Deuteronomy 28:65-67

28:65 Among those nations you will have no rest nor will there be a place of peaceful rest for the soles of your feet, for there the Lord will give you an anxious heart, failing eyesight, and a spirit of despair. 28:66 Your life will hang in doubt before you; you will be terrified by night and day and will have no certainty of surviving from one day to the next. ¹  28:67 In the morning you will say, ‘If only it were evening!’ And in the evening you will say, ‘I wish it were morning!’ because of the things you will fear and the things you will see.

Job 18:11-21

18:11 Terrors ²  frighten him on all sides

and dog ³  his every step.

18:12 Calamity is ⁴  hungry for him, ⁵ 

and misfortune is ready at his side. ⁶ 

18:13 It eats away parts of his skin; ⁷ 

the most terrible death ⁸  devours his limbs.

18:14 He is dragged from the security of his tent, ⁹ 

and marched off ¹⁰  to the king ¹¹  of terrors.

18:15 Fire resides in his tent; ¹² 

over his residence burning sulfur is scattered.

18:16 Below his roots dry up,

and his branches wither above.

18:17 His memory perishes from the earth,

he has no name in the land. ¹³ 

18:18 He is driven ¹⁴  from light into darkness

and is banished from the world.

18:19 He has neither children nor descendants ¹⁵  among his people,

no survivor in those places he once stayed. ¹⁶ 

18:20 People of the west ¹⁷  are appalled at his fate; ¹⁸ 

people of the east are seized with horror, ¹⁹  saying, ²⁰ 

18:21 ‘Surely such is the residence ²¹  of an evil man;

and this is the place of one who has not known God.’” ²² 

Job 20:23-26

20:23 “While he is ²³  filling his belly,

God ²⁴  sends his burning anger ²⁵  against him,

and rains down his blows upon him. ²⁶ 

20:24 If he flees from an iron weapon,

then an arrow ²⁷  from a bronze bow pierces him.

20:25 When he pulls it out ²⁸  and it comes out of his back,

the gleaming point ²⁹  out of his liver,

terrors come over him.

20:26 Total darkness waits to receive his treasures; ³⁰ 

a fire which has not been kindled ³¹ 

will consume him

and devour what is left in his tent.

Psalms 73:19

73:19 How desolate they become in a mere moment!

Terrifying judgments make their demise complete! ³² 

Ezekiel 26:17-21

26:17 They will sing this lament over you: ³³ 

“‘How you have perished – you have vanished ³⁴  from the seas,

O renowned city, once mighty in the sea,

she and her inhabitants, who spread their terror! ³⁵ 

26:18 Now the coastlands will tremble on the day of your fall;

the coastlands by the sea will be terrified by your passing.’ ³⁶ 

26:19 “For this is what the sovereign Lord says: When I make you desolate like the uninhabited cities, when I bring up the deep over you and the surging ³⁷  waters overwhelm you, 26:20 then I will bring you down to bygone people, ³⁸  to be with those who descend to the pit. I will make you live in the lower parts of the earth, among ³⁹  the primeval ruins, with those who descend to the pit, so that you will not be inhabited or stand ⁴⁰  in the land of the living. 26:21 I will bring terrors on you, and you will be no more! Though you are sought after, you will never be found again, declares the sovereign Lord.”

Matthew 27:4-5

27:4 saying, “I have sinned by betraying innocent blood!” But they said, “What is that to us? You take care of it yourself!” 27:5 So ⁴¹  Judas threw the silver coins into the temple and left. Then he went out and hanged himself.

[28:66]  ¹ tn Heb “you will not be confident in your life.” The phrase “from one day to the next” is implied by the following verse.

[18:11]  ² sn Bildad is referring here to all the things that afflict a person and cause terror. It would then be a metonymy of effect, the cause being the afflictions.

[18:11]  ³ tn The verb פּוּץ (puts) in the Hiphil has the meaning “to pursue” and “to scatter.” It is followed by the expression “at his feet.” So the idea is easily derived: they chase him at his feet. But some commentators have other proposals. The most far-fetched is that of Ehrlich and Driver (ZAW 24 [1953]: 259-60) which has “and compel him to urinate on his feet,” one of many similar readings the NEB accepted from Driver.

[18:12]  ⁴ tn The jussive is occasionally used without its normal sense and only as an imperfect (see GKC 323 §109.k).

[18:12]  ⁵ tn There are a number of suggestions for אֹנוֹ (’ono). Some take it as “vigor”: thus “his strength is hungry.” Others take it as “iniquity”: thus “his iniquity/trouble is hungry.”

[18:12]  ⁶ tn The expression means that misfortune is right there to destroy him whenever there is the opportunity.

