2:10 Go west 1 across the sea to the coasts of Cyprus 2 and see.
Send someone east to Kedar 3 and have them look carefully.
See if such a thing as this has ever happened:
2:11 Has a nation ever changed its gods
(even though they are not really gods at all)?
But my people have exchanged me, their glorious God, 4
for a god that cannot help them at all! 5
3:8 You are no more secure 6 than Thebes 7 –
she was located on the banks of the Nile;
the waters surrounded her,
her 8 rampart 9 was the sea,
the water 10 was her wall.
1 tn Heb “For go west.”
2 tn Heb “pass over to the coasts of Kittim.” The words “west across the sea” in this line and “east of” in the next are implicit in the text and are supplied in the translation to give geographical orientation.
3 sn Kedar is the home of the Bedouin tribes in the Syro-Arabian desert. See Gen 25:18 and Jer 49:38. See also the previous note for the significance of the reference here.
4 tn Heb “have exchanged their glory [i.e., the God in whom they glory].” This is a case of a figure of speech where the attribute of a person or thing is put for the person or thing. Compare the common phrase in Isaiah, the Holy One of Israel, obviously referring to the
5 tn Heb “what cannot profit.” The verb is singular and the allusion is likely to Baal. See the translator’s note on 2:8 for the likely pun or wordplay.
6 tn Heb “Are you better than Thebes?”
7 tn Heb “No-Amon.” The name is transliterated by NAB, NASB; many other English versions employ the equivalent “Thebes.”
8 tn The relative pronoun אֲשֶׁר (’asher) is functioning in a possessive sense: “whose” (Job 37:17; Ps 95:5; Isa 5:28; 49:23; Jer 31:32; see HALOT 98 s.v. 4).
9 tn The consonantal form חיל is vocalized in the MT as חֵיל (khel, “rampart”). The LXX translation ἡ ἀρξή (Jh arxh, “strength”) reflects confusion between the relatively rare חֵיל and the more common חַיִל (khayil, “strength”); see HALOT 310-12.
10 tn Heb “from (the) sea.” The form should be emended to מַיִם (mayim, “water”). This is a figurative description of the Nile River: It functioned like a fortress wall for Thebes.