Isaiah 63:3

63:3 “I have stomped grapes in the winepress all by myself;

no one from the nations joined me.

I stomped on them ¹  in my anger;

I trampled them down in my rage.

Their juice splashed on my garments,

and stained ²  all my clothes.

Jeremiah 49:13

49:13 For I solemnly swear,” ³  says the Lord, “that Bozrah ⁴  will become a pile of ruins. It will become an object of horror and ridicule, an example to be used in curses. ⁵  All the towns around it will lie in ruins forever.”

Ezekiel 21:4-5

21:4 Because I will cut off from you both the righteous and the wicked, my sword will go out from its sheath against everyone ⁶  from the south ⁷  to the north. 21:5 Then everyone will know that I am the Lord, who drew my sword from its sheath – it will not be sheathed again!’

Ezekiel 21:10

21:10 It is sharpened for slaughter,

it is polished to flash like lightning!

“‘Should we rejoice in the scepter of my son? No! The sword despises every tree! ⁸ 

¹ sn Nations, headed by Edom, are the object of the Lord’s anger (see v. 6). He compares military slaughter to stomping on grapes in a vat.

² tn Heb “and I stained.” For discussion of the difficult verb form, see HALOT 170 s.v. II גאל. Perhaps the form is mixed, combining the first person forms of the imperfect (note the alef prefix) and perfect (note the תי- ending).

³ tn Heb “I swear by myself.” See 22:5 and the study note there.

⁴ sn Bozrah appears to have been the chief city in Edom, its capital city (see its parallelism with Edom in Isa 34:6; 63:1; Jer 49:22). The reference to “its towns” (translated here “all the towns around it”) could then be a reference to all the towns in Edom. It was located about twenty-five miles southeast of the southern end of the Dead Sea apparently in the district of Teman (see the parallelism in Amos 1:12).

⁵ tn See the study note on 24:9 for the rendering of this term.

⁶ tn Heb “all flesh” (also in the following verse).

⁷ tn Heb “Negev.” The Negev is the south country.

⁸ tn Heb “Or shall we rejoice, scepter of my son, it despises every tree.” The translation understands the subject of the verb “despises,” which is a feminine form in the Hebrew text, to be the sword (which is a feminine noun) mentioned just before this. Alternatively, the line may be understood as “let us not rejoice, O tribe of my son; it despises every tree.” The same word in Hebrew may be either “rod,” “scepter,” or “tribe.” The word sometimes translated as “or” or taken as an interrogative particle may be a negative particle. See D. I. Block, Ezekiel (NICOT), 1:672, n. 79.