3:10 When the mountains see you, they shake.
The torrential downpour sweeps through. 1
The great deep 2 shouts out;
it lifts its hands high. 3
3:16 I listened and my stomach churned; 4
the sound made my lips quiver.
My frame went limp, as if my bones were decaying, 5
and I shook as I tried to walk. 6
I long 7 for the day of distress
to come upon 8 the people who attack us.
2:2 The Lord responded: 9
“Write down this message! 10 Record it legibly on tablets,
so the one who announces 11 it may read it easily. 12
1 tn Heb “a heavy rain of waters passes by.” Perhaps the flash floods produced by the downpour are in view here.
2 sn The great deep, which is to be equated with the sea (vv. 8, 15), is a symbol of chaos and represents the Lord’s enemies.
3 sn Lifting the hands here suggests panic and is accompanied by a cry for mercy (see Ps 28:2; Lam 2:19). The forces of chaos cannot withstand the Lord’s power revealed in the storm.
4 tn Heb “my insides trembled.”
5 tn Heb “decay entered my bones.”
6 tc Heb “beneath me I shook, which….” The Hebrew term אֲשֶׁר (’asher) appears to be a relative pronoun, but a relative pronoun does not fit here. The translation assumes a reading אֲשֻׁרָי (’ashuray, “my steps”) as well as an emendation of the preceding verb to a third plural form.
7 tn The translation assumes that אָנוּחַ (’anuakh) is from the otherwise unattested verb נָוָח (navakh, “sigh”; see HALOT 680 s.v. II נוח; so also NEB). Most take this verb as נוּחַ (nuakh, “to rest”) and translate, “I wait patiently” (cf. NIV).
8 tn Heb “to come up toward.”
7 tn Heb “the
8 tn Heb “[the] vision.”
9 tn Or “reads from.”
10 tn Heb “might run,” which here probably means “run [through it quickly with one’s eyes],” that is, read it easily.