Ratapan 2:17

ע (Ayin)

2:17 The Lord has done what he planned;

he has fulfilled ¹  his promise ² 

that he threatened ³  long ago: ⁴ 

He has overthrown you without mercy ⁵ 

and has enabled the enemy to gloat over you;

he has exalted your adversaries’ power. ⁶ 

Ratapan 2:21

ש (Sin/Shin)

2:21 The young boys and old men

lie dead on the ground in the streets.

My young women ⁷  and my young men

have fallen by the sword.

You killed them when you were angry; ⁸ 

you slaughtered them without mercy. ⁹ 

Ratapan 3:43

ס (Samek)

3:43 You shrouded yourself ¹⁰  with anger and then pursued us;

you killed without mercy.

Ayub 2:3

2:3 Then the Lord said to Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job? For there is no one like him on the earth, a pure and upright man, one who fears God and turns away from evil. And he still holds firmly ¹¹  to his integrity, ¹²  so that ¹³  you stirred me up to destroy him ¹⁴  without reason.” ¹⁵ 

Mazmur 21:9

21:9 You burn them up like a fiery furnace ¹⁶  when you appear; ¹⁷ 

the Lord angrily devours them; ¹⁸ 

the fire consumes them.

Yesaya 27:11

27:11 When its branches get brittle, ¹⁹  they break;

women come and use them for kindling. ²⁰ 

For these people lack understanding, ²¹ 

therefore the one who made them has no compassion on them;

the one who formed them has no mercy on them.

Yeremia 13:14

13:14 And I will smash them like wine bottles against one another, children and parents alike. ²²  I will not show any pity, mercy, or compassion. Nothing will keep me from destroying them,’ ²³  says the Lord.”

Yeremia 21:7

21:7 Then ²⁴  I, the Lord, promise that ²⁵  I will hand over King Zedekiah of Judah, his officials, and any of the people who survive the war, starvation, and disease. I will hand them over to King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon and to their enemies who want to kill them. He will slaughter them with the sword. He will not show them any mercy, compassion, or pity.’

Yehezkiel 5:11

5:11 “Therefore, as surely as I live, says the sovereign Lord, because you defiled my sanctuary with all your detestable idols and with all your abominable practices, I will withdraw; my eye will not pity you, nor will I spare ²⁶  you.

Yehezkiel 7:4

7:4 My eye will not pity you; I will not spare ²⁷  you. ²⁸  For I will hold you responsible for your behavior, ²⁹  and you will suffer the consequences of your abominable practices. ³⁰  Then you will know that I am the Lord!

Yehezkiel 7:9

7:9 My eye will not pity you; I will not spare ³¹  you. For your behavior I will hold you accountable, ³²  and you will suffer the consequences of your abominable practices. Then you will know that it is I, the Lord, who is striking you. ³³ 

Yehezkiel 8:18

8:18 Therefore I will act with fury! My eye will not pity them nor will I spare ³⁴  them. When they have shouted in my ears, I will not listen to them.”

Yehezkiel 9:10

9:10 But as for me, my eye will not pity them nor will I spare ³⁵  them; I hereby repay them for what they have done.” ³⁶ 

Zakharia 11:5-6

11:5 Those who buy them ³⁷  slaughter them and are not held guilty; those who sell them say, ‘Blessed be the Lord, for I am rich.’ Their own shepherds have no compassion for them. 11:6 Indeed, I will no longer have compassion on the people of the land,” says the Lord, “but instead I will turn every last person over to his neighbor and his king. They will devastate the land, and I will not deliver it from them.”

Matius 18:33

18:33 Should you not have shown mercy to your fellow slave, just as I showed it to you?’

[2:17]  ¹ tn The verb בָּצַע (batsa’) has a broad range of meanings: (1) “to cut off, break off,” (2) “to injure” a person, (3) “to gain by violence,” (4) “to finish, complete” and (5) “to accomplish, fulfill” a promise.

[2:17]  ² tn Heb “His word.” When used in collocation with the verb בָּצַע (batsa’, “to fulfill,” see previous tn), the accusative noun אִמְרָה (’imrah) means “promise.”

[2:17]  ³ tn Heb “commanded” or “decreed.” If a reference to prophetic oracles is understood, then “decreed” is preferable. If understood as a reference to the warnings in the covenant, then “threatened” is a preferable rendering.

[2:17]  ⁴ tn Heb “from days of old.”

[2:17]  ⁵ tn Heb “He has overthrown and has not shown mercy.” The two verbs חָרַס וְלֹא חָמָל (kharas vÿlo’ khamal) form a verbal hendiadys in which the first retains its verbal sense and the second functions adverbially: “He has overthrown you without mercy.” וְלֹא חָמָל (vÿlo’ khamal) alludes to 2:2.

[2:17]  ⁶ tn Heb “He has exalted the horn of your adversaries.” The term “horn” (קֶרֶן, qeren) normally refers to the horn of a bull, one of the most powerful animals in ancient Israel. This term is often used figuratively as a symbol of strength, usually in reference to the military might of an army (Deut 33:17; 1 Sam 2:1, 10; 2 Sam 22:3; Pss 18:3; 75:11; 89:18, 25; 92:11; 112:9; 1 Chr 25:5; Jer 48:25; Lam 2:3; Ezek 29:21), just as warriors are sometimes figuratively described as “bulls.” To lift up the horn often means to boast and to lift up someone else’s horn is to give victory or cause to boast.

