62:3 How long will you threaten 3 a man?
All of you are murderers, 4
as dangerous as a leaning wall or an unstable fence. 5
13:10 “‘This is because they have led my people astray saying, “All is well,” 6 when things are not well. When anyone builds a wall without mortar, 7 they coat it with whitewash. 13:11 Tell the ones who coat it with whitewash that it will fall. When there is a deluge of rain, hailstones 8 will fall and a violent wind will break out. 9 13:12 When the wall has collapsed, people will ask you, “Where is the whitewash you coated it with?”
13:13 “‘Therefore this is what the sovereign Lord says: In my rage I will make a violent wind break out. In my anger there will be a deluge of rain and hailstones in destructive fury. 13:14 I will break down the wall you coated with whitewash and knock it to the ground so that its foundation is exposed. When it falls you will be destroyed beneath it, 10 and you will know that I am the Lord. 13:15 I will vent my rage against the wall, and against those who coated it with whitewash. Then I will say to you, “The wall is no more and those who whitewashed it are no more –
1 tn Heb “and the remaining ones fled to Aphek to the city and the wall fell on twenty-seven thousand men, the ones who remained.”
2 tn Heb “and Ben Hadad fled and went into the city, [into] an inner room in an inner room.”
3 tn The verb form is plural; the psalmist addresses his enemies. The verb הוּת occurs only here in the OT. An Arabic cognate means “shout at.”
4 tn The Hebrew text has a Pual (passive) form, but the verb form should be vocalized as a Piel (active) form. See BDB 953-54 s.v. רָצַח.
5 tn Heb “like a bent wall and a broken fence.” The point of the comparison is not entirely clear. Perhaps the enemies are depicted as dangerous, like a leaning wall or broken fence that is in danger of falling on someone (see C. A. Briggs and E. G. Briggs, Psalms [ICC], 2:69).
6 tn Or “peace.”
7 tn The Hebrew word only occurs here in the Bible. According to L. C. Allen (Ezekiel [WBC], 1:202-3) it is also used in the Mishnah of a wall of rough stones without mortar. This fits the context here comparing the false prophetic messages to a nice coat of whitewash on a structurally unstable wall.
8 tn Heb “and you, O hailstones.”
9 sn A violent wind will break out. God’s judgments are frequently described in storm imagery (Pss 18:7-15; 77:17-18; 83:15; Isa 28:17; 30:30; Jer 23:19; 30:23).
10 tn Or “within it,” referring to the city of Jerusalem.
11 tn Grk “and great was its fall.”
12 tn Grk “does not do [them].”
13 tn Grk “against which”; because of the length and complexity of the Greek sentence, the relative clause was converted to a temporal clause in the translation and a new sentence started here.
14 tn Grk “it”; the referent (that house) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
15 tn Grk “and its crash was great.”