9:13 Esther replied, “If the king is so inclined, let the Jews who are in Susa be permitted to act tomorrow also according to today’s law, and let them hang the ten sons of Haman on the gallows.”
27:14 If his children increase – it is for the sword! 1
His offspring never have enough to eat. 2
27:15 Those who survive him are buried by the plague, 3
and their 4 widows do not mourn for them.
9:13 Just as lion cubs are born predators, 5
so Ephraim will bear his sons for slaughter.
9:14 Give them, O Lord –
what will you give them?
Give them wombs that miscarry,
and breasts that cannot nurse! 6
1 tn R. Gordis (Job, 294) identifies this as a breviloquence. Compare Ps 92:8 where the last two words also constitute the apodosis.
2 tn Heb “will not be satisfied with bread/food.”
3 tn The text says “will be buried in/by death.” A number of passages in the Bible use “death” to mean the plague that kills (see Jer 15:2; Isa 28:3; and BDB 89 s.v. בְּ 2.a). In this sense it is like the English expression for the plague, “the Black Death.”
4 tc The LXX has “their widows” to match the plural, and most commentators harmonize in the same way.
5 tc The MT is corrupt in 9:13. The BHS editors suggest emending the text to follow the LXX reading. See D. Barthélemy, ed., Preliminary and Interim Report on the Hebrew Old Testament Text Project, 5:250-51.
6 tn Heb “breasts that shrivel up dry”; cf. KJV, NAB, NASB, NRSV “dry breasts.”