Deuteronomy 9:14

9:14 Stand aside ¹  and I will destroy them, obliterating their very name from memory, ²  and I will make you into a stronger and more numerous nation than they are.”

Deuteronomy 25:19

25:19 So when the Lord your God gives you relief from all the enemies who surround you in the land he ³  is giving you as an inheritance, ⁴  you must wipe out the memory of the Amalekites from under heaven ⁵  – do not forget! ⁶ 

Deuteronomy 29:20

29:20 The Lord will be unwilling to forgive him, and his intense anger ⁷  will rage ⁸  against that man; all the curses ⁹  written in this scroll will fall upon him ¹⁰  and the Lord will obliterate his name from memory. ¹¹ 

Proverbs 10:7

10:7 The memory ¹²  of the righteous is a blessing,

but the reputation ¹³  of the wicked will rot. ¹⁴ 

¹ tn Heb “leave me alone.”

² tn Heb “from under heaven.”

³ tn Heb “ the Lord your God.” The pronoun has been used in the translation for stylistic reasons to avoid redundancy.

⁴ tn The Hebrew text includes “to possess it.”

⁵ tn Or “from beneath the sky.” The Hebrew term שָׁמַיִם (shamayim) may be translated “heaven(s)” or “sky” depending on the context.

⁶ sn This command is fulfilled in 1 Sam 15:1-33.

⁵ tn Heb “the wrath of the Lord and his zeal.” The expression is a hendiadys, a figure in which the second noun becomes adjectival to the first.

⁶ tn Heb “smoke,” or “smolder.”

⁷ tn Heb “the entire oath.”

⁸ tn Or “will lie in wait against him.”

⁹ tn Heb “blot out his name from under the sky.”

⁷ sn “Memory” (זֵכֶר, zekher) and “name” are often paired as synonyms. “Memory” in this sense has to do with reputation, fame. One’s reputation will be good or bad by righteousness or wickedness respectively.

⁸ tn Heb “name.” The term “name” often functions as a metonymy of association for reputation (BDB 1028 s.v. שֵׁם 2.b).

⁹ tn The editors of BHS suggest a reading “will be cursed” to make a better parallelism, but the reading of the MT is more striking as a metaphor.