24:13 There are those 8 who rebel against the light;
they do not know its ways
and they do not stay on its paths.
24:14 Before daybreak 9 the murderer rises up;
he kills the poor and the needy;
in the night he is 10 like a thief. 11
24:15 And the eye of the adulterer watches for the twilight,
thinking, 12 ‘No eye can see me,’
and covers his face with a mask.
23:24 “Do you really think anyone can hide himself
where I cannot see him?” the Lord asks. 13
“Do you not know that I am everywhere?” 14
the Lord asks. 15
1 tn Heb “Get up, change yourself.”
2 tn Heb “look, Ahijah the prophet is there, he told me [I would be] king over this nation.”
3 tn Heb “take in your hand.”
4 tn The Hebrew verbal forms could be imperatives (“Disguise yourself and enter”), but this would make no sense in light of the immediately following context. The forms are better interpreted as infinitives absolute functioning as cohortatives. See IBHS 594 §35.5.2a. Some prefer to emend the forms to imperfects.
5 tn Heb “now a man drew a bow in his innocence” (i.e., with no specific target in mind, or at least without realizing his target was the king of Israel).
6 tn Heb “he”; the referent (the king) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
7 tn Heb “camp.”
8 tn Heb “They are among those who.”
9 tn The text simply has לָאוֹר (la’or, “at light” or “at daylight”), probably meaning just at the time of dawn.
10 tn In a few cases the jussive is used without any real sense of the jussive being present (see GKC 323 §109.k).
11 sn The point is that he is like a thief in that he works during the night, just before the daylight, when the advantage is all his and the victim is most vulnerable.
12 tn Heb “saying.”
13 tn Heb “Oracle of the
14 tn The words “Don’t you know” are not in the text. They are a way of conveying the idea that the question which reads literally “Do I not fill heaven and earth?” expects a positive answer. They follow the pattern used at the beginning of the previous two questions and continue that thought. The words are supplied in the translation for clarity.
15 tn Heb “Oracle of the
16 tn Or “this is the reason for God judging,” or “this is how judgment works.”
17 tn Grk “and men,” but in a generic sense, referring to people of both genders (as “everyone” in v. 20 makes clear).