32:22 For a fire has been kindled by my anger,
and it burns to lowest Sheol; 1
it consumes the earth and its produce,
and ignites the foundations of the mountains.
79:5 How long will this go on, O Lord? 2
Will you stay angry forever?
How long will your rage 3 burn like fire?
89:46 How long, O Lord, will this last?
Will you remain hidden forever? 4
Will your anger continue to burn like fire?
1:31 The powerful will be like 5 a thread of yarn,
their deeds like a spark;
both will burn together,
and no one will put out the fire.
42:25 So he poured out his fierce anger on them,
along with the devastation 6 of war.
Its flames encircled them, but they did not realize it; 7
it burned against them, but they did notice. 8
4:4 Just as ritual circumcision cuts away the foreskin
as an external symbol of dedicated covenant commitment,
you must genuinely dedicate yourselves to the Lord
and get rid of everything that hinders your commitment to me, 9
people of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem.
If you do not, 10 my anger will blaze up like a flaming fire against you
that no one will be able to extinguish.
That will happen because of the evil you have done.”
4:1 (3:19) 14 “For indeed the day 15 is coming, burning like a furnace, and all the arrogant evildoers will be chaff. The coming day will burn them up,” says the Lord who rules over all. “It 16 will not leave even a root or branch.
1 tn Or “to the lowest depths of the earth”; cf. NAB “to the depths of the nether world”; NIV “to the realm of death below”; NLT “to the depths of the grave.”
2 tn Heb “How long, O
3 tn Or “jealous anger.”
4 tn Heb “How long, O
5 tn Heb “will become” (so NASB, NIV).
6 tn Heb “strength” (so KJV, NASB); NAB “fury”; NASB “fierceness”; NIV “violence.”
7 tn Heb “and it blazed against him all around, but he did not know.” The subject of the third feminine singular verb “blazed” is the divine חֵמָה (khemah, “anger”) mentioned in the previous line.
8 tn Heb “and it burned against him, but he did not set [it] upon [the] heart.”
9 tn Heb “Circumcise yourselves to the
10 tn Heb “lest.”
11 tn Heb “Lord Yahweh.” The translation follows the ancient Jewish tradition of substituting the Hebrew word for God for the proper name Yahweh.
12 tn Heb “this place.” Some see this as a reference to the temple but the context has been talking about what goes on in the towns of Judah and Jerusalem and the words that follow, meant as a further explanation, are applied to the whole land.
13 tn Heb “the trees of/in the field and the fruit of/in the ground.”
14 sn Beginning with 4:1, the verse numbers through 4:6 in the English Bible differ from the verse numbers in the Hebrew text (BHS), with 4:1 ET = 3:19 HT, 4:2 ET = 3:20 HT, etc., through 4:6 ET = 3:24 HT. Thus the book of Malachi in the Hebrew Bible has only three chapters, with 24 verses in ch. 3.
15 sn This day is the well-known “day of the
16 tn Heb “so that it” (so NASB, NRSV). For stylistic reasons a new sentence was begun here in the translation.
17 sn A winnowing fork is a pitchfork-like tool used to toss threshed grain in the air so that the wind blows away the chaff, leaving the grain to fall to the ground. The note of purging is highlighted by the use of imagery involving sifting though threshed grain for the useful kernels.
18 tn Or “granary,” “barn” (referring to a building used to store a farm’s produce rather than a building for housing livestock).
19 sn The image of fire that cannot be extinguished is from the OT: Job 20:26; Isa 34:8-10; 66:24.