Jeremiah 13:22

13:22 You will probably ask yourself, ¹ 

‘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?’ ² 

It is because you have sinned so much. ³ 

Deuteronomy 28:48

28:48 instead in hunger, thirst, nakedness, and poverty ⁴  you will serve your enemies whom the Lord will send against you. They ⁵  will place an iron yoke on your neck until they have destroyed you.

Isaiah 20:2-4

20:2 At that time the Lord announced through ⁶  Isaiah son of Amoz: “Go, remove the sackcloth from your waist and take your sandals off your feet.” He did as instructed and walked around in undergarments ⁷  and barefoot. 20:3 Later the Lord explained, “In the same way that my servant Isaiah has walked around in undergarments and barefoot for the past three years, as an object lesson and omen pertaining to Egypt and Cush, 20:4 so the king of Assyria will lead away the captives of Egypt and the exiles of Cush, both young and old. They will be in undergarments and barefoot, with the buttocks exposed; the Egyptians will be publicly humiliated. ⁸ 

Lamentations 4:4

ד (Dalet)

4:4 The infant’s tongue sticks

to the roof of its mouth due to thirst;

little children beg for bread, ⁹ 

but no one gives them even a morsel. ¹⁰ 

Hosea 2:3

2:3 Otherwise, I will strip her naked,

and expose her like she was when she was born.

I will turn her land into a wilderness

and make her country a parched land,

so that I might kill ¹¹  her with thirst.

Luke 15:22

15:22 But the father said to his slaves, ¹²  ‘Hurry! Bring the best robe, ¹³  and put it on him! Put a ring on his finger ¹⁴  and sandals ¹⁵  on his feet!

Luke 16:24

16:24 So ¹⁶  he called out, ¹⁷  ‘Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus ¹⁸  to dip the tip of his finger ¹⁹  in water and cool my tongue, because I am in anguish ²⁰  in this fire.’ ²¹ 

¹ tn Heb “say in your heart.”

² 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.

³ 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.”

⁴ tn Heb “lack of everything.”

⁵ tn Heb “he” (also later in this verse). The pronoun is a collective singular referring to the enemies (cf. CEV, NLT). Many translations understand the singular pronoun to refer to the Lord (cf. NAB, NASB, NIV, NCV, NRSV, TEV).

⁶ tn Heb “spoke by the hand of.”

⁷ tn The word used here (עָרוֹם, ’arom) sometimes means “naked,” but here it appears to mean simply “lightly dressed,” i.e., stripped to one’s undergarments. See HALOT 883 s.v. עָרוֹם. The term also occurs in vv. 3, 4.

⁸ tn Heb “lightly dressed and barefoot, and bare with respect to the buttocks, the nakedness of Egypt.”

⁹ tn Heb “bread.” The term “bread” might function as a synecdoche of specific (= bread) for general (= food); however, the following parallel line does indeed focus on the act of breaking bread in two.

¹⁰ tn Heb “there is not a divider to them.” The term פָּרַשׂ (paras), Qal active participle ms from פָּרַס (paras, “to divide”) refers to the action of breaking bread in two before giving it to a person to eat (Isa 58:7; Jer 16:7; Lam 4:4). The form פָּרַשׂ (paras) is the alternate spelling of the more common פָּרַס (paras).

¹¹ tn Heb “and kill her with thirst.” The vav prefixed to the verb (וַהֲמִתִּיהָ, vahamittiha) introduces a purpose/result clause: “in order to make her die of thirst” (purpose) or “and thus make her die of thirst” (result).

¹² tn See the note on the word “slave” in 7:2.

¹³ sn With the instructions Hurry! Bring the best robe, there is a total acceptance of the younger son back into the home.

¹⁴ tn Grk “hand”; but χείρ (ceir) can refer to either the whole hand or any relevant part of it (L&N 8.30).

¹⁵ sn The need for sandals underlines the younger son’s previous destitution, because he was barefoot.

¹⁶ tn Here καί (kai) has been translated as “so” to indicate the implied result of previous actions in the narrative.

¹⁷ tn Grk “calling out he said”; this is redundant in contemporary English style and has been simplified to “he called out.”

¹⁸ sn The rich man had not helped Lazarus before, when he lay outside his gate (v. 2), but he knew him well enough to know his name. This is why the use of the name Lazarus in the parable is significant. (The rich man’s name, on the other hand, is not mentioned, because it is not significant for the point of the story.)

¹⁹ sn The dipping of the tip of his finger in water is evocative of thirst. The thirsty are in need of God’s presence (Ps 42:1-2; Isa 5:13). The imagery suggests the rich man is now separated from the presence of God.

²⁰ tn Or “in terrible pain” (L&N 24.92).

²¹ sn Fire in this context is OT imagery; see Isa 66:24.