Ezekiel 5:15

5:15 You will be ¹  an object of scorn and taunting, ²  a prime example of destruction ³  among the nations around you when I execute judgments against you in anger and raging fury. ⁴  I, the Lord, have spoken!

Numbers 26:10

26:10 The earth opened its mouth and swallowed them and Korah at the time that company died, when the fire consumed 250 men. So they became a warning.

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.

Psalms 37:22

37:22 Surely ⁵  those favored by the Lord ⁶  will possess the land,

but those rejected ⁷  by him will be wiped out. ⁸ 

Psalms 44:13-14

44:13 You made us ⁹  an object of disdain to our neighbors;

those who live on our borders taunt and insult us. ¹⁰ 

44:14 You made us ¹¹  an object of ridicule ¹²  among the nations;

foreigners treat us with contempt. ¹³ 

Isaiah 65:15

65:15 Your names will live on in the curse formulas of my chosen ones. ¹⁴ 

The sovereign Lord will kill you,

but he will give his servants another name.

Jeremiah 24:9

24:9 I will bring such disaster on them that all the kingdoms of the earth will be horrified. I will make them an object of reproach, a proverbial example of disaster. I will make them an object of ridicule, an example to be used in curses. ¹⁵  That is how they will be remembered wherever I banish them. ¹⁶ 

Jeremiah 29:22

29:22 And all the exiles of Judah who are in Babylon will use them as examples when they put a curse on anyone. They will say, “May the Lord treat you like Zedekiah and Ahab whom the king of Babylon roasted to death in the fire!” ¹⁷ 

¹ 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.

² tn The Hebrew word occurs only here in the OT. A related verb means “revile, taunt” (see Ps 44:16).

³ 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).

⁴ tn Heb “in anger and in fury and in rebukes of fury.” The heaping up of synonyms emphasizes the degree of God’s anger.

⁵ tn The particle כִּי is best understood as asseverative or emphatic here.

⁶ tn Heb “those blessed by him.” The pronoun “him” must refer to the Lord (see vv. 20, 23), so the referent has been specified in the translation for clarity.

⁷ tn Heb “cursed.”

⁸ tn Or “cut off”; or “removed” (see v. 9).

⁹ tn The prefixed verbal form is a preterite (without vav [ו] consecutive).

¹⁰ tn Heb “an [object of] taunting and [of] mockery to those around us.”

¹¹ tn The prefixed verbal form is a preterite (without vav [ו] consecutive).

¹² tn Heb “a proverb,” or “[the subject of] a mocking song.”

¹³ tn Heb “a shaking of the head among the peoples.” Shaking the head was a derisive gesture (see Jer 18:16; Lam 2:15).

¹⁴ tn Heb “you will leave your name for an oath to my chosen ones.”

¹⁵ tn Or “an object of reproach in peoples’ proverbs…an object of ridicule in people’s curses.” The alternate translation treats the two pairs which are introduced without vavs (ו) but are joined by vavs as examples of hendiadys. This is very possible here but the chain does not contain this pairing in 25:18; 29:18.

¹⁶ tn Heb “I will make them for a terror for disaster to all the kingdoms of the earth, for a reproach and for a proverb, for a taunt and a curse in all the places which I banish them there.” The complex Hebrew sentence has been broken down into equivalent shorter sentences to conform more with contemporary English style.

¹⁷ sn Being roasted to death in the fire appears to have been a common method of execution in Babylon. See Dan 3:6, 19-21. The famous law code of the Babylonian king Hammurabi also mandated this method of execution for various crimes a thousand years earlier. There is a satirical play on words involving their fate, “roasted them to death” (קָלָם, qalam), and the fact that that fate would become a common topic of curse (קְלָלָה, qÿlalah) pronounced on others in Babylon.