Isaiah 40:2

40:2 “Speak kindly to ¹  Jerusalem, ²  and tell her

that her time of warfare is over, ³ 

that her punishment is completed. ⁴ 

For the Lord has made her pay double ⁵  for all her sins.”

Deuteronomy 21:17

21:17 Rather, he must acknowledge the son of the less loved ⁶  wife as firstborn and give him the double portion ⁷  of all he has, for that son is the beginning of his father’s procreative power ⁸  – to him should go the right of the firstborn.

Deuteronomy 21:2

21:2 your elders and judges must go out and measure how far it is to the cities in the vicinity of the corpse. ⁹ 

Deuteronomy 2:9

2:9 Then the Lord said to me, “Do not harass Moab and provoke them to war, for I will not give you any of their land as your territory. This is because I have given Ar ¹⁰  to the descendants of Lot ¹¹  as their possession.

Job 42:10

42:10 So the Lord ¹²  restored what Job had lost ¹³  after he prayed for his friends, ¹⁴  and the Lord doubled ¹⁵  all that had belonged to Job.

Zechariah 9:12

9:12 Return to the stronghold, you prisoners, with hope; today I declare that I will return double what was taken from you.

Zechariah 9:2

9:2 as are those of Hamath also, which adjoins Damascus, and Tyre ¹⁶  and Sidon, ¹⁷  though they consider themselves to be very wise.

Colossians 4:17

4:17 And tell Archippus, “See to it that you complete the ministry you received in the Lord.”

¹ tn Heb “speak to the heart of Jerusalem.” Jerusalem is personified as a woman.

² map For location see Map5-B1; Map6-F3; Map7-E2; Map8-F2; Map10-B3; JP1-F4; JP2-F4; JP3-F4; JP4-F4.

³ tn Heb “that she is filled [with] her warfare.” Some understand צָבָא (tsavah, “warfare”) as meaning “hard service” or “compulsory labor” in this context.

⁴ tn Heb “that her punishment is accepted [as satisfactory].”

⁵ tn Heb “for she has received from the hand of the Lord double.” The principle of the double portion in punishment is also seen in Jer 16:18; 17:18 and Rev 18:6. For examples of the double portion in Israelite law, see Exod 22:4, 7, 9 (double restitution by a thief) and Deut 21:17 (double inheritance portion for the firstborn).

⁶ tn See note on the word “other” in v. 15.

⁷ tn Heb “measure of two.” The Hebrew expression פִּי שְׁנַיִם (piy shÿnayim) suggests a two-thirds split; that is, the elder gets two parts and the younger one part. Cf. 2 Kgs 2:9; Zech 13:8. The practice is implicit in Isaac’s blessing of Jacob (Gen 25:31-34) and Jacob’s blessing of Ephraim (Gen 48:8-22).

⁸ tn Heb “his generative power” (אוֹן, ’on; cf. HALOT 22 s.v.). Cf. NAB “the first fruits of his manhood”; NRSV “the first issue of his virility.”

⁹ tn Heb “surrounding the slain [one].”

¹⁰ sn Ar was a Moabite city on the Arnon River east of the Dead Sea. It is mentioned elsewhere in the “Book of the Wars of Yahweh” (Num 21:15; cf. 21:28; Isa 15:1). Here it is synonymous with the whole land of Moab.

¹¹ sn The descendants of Lot. Following the destruction of the cities of the plain, Sodom and Gomorrah, as God’s judgment, Lot fathered two sons by his two daughters, namely, Moab and Ammon (Gen 19:30-38). Thus, these descendants of Lot in and around Ar were the Moabites.

¹² tn The paragraph begins with the disjunctive vav, “Now as for the Lord, he….”

¹³ sn The expression here is interesting: “he returned the captivity of Job,” a clause used elsewhere in the Bible of Israel (see e.g., Ps 126). Here it must mean “the fortunes of Job,” i.e., what he had lost. There is a good deal of literature on this; for example, see R. Borger, “Zu sub sb(i)t,” ZAW 25 (1954): 315-16; and E. Baumann, ZAW 6 (1929): 17ff.

¹⁴ tn This is a temporal clause, using the infinitive construct with the subject genitive suffix. By this it seems that this act of Job was also something of a prerequisite for restoration – to pray for them.

¹⁵ tn The construction uses the verb “and he added” with the word “repeat” (or “twice”).

¹⁶ map For location see Map1-A2; Map2-G2; Map4-A1; JP3-F3; JP4-F3.

¹⁷ map For location see Map1-A1; JP3-F3; JP4-F3.