55:9 Confuse them, 3 O Lord!
Frustrate their plans! 4
For I see violence and conflict in the city.
10:34 “Do not think that I have come to bring 5 peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace but a sword.
7:40 When they heard these words, some of the crowd 6 began to say, “This really 7 is the Prophet!” 8 7:41 Others said, “This is the Christ!” 9 But still others said, “No, 10 for the Christ doesn’t come from Galilee, does he? 11 7:42 Don’t the scriptures say that the Christ is a descendant 12 of David 13 and comes from Bethlehem, 14 the village where David lived?” 15 7:43 So there was a division in the crowd 16 because of Jesus. 17
1 tn BDAG 825 s.v. πλῆθος 2.b.γ has this translation for πλῆθος (plhqo").
2 tn These clauses are a good example of the contrastive μὲν…δέ (men…de) construction: Some “on the one hand” sided with the Jews, but some “on the other hand” sided with the apostles.
3 tn Traditionally בַּלַּע (bala’) has been taken to mean “swallow” in the sense of “devour” or “destroy” (cf. KJV), but this may be a homonym meaning “confuse” (see BDB 118 s.v. בַּלַּע; HALOT 135 s.v. III *בֶּלַע). “Their tongue” is the understood object of the verb (see the next line).
4 tn Heb “split their tongue,” which apparently means “confuse their speech,” or, more paraphrastically, “frustrate the plans they devise with their tongues.”
5 tn Grk “cast.” For βάλλω (ballw) in the sense of causing a state or condition, see L&N 13.14.
6 tn Or “The common people” (as opposed to the religious authorities like the chief priests and Pharisees).
7 tn Or “truly.”
8 sn The Prophet is a reference to the “prophet like Moses” of Deut 18:15, by this time an eschatological figure in popular belief.
9 tn Or “the Messiah” (Both Greek “Christ” and Hebrew and Aramaic “Messiah” mean “one who has been anointed”).
10 tn An initial negative reply (“No”) is suggested by the causal or explanatory γάρ (gar) which begins the clause.
11 tn Questions prefaced with μή (mh) in Greek anticipate a negative answer. This can sometimes be indicated by using a “tag” at the end in English (here the tag is “does he?”).
12 tn Grk “is from the seed” (an idiom for human descent).
13 sn An allusion to Ps 89:4.
14 sn An allusion to Mic 5:2.
15 tn Grk “the village where David was.”
16 tn Or “among the common people” (as opposed to the religious authorities like the chief priests and Pharisees).
17 tn Grk “him”; the referent (Jesus) has been specified in the translation for clarity.