8:16 Then he brought me to the inner court of the Lord’s house. Right there 6 at the entrance to the Lord’s temple, between the porch and the altar, 7 were about twenty-five 8 men with their backs to the Lord’s temple, 9 facing east – they were worshiping the sun 10 toward the east!
2:17 Let the priests, those who serve the Lord, weep
from the vestibule all the way back to the altar. 11
Let them say, “Have pity, O Lord, on your people;
please do not turn over your inheritance to be mocked,
to become a proverb 12 among the nations.
Why should it be said 13 among the peoples,
“Where is their God?”
1 tn Heb “you will raise,” an imperfect of instruction.
2 tn Heb “And Moses spoke before.”
3 sn This analogy is an example of a qal wahomer comparison. It is an argument by inference from the light (qal) to the heavy (homer), from the simple to the more difficult. If the Israelites, who are Yahwists, would not listen to him, it is highly unlikely Pharaoh would.
4 tn The final clause begins with a disjunctive vav (ו), a vav on a nonverb form – here a pronoun. It introduces a circumstantial causal clause.
5 tn Heb “and [since] I am of uncircumcised lips.” The “lips” represent his speech (metonymy of cause). The term “uncircumcised” makes a comparison between his speech and that which Israel perceived as unacceptable, unprepared, foreign, and of no use to God. The heart is described this way when it is impervious to good impressions (Lev 26:41; Jer 9:26) and the ear when it hears imperfectly (Jer 6:10). Moses has here returned to his earlier claim – he does not speak well enough to be doing this.
6 tn The word הִנֵּה (hinneh, traditionally “behold”) indicates becoming aware of something.
7 sn The priests prayed to God between the porch and the altar on fast days (Joel 2:17). This is the location where Zechariah was murdered (Matt 23:35).
8 tc The LXX reads “twenty” instead of twenty-five, perhaps because of the association of the number twenty with the Mesopotamian sun god Shamash.
9 sn The temple faced east.
10 tn Or “the sun god.”
11 tn Heb “between the vestibule and the altar.” The vestibule was located at the entrance of the temple and the altar was located at the other end of the building. So “between the vestibule and the altar” is a merism referring to the entire structure. The priestly lament permeates the entire house of worship.
12 tn For the MT reading לִמְשָׁל (limshol, an infinitive, “to rule”), one should instead read לְמָשָׁל (lÿmashal, a noun, “to a byword”). While the consonantal Hebrew text permits either, the context suggests that the concern here is more one of not wanting to appear abandoned by God to ongoing economic depression rather than one of concern over potential political subjection of Israel (cf. v. 19). The possibility that the form in the MT is an infinitive construct of the denominative verb II מָשַׁל (mashal, “to utter a proverb”) does not seem likely because of the following preposition (Hebrew בְּ [bÿ], rather than עַל [’al]).
13 tn Heb “Why will they say?”
14 sn Spelling of this name (Βαραχίου, Baraciou) varies among the English versions: “Barachiah” (RSV, NRSV); “Berechiah” (NASB); “Berachiah” (NIV).
15 sn Gen 4:10 indicates that Abel’s blood cried out for justice.
16 sn It is not clear which Zechariah is meant here. It is probably the person mentioned in 2 Chr 24:20-25.
17 tn Or “who perished.”
18 tn Or “and the temple”; Grk “and the house,” but in this context a reference to the house of God as a place of sanctuary.
19 tn Or “required from.”