Isaiah 30:25

30:25 On every high mountain

and every high hill

there will be streams flowing with water,

at the time of ¹  great slaughter when the fortified towers collapse.

Isaiah 40:4

40:4 Every valley must be elevated,

and every mountain and hill leveled.

The rough terrain will become a level plain,

the rugged landscape a wide valley.

Psalms 68:16

68:16 Why do you look with envy, ²  O mountains ³  with many peaks,

at the mountain where God has decided to live? ⁴ 

Indeed ⁵  the Lord will live there ⁶  permanently!

Psalms 110:5-6

110:5 O sovereign Lord, ⁷  at your right hand

he strikes down ⁸  kings in the day he unleashes his anger. ⁹ 

110:6 He executes judgment ¹⁰  against ¹¹  the nations;

he fills the valleys with corpses; ¹² 

he shatters their heads over the vast battlefield. ¹³ 

Psalms 110:2

110:2 The Lord ¹⁴  extends ¹⁵  your dominion ¹⁶  from Zion.

Rule in the midst of your enemies!

Colossians 1:5

1:5 Your faith and love have arisen ¹⁷  from the hope laid up ¹⁸  for you in heaven, which you have heard about in the message of truth, the gospel ¹⁹ 

¹ tn Or “in the day of” (KJV).

² tn The meaning of the Hebrew verb רָצַד (ratsad), translated here “look with envy,” is uncertain; it occurs only here in the OT. See BDB 952-53. A cognate verb occurs in later Aramaic with the meaning “to lie in wait; to watch” (Jastrow 1492 s.v. רְצַד).

³ tn Perhaps the apparent plural form should be read as a singular with enclitic mem (ם; later misinterpreted as a plural ending). The preceding verse has the singular form.

⁴ tn Heb “[at] the mountain God desires for his dwelling place.” The reference is to Mount Zion/Jerusalem.

⁵ tn The Hebrew particle אַף (’af) has an emphasizing function here.

⁶ tn The word “there” is supplied in the translation for clarification.

⁷ tn As pointed in the Hebrew text, this title refers to God (many medieval Hebrew mss read יְהוָה, yehveh, “Lord” here). The present translation assumes that the psalmist here addresses the Lord as he celebrates what the king is able to accomplish while positioned at God’s “right hand.” According to this view the king is the subject of the third person verb forms in vv. 5b-7. (2) Another option is to understand the king as the addressee (as in vv. 2-3). In this case “the Lord” is the subject of the third person verbs throughout vv. 5-7 and is depicted as a warrior in a very anthropomorphic manner. In this case the Lord is pictured as being at the psalmist’s right hand (just the opposite of v. 1). See Pss 16:8; 121:5. (3) A third option is to revocalize אֲדֹנָי (’adonay, “Lord”) as אֲדֹנִי (’adoniy, “my lord”; see v. 1). In this case one may translate, “My lord, at his [God’s] right hand, strikes down.” In this case the king is the subject of the third person verbs in vv. 5b-7.

⁸ tn The perfect verbal forms in vv. 5-6 are understood here as descriptive-dramatic or as generalizing. Another option is to take them as rhetorical. In this case the psalmist describes anticipated events as if they had already taken place.

⁹ tn Heb “in the day of his anger.”

¹⁰ tn The imperfect verbal forms in vv. 6-7 are understood here as descriptive-dramatic or as generalizing, though they could be taken as future.

¹¹ tn Or “among.”

¹² tn Heb “he fills [with] corpses,” but one expects a double accusative here. The translation assumes an emendation to גְוִיּוֹת גֵאָיוֹת(בִּ) מִלֵּא or מִלֵּא גֵאָיוֹת גְּוִיוֹת (for a similar construction see Ezek 32:5). In the former case גֵאָיוֹת(ge’ayot) has accidentally dropped from the text due to homoioteleuton; in the latter case it has dropped out due to homoioarcton.

¹³ tn Heb “he strikes [the verb is מָחַץ (makhats), translated “strikes down” in v. 5] head[s] over a great land.” The Hebrew term רַבָּה (rabbah, “great”) is here used of distance or spatial measurement (see 1 Sam 26:13).

¹⁴ tn Since the Lord is mentioned in the third person (note the use of the first person in v. 1), it is likely that these are the psalmist’s words to the king, not a continuation of the oracle per se.

¹⁵ tn The prefixed verbal form is understood here as descriptive-dramatic or as generalizing, though it could be taken as future.

¹⁶ tn Heb “your strong scepter,” symbolic of the king’s royal authority and dominion.

¹⁷ tn Col 1:3-8 form one long sentence in the Greek text and have been divided at the end of v. 4 and v. 6 and within v. 6 for clarity, in keeping with the tendency in contemporary English toward shorter sentences. Thus the phrase “Your faith and love have arisen from the hope” is literally “because of the hope.” The perfect tense “have arisen” was chosen in the English to reflect the fact that the recipients of the letter had acquired this hope at conversion in the past, but that it still remains and motivates them to trust in Christ and to love one another.

¹⁸ tn BDAG 113 s.v. ἀπόκειμαι 2 renders ἀποκειμένην (apokeimenhn) with the expression “reserved” in this verse.

¹⁹ tn The term “the gospel” (τοῦ εὐαγγελίου, tou euangeliou) is in apposition to “the word of truth” (τῷ λόγῳ τῆς ἀληθείας, tw logw th" alhqeia") as indicated in the translation.