Hosea 9:13

9:13 Just as lion cubs are born predators, ¹ 

so Ephraim will bear his sons for slaughter.

Hosea 9:16

9:16 Ephraim will be struck down ²  –

their root will be dried up;

they will not yield any fruit.

Even if they do bear children,

I will kill their precious offspring.

Deuteronomy 28:32

28:32 Your sons and daughters will be given to another people while you look on in vain all day, and you will be powerless to do anything about it. ³ 

Deuteronomy 28:41-42

28:41 You will bear sons and daughters but not keep them, because they will be taken into captivity. 28:42 Whirring locusts ⁴  will take over every tree and all the produce of your soil.

Deuteronomy 32:25

32:25 The sword will make people childless outside,

and terror will do so inside;

they will destroy ⁵  both the young man and the virgin,

the infant and the gray-haired man.

Job 27:14

27:14 If his children increase – it is for the sword! ⁶ 

His offspring never have enough to eat. ⁷ 

Jeremiah 15:7

15:7 The Lord continued, ⁸ 

“In every town in the land I will purge them

like straw blown away by the wind. ⁹ 

I will destroy my people.

I will kill off their children.

I will do so because they did not change their behavior. ¹⁰ 

Jeremiah 16:3-4

16:3 For I, the Lord, tell you what will happen to ¹¹  the children who are born here in this land and to the men and women who are their mothers and fathers. ¹²  16:4 They will die of deadly diseases. No one will mourn for them. They will not be buried. Their dead bodies will lie like manure spread on the ground. They will be killed in war or die of starvation. Their corpses will be food for the birds and wild animals.

Lamentations 2:20

Jerusalem Speaks:

ר (Resh)

2:20 Look, O Lord! Consider! ¹³ 

Whom have you ever afflicted ¹⁴  like this?

Should women eat their offspring, ¹⁵ 

their healthy infants? ¹⁶ 

Should priest and prophet

be killed in the Lord’s ¹⁷  sanctuary?

¹ 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.

² tn Or perhaps, following the plant metaphor, “will be blighted” (NIV similar).

³ tn Heb “and there will be no power in your hand”; NCV “there will be nothing you can do.”

⁴ tn The Hebrew term denotes some sort of buzzing or whirring insect; some have understood this to be a type of locust (KJV, NIV, CEV), but other insects have also been suggested: “buzzing insects” (NAB); “the cricket” (NASB); “the cicada” (NRSV).

⁵ tn A verb is omitted here in the Hebrew text; for purposes of English style one suitable to the context is supplied.

⁶ tn R. Gordis (Job, 294) identifies this as a breviloquence. Compare Ps 92:8 where the last two words also constitute the apodosis.

⁷ tn Heb “will not be satisfied with bread/food.”

⁸ tn The words “The Lord continued” are not in the text. They have been supplied in the translation to show the shift back to talking about the people instead of addressing them. The obvious speaker is the Lord; the likely listener is Jeremiah as in vv. 1-4.

⁹ tn Heb “I have winnowed them with a winnowing fork in the gates of the land.” The word “gates” is here being used figuratively for the cities, the part for the whole. See 14:2 and the notes there.

¹⁰ tn Or “did not repent of their wicked ways”; Heb “They did not turn back from their ways.” There is no casual particle here (either כִּי [ki], which is more formally casual, or וְ [vÿ], which sometimes introduces casual circumstantial clauses). The causal idea is furnished by the connection of ideas. If the verbs throughout this section are treated as pasts and this section seen as a lament, then the clause could be sequential: “but they still did not turn…”

¹¹ tn Heb “For thus says the Lord concerning…”

¹² tn Heb “Thus says the Lord concerning the sons and daughters who are born in the place and concerning their mothers who give them birth and their fathers who fathered them in this land.”

¹³ tn Heb “Look, O Lord! See!” When used in collocation with verbs of cognition, רָאָה (ra’ah) means “to see for oneself” or “to take notice” (1 Sam 26:12). The parallelism between seeing and understanding is often emphasized (e.g., Exod 16:6; Isa 5:19; 29:15; Job 11:11; Eccl 6:5). See also 1:11 and cf. 1:9, 12, 20; 3:50, 59, 60; 5:1.

¹⁴ tn For the nuance “afflict” see the note at 1:12.

¹⁵ tn Heb “their fruit.” The term פְּרִי (pÿri, “fruit”) is used figuratively to refer to children as the fruit of a mother’s womb (e.g., Gen 30:2; Deut 7:13; 28:4, 11, 18, 53; 30:9; Pss 21:11; 127:3; 132:11; Isa 13:18; Mic 6:7).

¹⁶ tn Heb “infants of healthy childbirth.” The genitive-construct phrase עֹלֲלֵי טִפֻּחִים (’olale tippukhim) functions as an attributive genitive construction: “healthy newborn infants.” The noun טִפֻּחִים (tippukhim) appears only here. It is related to the verb טָפַח (tafakh), meaning “to give birth to a healthy child” or “to raise children” depending on whether the Arabic or Akkadian cognate is emphasized. For the related verb, see below at 2:22.

¹⁷ tc The MT reads אֲדֹנָי (’adonay, “the Lord”) here rather than יהוה (YHWH, “the Lord”) as at the beginning of the verse. See the tc note at 1:14.