13:15 Everyone who is caught will be stabbed;
everyone who is seized 1 will die 2 by the sword.
13:16 Their children will be smashed to pieces before their very eyes;
their houses will be looted
and their wives raped.
13:17 Look, I am stirring up the Medes to attack them; 3
they are not concerned about silver,
nor are they interested in gold. 4
13:18 Their arrows will cut young men to ribbons; 5
they have no compassion on a person’s offspring, 6
they will not 7 look with pity on children.
13:19 Babylon, the most admired 8 of kingdoms,
the Chaldeans’ source of honor and pride, 9
will be destroyed by God
just as Sodom and Gomorrah were. 10
18:16 Below his roots dry up,
and his branches wither above.
18:19 He has neither children nor descendants 11 among his people,
no survivor in those places he once stayed. 12
21:10 You destroy their offspring 13 from the earth,
their descendants 14 from among the human race. 15
37:28 For the Lord promotes 16 justice,
and never abandons 17 his faithful followers.
They are permanently secure, 18
but the children 19 of evil men are wiped out. 20
109:13 May his descendants 21 be cut off! 22
May the memory of them be wiped out by the time the next generation arrives! 23
137:8 O daughter Babylon, soon to be devastated! 24
How blessed will be the one who repays you
for what you dished out to us! 25
137:9 How blessed will be the one who grabs your babies
and smashes them on a rock! 26
1 tn Heb “carried off,” i.e., grabbed from the fleeing crowd. See HALOT 764 s.v. ספה.
2 tn Heb “will fall” (so KJV, NIV, NRSV); NLT “will be run through with a sword.”
3 tn Heb “against them”; NLT “against Babylon.”
4 sn They cannot be bought off, for they have a lust for bloodshed.
5 tn Heb “and bows cut to bits young men.” “Bows” stands by metonymy for arrows.
6 tn Heb “the fruit of the womb.”
7 tn Heb “their eye does not.” Here “eye” is a metonymy for the whole person.
8 tn Or “most beautiful” (NCV, TEV).
9 tn Heb “the beauty of the pride of the Chaldeans.”
10 tn Heb “and Babylon…will be like the overthrow by God of Sodom and Gomorrah.” On מַהְפֵּכַת (mahpekhat, “overthrow”) see the note on the word “destruction” in 1:7.
11 tn The two words נִין (nin, “offspring”) and נֶכֶד (nekhed, “posterity”) are always together and form an alliteration. This is hard to capture in English, but some have tried: Moffatt had “son and scion,” and Tur-Sinai had “breed or brood.” But the words are best simply translated as “lineage and posterity” or as in the NIV “offspring or descendants.”
12 tn Heb “in his sojournings.” The verb גּוּר (gur) means “to reside; to sojourn” temporarily, without land rights. Even this word has been selected to stress the temporary nature of his stay on earth.
13 tn Heb “fruit.” The next line makes it clear that offspring is in view.
14 tn Heb “seed.”
15 tn Heb “sons of man.”
16 tn Heb “loves.” The verb “loves” is here metonymic; the
17 tn The imperfect verbal form draws attention to this generalizing statement.
18 tn Or “protected forever.”
19 tn Or “offspring”; Heb “seed.”
20 tn Or “cut off”; or “removed.” The perfect verbal forms in v. 28b state general truths.
21 tn Or “offspring.”
22 sn On the expression cut off see Ps 37:28.
23 tn Heb “in another generation may their name be wiped out.”
24 tn Heb “O devastated daughter of Babylon.” The psalmist dramatically anticipates Babylon’s demise.
25 tn Heb “O the happiness of the one who repays you your wage which you paid to us.”
26 sn For other references to the wholesale slaughter of babies in the context of ancient Near Eastern warfare, see 2 Kgs 8:12; Isa 13:16; Hos 13:16; Nah 3:10.