[2:21]  ⁷ tn Heb “virgins.” The term “virgin” probably functions as a metonymy of association for single young women.

[2:21]  ⁸ tn Heb “in the day of your anger.” The construction בָּיוֹם (bayom, “in the day of…”) is a common Hebrew idiom, meaning “when…” (e.g., Gen 2:4; Lev 7:35; Num 3:1; Deut 4:15; 2 Sam 22:1; Pss 18:1; 138:3; Zech 8:9). This temporal idiom refers to a general time period, but uses the term “day” as a forceful rhetorical device to emphasize the vividness and drama of the event, depicting it as occurring within a single day. In the ancient Near East, military minded kings often referred to a successful campaign as “the day of X” in order to portray themselves as powerful conquerors who, as it were, could inaugurate and complete a victory military campaign within the span of one day.

[2:21]  ⁹ tc The MT reads לֹא חָמָלְתָּ (lo’ khamalta, “You showed no mercy”). However, many medieval Hebrew mss and most of the ancient versions (Aramaic Targum, Syriac Peshitta and Latin Vulgate) read וְלֹא חָמָלְתָּ (vÿlo’ khamalta, “and You showed no mercy”).

[3:43]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “covered.” The object must be supplied either from the next line (“covered yourself”) or from the end of this line (“covered us”).

[2:3]  ¹¹ tn The form is the Hiphil participle, “make strong, seize, hold fast.” It is the verbal use here; joined with עֹדֶנּוּ (’odennu, “yet he”) it emphasizes that “he is still holding firmly.” The testing has simply strengthened Job in his integrity.

[2:3]  ¹² tn This is the same word used to describe Job as “blameless, pure.” Here it carries the idea of “integrity”; Job remained blameless, perfect.

[2:3]  ¹³ tn The vav (ו) with the preterite is used here to express the logical conclusion or consequence of what was stated previously. God is saying that Job has maintained his integrity, so that now it is clear that Satan moved against him groundlessly (GKC 328 §111.l).

[2:3]  ¹⁴ tn The verb literally means “to swallow”; it forms an implied comparison in the line, indicating the desire of Satan to ruin him completely. See A Guillaume, “A Note on the Root bala`,” JTS 13 (1962): 320-23; and N. M. Sarna, “Epic Substratum in the Prose of Job,”JBL 76 (1957): 13-25, for a discussion of the Ugaritic deity Mot swallowing up the enemy.

[2:3]  ¹⁵ sn Once again the adverb חִנָּם (khinnam, “gratis”) is used. It means “graciously, gratis, free, without cause, for no reason.” Here the sense has to be gratuitously, for no reason.” The point of the verb חָנַן (khanan, “to be gracious”) and its derivatives is that the action is undeserved. In fact, they would deserve the opposite. Sinners seeking grace deserve punishment. Here, Job deserves reward, not suffering.

[21:9]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “you make them like a furnace of fire.” Although many modern translations retain the literal Hebrew, the statement is elliptical. The point is not that he makes them like a furnace, but like an object burned in a furnace (cf. NEB, “at your coming you shall plunge them into a fiery furnace”).

[21:9]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “at the time of your face.” The “face” of the king here refers to his angry presence. See Lam 4:16.

[21:9]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “the Lord, in his anger he swallows them, and fire devours them.” Some take “the Lord” as a vocative, in which case he is addressed in vv. 8-9a. But this makes the use of the third person in v. 9b rather awkward, though the king could be the subject (see vv. 1-7).

[27:11]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “are dry” (so NASB, NIV, NRSV).

[27:11]  ²⁰ tn Heb “women come [and] light it.” The city is likened to a dead tree with dried up branches that is only good for firewood.

[27:11]  ²¹ tn Heb “for not a people of understanding [is] he.”

[13:14]  ²² tn Or “children along with their parents”; Heb “fathers and children together.”

[13:14]  ²³ tn Heb “I will not show…so as not to destroy them.”

[21:7]  ²⁴ tn Heb “And afterward.”

[21:7]  ²⁵ tn Heb “oracle of the Lord.”

[5:11]  ²⁶ 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]  ²⁷ 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]  ²⁸ tn The pronoun “you” is not in the Hebrew text, but is implied.

[7:4]  ²⁹ tn “I will set your behavior on your head.”

[7:4]  ³⁰ tn Heb “and your abominable practices will be among you.”

[7:9]  ³¹ 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]  ³² tn Heb “According to your behavior I will place on you.”

[7:9]  ³³ tn The MT lacks “you.” It has been added for clarification.

[8:18]  ³⁴ 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.

[9:10]  ³⁵ 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.

[9:10]  ³⁶ tn Heb “their way on their head I have placed.” The same expression occurs in 1 Kgs 8:32; Ezek 11:21; 16:43; 22:31.

[11:5]  ³⁷ sn The expression those who buy them appears to be a reference to the foreign nations to whom Israel’s own kings “sold” their subjects. Far from being good shepherds, then, they were evil and profiteering. The whole section (vv. 4-14) refers to the past when the Lord, the Good Shepherd, had in vain tried to lead his people to salvation and life.