47:2 Pick up millstones and grind flour!
Remove your veil,
strip off your skirt,
expose your legs,
cross the streams!
47:3 Let your private parts be exposed!
Your genitals will be on display! 1
I will get revenge;
I will not have pity on anyone,” 2
13:22 You will probably ask yourself, 3
‘Why have these things happened to me?
Why have I been treated like a disgraced adulteress
whose skirt has been torn off and her limbs exposed?’ 4
It is because you have sinned so much. 5
13:26 So I will pull your skirt up over your face
and expose you to shame like a disgraced adulteress! 6
1:11 Residents 10 of Shaphir, 11 pass by in nakedness and humiliation! 12
The residents of Zaanan can’t leave their city. 13
Beth Ezel 14 mourns, 15
“He takes from you what he desires.” 16
2:16 But you will become drunk 17 with shame, not majesty. 18
Now it is your turn to drink and expose your uncircumcised foreskin! 19
The cup of wine in the Lord’s right hand 20 is coming to you,
and disgrace will replace your majestic glory!
1 tn Heb “Your shame will be seen.” In this context “shame” is a euphemism referring to the genitals.
2 tn Heb “I will not meet a man.” The verb פָּגַע (pagah) apparently carries the nuance “meet with kindness” here (cf. 64:5, and see BDB 803 s.v. Qal.2).
3 tn Heb “say in your heart.”
4 tn Heb “Your skirt has been uncovered and your heels have been treated with violence.” This is the generally accepted interpretation of these phrases. See, e.g., BDB 784 s.v. עָקֵב a and HALOT 329 s.v. I חָמַס Nif. The significance of the actions here are part of the metaphor (i.e., personification) of Jerusalem as an adulteress having left her husband and have been explained in the translation for the sake of readers unfamiliar with the metaphor.
5 tn The translation has been restructured to break up a long sentence involving a conditional clause and an elliptical consequential clause. It has also been restructured to define more clearly what “these things” are. The Hebrew text reads: “And if you say, ‘Why have these things happened to me?’ Because of the greatness of your iniquity your skirts [= what your skirt covers] have been uncovered and your heels have been treated with violence.”
6 tn Heb “over your face and your shame will be seen.” The words “like a disgraced adulteress” are not in the text but are supplied in the translation to explain the metaphor. See the notes on 13:22.
7 sn Harlots suffered degradation when their nakedness was exposed (Jer 13:22, 26; Hos 2:12; Nah 3:5).
8 tn The Hebrew term means “labor,” but by extension it can also refer to that for which one works.
9 tn Heb “The nakedness of your prostitution will be exposed, and your obscene conduct and your harlotry.”
10 tn The Hebrew participial form, which is feminine singular, is here used in a collective sense for the all the residents of the town. See GKC 394 §122.s.
11 sn The place name Shaphir means “pleasant” in Hebrew.
12 tn The imperatival form is used rhetorically, emphasizing that the inhabitants of Shaphir will pass by into exile.
13 tn Heb “have not come out”; NIV “will not come out”; NLT “dare not come outside.”
14 sn The place name Beth Ezel means “house of nearness” or “house of proximity” in Hebrew.
15 tn Heb “the lamentation of Beth Ezel.” The following words could be the lamentation offered up by Beth Ezel (subjective genitive) or the mourning song sung over it (objective genitive).
16 tc The form עֶמְדָּתוֹ (’emdato) should be emended to חֲמַדְּתוֹ (khamadto, “his (the conqueror’s) desire”).
17 tn Heb “are filled.” The translation assumes the verbal form is a perfect of certitude, emphasizing the certainty of Babylon’s coming judgment, which will reduce the majestic empire to shame and humiliation.
18 tn Or “glory.”
19 tc Heb “drink, even you, and show the foreskin.” Instead of הֵעָרֵל (he’arel, “show the foreskin”) one of the Dead Sea scrolls has הֵרָעֵל (hera’el, “stumble”). This reading also has support from several ancient versions and is followed by the NEB (“you too shall drink until you stagger”) and NRSV (“Drink, you yourself, and stagger”). For a defense of the Hebrew text, see P. D. Miller, Jr., Sin and Judgment in the Prophets, 63-64.
20 sn The Lord’s right hand represents his military power. He will force the Babylonians to experience the same humiliating defeat they inflicted on others.