6:28 “The time will come when the land suffers from a famine, a plague, blight, and disease, or a locust 1 invasion, or when their enemy lays siege to the cities of the land, 2 or when some other type of plague or epidemic occurs. 6:29 When all your people Israel pray and ask for help, 3 as they acknowledge their intense pain 4 and spread out their hands toward this temple,
77:2 In my time of trouble I sought 5 the Lord.
I kept my hand raised in prayer throughout the night. 6
I 7 refused to be comforted.
6:14 They offer only superficial help
for the harm my people have suffered. 8
They say, ‘Everything will be all right!’
But everything is not all right! 9
30:12 Moreover, 10 the Lord says to the people of Zion, 11
“Your injuries are incurable;
your wounds are severe. 12
3:19 Your destruction is like an incurable wound; 13
your demise is like a fatal injury! 14
All who hear what has happened to you 15 will clap their hands for joy, 16
for no one ever escaped your endless cruelty! 17
1 tn Actually two Hebrew words appear here, both of which are usually (but not always) taken as referring to locusts. Perhaps different stages of growth or different varieties are in view, but this is uncertain. NEB has “locusts new-sloughed or fully grown”; NASB has “locust or grasshopper”; NIV has “locusts or grasshoppers”; NRSV has “locust, or caterpillar.”
2 tn Heb “in the land, his gates.”
3 tn Heb “every prayer, every request for help which will be to all the people, to all your people Israel.”
4 tn Heb “which they know, each his pain and his affliction.”
5 tn Here the psalmist refers back to the very recent past, when he began to pray for divine help.
6 tn Heb “my hand [at] night was extended and was not growing numb.” The verb נָגַר (nagar), which can mean “flow” in certain contexts, here has the nuance “be extended.” The imperfect form (תָפוּג, tafug, “to be numb”) is used here to describe continuous action in the past.
7 tn Or “my soul.” The Hebrew term נֶפֶשׁ (nefesh) with a pronominal suffix is often equivalent to a pronoun, especially in poetry (see BDB 660 s.v. נֶפֶשׁ 4.a).
8 tn Heb “They heal [= bandage] the wound of my people lightly”; TEV “They act as if my people’s wounds were only scratches.”
9 tn Heb “They say, ‘Peace! Peace!’ and there is no peace!”
10 tn The particle כִּי (ki) here is parallel to the one in v. 5 that introduces the first oracle. See the discussion in the translator’s note there.
11 tn The pronouns in vv. 10-17 are second feminine singular referring to a personified entity. That entity is identified in v. 17 as Zion, which here stands for the people of Zion.
12 sn The wounds to the body politic are those of the incursions from the enemy from the north referred to in Jer 4:6; 6:1 over which Jeremiah and even God himself have lamented (Jer 8:21; 10:19; 14:17). The enemy from the north has been identified as Babylon and has been identified as the agent of God’s punishment of his disobedient people (Jer 1:15; 4:6; 25:9).
13 tc The MT reads the hapax legomenon כֵּהָה (kehah, “relief, alleviation”). On the other hand, the LXX reads ἴασις (iasi", “healing”) which seems to reflect a reading of גֵּהָה (gehah, “cure, healing”). In the light of the LXX, the BHS editors suggest emending the MT to גֵּהָה (gehah) – which occurs only once elsewhere (Prov 17:22) – on the basis of orthographic and phonological confusion between Hebrew כ (kaf) and ג (gimel). This emendation would produce the common ancient Near Eastern treaty-curse: “there is no cure for your wound” (e.g., Hos 5:13); see HALOT 461 s.v. כֵּהָה; K. J. Cathcart, “Treaty-Curses and the Book of Nahum,” CBQ 35 (1973): 186; D. Hillers, Treaty-Curses and the Old Testament Prophets, 64-66.
14 tn Heb “your injury is fatal.”
15 tn Heb “the report of you.”
16 tn Heb “will clap their hands over you.”
17 tn Heb “For who ever escaped…?”