[18:13]  ⁷ tn The expression “the limbs of his skin” makes no sense, unless a poetic meaning of “parts” (or perhaps “layers”) is taken. The parallelism has “his skin” in the first colon, and “his limbs” in the second. One plausible suggestion is to take בַּדֵּי (badde, “limbs of”) in the first part to be בִּדְוָי (bidvay, “by a disease”; Dhorme, Wright, RSV). The verb has to be made passive, however. The versions have different things: The LXX has “let the branches of his feet be eaten”; the Syriac has “his cities will be swallowed up by force”; the Vulgate reads “let it devour the beauty of his skin”; and Targum Job has “it will devour the linen garments that cover his skin.”

[18:13]  ⁸ tn The “firstborn of death” is the strongest child of death (Gen 49:3), or the deadliest death (like the “firstborn of the poor, the poorest). The phrase means the most terrible death (A. B. Davidson, Job, 134).

[18:14]  ⁹ tn Heb “from his tent, his security.” The apposition serves to modify the tent as his security.

[18:14]  ¹⁰ tn The verb is the Hiphil of צָעַד (tsa’ad, “to lead away”). The problem is that the form is either a third feminine (Rashi thought it was referring to Job’s wife) or the second person. There is a good deal of debate over the possibility of the prefix t- being a variant for the third masculine form. The evidence in Ugaritic and Akkadian is mixed, stronger for the plural than the singular. Gesenius has some samples where the third feminine form might also be used for the passive if there is no expressed subject (see GKC 459 §144.b), but the evidence is not strong. The simplest choices are to change the prefix to a י (yod), or argue that the ת (tav) can be masculine, or follow Gesenius.

[18:14]  ¹¹ sn This is a reference to death, the king of all terrors. Other identifications are made in the commentaries: Mot, the Ugaritic god of death; Nergal of the Babylonians; Molech of the Canaanites, the one to whom people sent emissaries.

[18:15]  ¹² tn This line is difficult as well. The verb, again a third feminine form, says “it dwells in his tent.” But the next part (מִבְּלִי לוֹ, mibbÿli lo) means something like “things of what are not his.” The best that can be made of the MT is “There shall live in his tent they that are not his” (referring to persons and animals; see J. E. Hartley, Job [NICOT], 279). G. R. Driver and G. B. Gray (Job [ICC], 2:161) refer “that which is naught of his” to weeds and wild animals. M. Dahood suggested a reading מַבֶּל (mabbel) and a connection to Akkadian nablu, “fire” (cf. Ugaritic nbl). The interchange of m and n is not a problem, and the parallelism with the next line makes good sense (“Some Northwest Semitic words in Job,” Bib 38 [1957]: 312ff.). Others suggest an emendation to get “night-hag” or vampire. This suggestion, as well as Driver’s “mixed herbs,” are linked to the idea of exorcism. But if a change is to be made, Dahood’s is the most compelling.

[18:17]  ¹³ tn Heb “outside.” Cf. ESV, “in the street,” referring to absence from his community’s memory.

[18:18]  ¹⁴ tn The verbs in this verse are plural; without the expressed subject they should be taken in the passive sense.

[18:19]  ¹⁵ tn The two words נִין (nin, “offspring”) and נֶכֶד (nekhed, “posterity”) are always together and form an alliteration. This is hard to capture in English, but some have tried: Moffatt had “son and scion,” and Tur-Sinai had “breed or brood.” But the words are best simply translated as “lineage and posterity” or as in the NIV “offspring or descendants.”

[18:19]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “in his sojournings.” The verb גּוּר (gur) means “to reside; to sojourn” temporarily, without land rights. Even this word has been selected to stress the temporary nature of his stay on earth.

[18:20]  ¹⁷ tn The word אַחֲרֹנִים (’akharonim) means “those [men] coming after.” And the next word, קַדְמֹנִים (qadmonim), means “those [men] coming before.” Some commentators have tried to see here references to people who lived before and people who lived after, but that does not explain their being appalled at the fate of the wicked. So the normal way this is taken is in connection to the geography, notably the seas – “the hinder sea” refers to the Mediterranean, the West, and “the front sea” refers to the Dead Sea (Zech 14:8), namely, the East. The versions understood this as temporal: “the last groaned for him, and wonder seized the first” (LXX).

[18:20]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “his day.”

[18:20]  ¹⁹ tn The expression has “they seize horror.” The RSV renders this “horror seizes them.” The same idiom is found in Job 21:6: “laid hold on shuddering.” The idiom would solve the grammatical problem, and not change the meaning greatly; but it would change the parallelism.

