ²³  futile thing on earth: ²⁴ 

[51:13]  ¹ sn Babylon was situated on the Euphrates River and was surrounded by canals (also called “rivers”).

[51:13]  ² tn Heb “You who live upon [or beside] many waters, rich in treasures, your end has come, the cubit of your cutting off.” The sentence has been restructured and paraphrased to provide clarity for the average reader. The meaning of the last phrase is debated. For a discussion of the two options see W. L. Holladay, Jeremiah (Hermeneia), 2:423. Most modern commentaries and English versions see an allusion to the figure in Isa 38:12 where the reference is to the end of life compared to a tapestry which is suddenly cut off from the loom. Hence, NRSV renders the last line as “the thread of your life is cut” and TEV renders “its thread of life is cut.” That idea is accepted also in HALOT 141 s.v. בצע Qal.1.

[7:2]  ³ tn Or “earth.” Elsewhere the expression “four corners of the earth” figuratively refers to the whole earth (Isa 11:12).

[7:3]  ⁴ tn Or “punish” (cf. BDB 1047 s.v. שָׁפַט 3.c).

[7:3]  ⁵ tn Heb “ways.”

[7:3]  ⁶ tn Heb “I will place on you.”

[7:4]  ⁷ 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]  ⁸ tn The pronoun “you” is not in the Hebrew text, but is implied.

[7:4]  ⁹ tn “I will set your behavior on your head.”

[7:4]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “and your abominable practices will be among you.”

[7:5]  ¹¹ 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]  ¹² tc So most Hebrew mss; many Hebrew mss read “disaster after disaster” (cf. NAB, NCV, NRSV, NLT).

[7:6]  ¹³ tn Or “has come.”

[7:6]  ¹⁴ tn Or “has come.”

[7:6]  ¹⁵ 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]  ¹⁶ 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.

[8:2]  ¹⁷ 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]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “I will no longer pass over him.”

[8:1]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “behold” or “look.”

[8:1]  ²⁰ sn The basket of summer fruit (also in the following verse) probably refers to figs from the summer crop, which ripens in August-September. See O. Borowski, Agriculture in Iron Age Israel, 115.

[4:7]  ²¹ tn The prefixed vav on וְשַׁבְתִּי (vÿshavti, vav + perfect 1st person common singular from שׁוּב, shuv, “to turn”) might be: (1) introductory (and left untranslated): “I observed again…”; (2) consequence of preceding statement: “So I observed again…”; or (3) continuation of preceding statement: “And I observed again….”

[4:7]  ²² tn Heb “I turned and I saw…”; or “I again considered.” The Hebrew phrase וָאֶרְאֶה…וְשַׁבְתִּי (vÿshavti…va’er’eh, “I turned and I saw”) is a verbal hendiadys (the two verbs represent one common idea). Normally in a verbal hendiadys, the first verb functions adverbially, modifying the second verb which retains its full verbal force. The verb שׁוּב (shuv, “to turn”) is used idiomatically to denote repetition: “to return and do” = “to do again” (e.g., Gen 26:18; 30:31; 43:2) or “to do repeatedly” (e.g., Lam 3:3); see HALOT 1430 s.v. שׁוב 5; BDB 998 s.v. שׁוּב 8; GKC 386 §120.e: “I observed again” or “I repeatedly observed.” On the other hand, the shift from the perfect וְשַׁבְתִּי (vav + perfect 1st person common singular from שׁוּב, “to turn”) to the preterite וָאֶרְאֶה (vav + Qal preterite 1st person common singular from רָאָה, ra’ah, “to see”) might indicate a purpose clause: “I turned [my mind] to consider….” The preterite וָאֶרְאֶה follows the perfect וְשַׁבְתִּי. When a wayyiqtol form (vav + preterite) follows a perfect in reference to a past-time situation, the preterite also represents a past-time situation. Its aspect is based on the preceding perfect. In this context, the perfect and preterite may denote definite past or indefinite past action (“I turned and considered …” as hendiadys for “I observed again” or “I repeatedly observed”) or past telic action (“I turned [my mind] to consider…”). See IBHS 554-55 §33.3.1a.

[4:7]  ²³ tn The word “another” does not appear in the Hebrew text, but is supplied in the translation for clarity.

[4:7]  ²⁴ tn Heb “under the sun.”