3:26 Her gates will mourn and lament;
deprived of her people, she will sit on the ground. 1
16:1 Send rams as tribute to the ruler of the land, 2
from Sela in the desert 3
to the hill of Daughter Zion.
29:2 I will threaten Ariel,
and she will mourn intensely
and become like an altar hearth 4 before me.
33:4 Your plunder 5 disappears as if locusts were eating it; 6
they swarm over it like locusts! 7
1 tn Heb “she will be empty, on the ground she will sit.” Jerusalem is personified as a destitute woman who sits mourning the empty city.
2 tc The Hebrew text reads literally, “Send [a plural imperatival form is used] a ram [to] the ruler of the land.” The term כַּר (kar, “ram”) should be emended to the plural כָּרִים (karim). The singular form in the text is probably the result of haplography; note that the next word begins with a mem (מ).
3 tn The Hebrew text has “toward [across?] the desert.”
3 tn The term אֲרִיאֵל (’ari’el, “Ariel”) is the word translated “altar hearth” here. The point of the simile is not entirely clear. Perhaps the image likens Jerusalem’s coming crisis to a sacrificial fire.
4 tn The pronoun is plural; the statement is addressed to the nations who have stockpiled plunder from their conquests of others.
5 tn Heb “and your plunder is gathered, the gathering of the locust.”
6 tn Heb “like a swarm of locusts swarming on it.”