[18:20]  ²⁰ tn The word “saying” is supplied in the translation to mark and introduce the following as a quotation of these people who are seized with horror. The alternative is to take v. 21 as Bildad’s own summary statement (cf. G. R. Driver and G. B. Gray, Job [ICC], 2:162; J. E. Hartley, Job [NICOT], 280).

[18:21]  ²¹ tn The term is in the plural, “the tabernacles”; it should be taken as a plural of local extension (see GKC 397 §124.b).

[18:21]  ²² tn The word “place” is in construct; the clause following it replaces the genitive: “this is the place of – he has not known God.”

[20:23]  ²³ tn D. J. A. Clines observes that to do justice to the three jussives in the verse, one would have to translate “May it be, to fill his belly to the full, that God should send…and rain” (Job [WBC], 477). The jussive form of the verb at the beginning of the verse could also simply introduce a protasis of a conditional clause (see GKC 323 §109.h, i). This would mean, “if he [God] is about to fill his [the wicked’s] belly to the full, he will send….” The NIV reads “when he has filled his belly.” These fit better, because the context is talking about the wicked in his evil pursuit being cut down.

[20:23]  ²⁴ tn “God” is understood as the subject of the judgment.

[20:23]  ²⁵ tn Heb “the anger of his wrath.”

[20:23]  ²⁶ tn Heb “rain down upon him, on his flesh.” Dhorme changes עָלֵימוֹ (’alemo, “upon him”) to “his arrows”; he translates the line as “he rains his arrows upon his flesh.” The word בִּלְחוּמוֹ (bilkhumo,“his flesh”) has been given a wide variety of translations: “as his food,” “on his flesh,” “upon him, his anger,” or “missiles or weapons of war.”

[20:24]  ²⁷ tn Heb “a bronze bow pierces him.” The words “an arrow from” are implied and are supplied in the translation; cf. “pulls it out” in the following verse.

[20:25]  ²⁸ tn The MT has “he draws out [or as a passive, “it is drawn out/forth”] and comes [or goes] out of his back.” For the first verb שָׁלַף (shalaf, “pull, draw”), many commentators follow the LXX and use שֶׁלַח (shelakh, “a spear”). It then reads “and a shaft comes out of his back,” a sword flash comes out of his liver.” But the verse could also be a continuation of the preceding.

[20:25]  ²⁹ tn Possibly a reference to lightnings.

[20:26]  ³⁰ tn Heb “all darkness is hidden for his laid up things.” “All darkness” refers to the misfortunes and afflictions that await. The verb “hidden” means “is destined for.”

[20:26]  ³¹ tn Heb “not blown upon,” i.e., not kindled by man. But G. R. Driver reads “unquenched” (“Hebrew notes on the ‘Wisdom of Jesus Ben Sirach’,” JBL 53 [1934]: 289).

[73:19]  ³² tn Heb “they come to an end, they are finished, from terrors.”

[26:17]  ³³ tn Heb “and they will lift up over you a lament and they will say to you.”

[26:17]  ³⁴ tn Heb “O inhabitant.” The translation follows the LXX and understands a different Hebrew verb, meaning “cease,” behind the consonantal text. See L. C. Allen, Ezekiel [WBC], 2:72, and D. I. Block, Ezekiel (NICOT), 2:43.

[26:17]  ³⁵ tn Heb “she and her inhabitants who placed their terror to all her inhabitants.” The relationship of the final prepositional phrase to what precedes is unclear. The preposition probably has a specifying function here, drawing attention to Tyre’s inhabitants as the source of the terror mentioned prior to this. In this case, one might paraphrase verse 17b: “she and her inhabitants, who spread their terror; yes, her inhabitants (were the source of this terror).”

[26:18]  ³⁶ tn Heb “from your going out.”

[26:19]  ³⁷ tn Heb “many.”

[26:20]  ³⁸ tn Heb “to the people of antiquity.”

[26:20]  ³⁹ tn Heb “like.” The translation assumes an emendation of the preposition כְּ (kÿ, “like”), to בְּ (bÿ, “in, among”).

[26:20]  ⁴⁰ tn Heb “and I will place beauty.” This reading makes little sense; many, following the lead of the LXX, emend the text to read “nor will you stand” with the negative particle before the preceding verb understood by ellipsis; see L. C. Allen, Ezekiel (WBC), 2:73. D. I. Block (Ezekiel [NICOT], 2:47) offers another alternative, taking the apparent first person verb form as an archaic second feminine form and translating “nor radiate splendor.”

[27:5]  ⁴¹ tn Here καί (kai) has been translated as “so” to indicate the implied result of the leaders’ response to Judas.