Deuteronomy 28:37

28:37 You will become an occasion of horror, a proverb, and an object of ridicule to all the peoples to whom the Lord will drive you.

Deuteronomy 29:24-28

29:24 Then all the nations will ask, “Why has the Lord done all this to this land? What is this fierce, heated display of anger ¹  all about?” 29:25 Then people will say, “Because they abandoned the covenant of the Lord, the God of their ancestors, which he made with them when he brought them out of the land of Egypt. 29:26 They went and served other gods and worshiped them, gods they did not know and that he did not permit them to worship. ²  29:27 That is why the Lord’s anger erupted against this land, bringing on it all the curses ³  written in this scroll. 29:28 So the Lord has uprooted them from their land in anger, wrath, and great rage and has deported them to another land, as is clear today.”

Deuteronomy 29:1

Narrative Interlude

29:1 (28:69) ⁴  These are the words of the covenant that the Lord commanded Moses to make with the people of Israel in the land of Moab, in addition to the covenant he had made with them at Horeb. ⁵ 

Deuteronomy 9:8

9:8 At Horeb you provoked him and he was angry enough with you to destroy you.

Jeremiah 18:16

18:16 So their land will become an object of horror. ⁶ 

People will forever hiss out their scorn over it.

All who pass that way will be filled with horror

and will shake their heads in derision. ⁷ 

Jeremiah 19:8

19:8 I will make this city an object of horror, a thing to be hissed at. All who pass by it will be filled with horror and will hiss out their scorn ⁸  because of all the disasters that have happened to it. ⁹ 

Lamentations 4:12

ל (Lamed)

4:12 Neither the kings of the earth

nor the people of the lands ¹⁰  ever thought ¹¹ 

that enemy or foe would enter

the gates ¹²  of Jerusalem. ¹³ 

Ezekiel 5:15

5:15 You will be ¹⁴  an object of scorn and taunting, ¹⁵  a prime example of destruction ¹⁶  among the nations around you when I execute judgments against you in anger and raging fury. ¹⁷  I, the Lord, have spoken!

¹ tn Heb “this great burning of anger”; KJV “the heat of this great anger.”

² tn Heb “did not assign to them”; NASB, NRSV “had not allotted to them.”

³ tn Heb “the entire curse.”

⁴ sn Beginning with 29:1, the verse numbers through 29:29 in the English Bible differ from the verse numbers in the Hebrew text (BHS), with 29:1 ET = 28:69 HT, 29:2 ET = 29:1 HT, 29:3 ET = 29:2 HT, etc., through 29:29 ET = 29:28 HT. With 30:1 the verse numbers in the ET and HT are again the same.

⁵ sn Horeb is another name for Mount Sinai (which some English versions substitute here for clarity, cf. NCV, TEV, CEV, NLT).

⁶ tn There may be a deliberate double meaning involved here. The word translated here “an object of horror” refers both to destruction (cf. 2:15; 4:17) and the horror or dismay that accompanies it (cf. 5:30; 8:21). The fact that there is no conjunction or preposition in front of the noun “hissing” that follows this suggests that the reaction is in view here, not the cause.

⁷ tn Heb “an object of lasting hissing. All who pass that way will be appalled and shake their head.”

⁸ sn See 18:16 and the study note there.

⁹ tn Heb “all its smitings.” This word has been used several times for the metaphorical “wounds” that Israel has suffered as a result of the blows from its enemies. See, e.g., 14:17. It is used in the Hebrew Bible of scourging, both literally and metaphorically (cf. Deut 25:3; Isa 10:26), and of slaughter and defeat (1 Sam 4:10; Josh 10:20). Here it refers to the results of the crushing blows at the hands of her enemies which has made her the object of scorn.

¹⁰ tn Heb “inhabitants of the mainland.”

¹¹ tn Heb “they did not believe that.” The verb הֶאֱמִינוּ (he’eminu), Hiphil perfect 3rd person common plural from אָמַן (’aman, “to believe”), ordinarily is a term of faith and trust, but occasionally it functions cognitively: “to think that” (Job 9:16; 15:22; Ps 116:10; Lam 4:12) and “to be convinced that” (Ps 27:13) (HALOT 64 s.v. I אמן hif.1). The semantic relationship between “to believe” = “to think” is metonymical, that is, effect for cause.

¹² sn The expression “to enter the gates” of a city is an idiom referring to the military conquest of that city. Ancient Near Eastern fortified cities typically featured double and sometimes triple city gates – the bulwark of the defense of the city. Because fortified cities were enclosed with protective walls, the Achilles tendon of every city was the city gates – the weak point in the defense and the perennial point of attack by enemies (e.g., Judg 5:8, 11; 1 Sam 17:52; Isa 29:6; Jer 17:27; 51:54; Ezek 21:20, 27; Mic 1:9, 12; Neh 1:3; 2:3, 13, 17).

¹³ map For location see Map5-B1; Map6-F3; Map7-E2; Map8-F2; Map10-B3; JP1-F4; JP2-F4; JP3-F4; JP4-F4.

¹⁴ tc This reading is supported by the versions and by the Dead Sea Scrolls (11QEzek). Most Masoretic Hebrew mss read “it will be,” but if the final he (ה) is read as a mater lectionis, as it can be with the second masculine singular perfect, then they are in agreement. In either case the subject refers to Jerusalem.

¹⁵ tn The Hebrew word occurs only here in the OT. A related verb means “revile, taunt” (see Ps 44:16).

¹⁶ tn Heb “discipline and devastation.” These words are omitted in the Old Greek. The first term pictures Jerusalem as a recipient or example of divine discipline; the second depicts her as a desolate ruin (see Ezek 6:14).

¹⁷ tn Heb “in anger and in fury and in rebukes of fury.” The heaping up of synonyms emphasizes the degree of God’s anger.