46:25 The Lord God of Israel who rules over all 1 says, “I will punish Amon, the god of Thebes. 2 I will punish Egypt, its gods, and its kings. I will punish Pharaoh and all who trust in him. 3
3:8 You are no more secure 4 than Thebes 5 –
she was located on the banks of the Nile;
the waters surrounded her,
her 6 rampart 7 was the sea,
the water 8 was her wall.
1 tn Heb “Yahweh of armies, the God of Israel.” For the significance of this title see the note at 2:19.
2 tn Heb “Amon of No.”
3 tc Heb “Behold I will punish Amon of No and Pharaoh and Egypt and its gods and its kings and Pharaoh and all who trust in him.” There appears to be a copyist slip involving a double writing of וְעַל־פַּרְעֹה (vÿ’al-par’oh). The present translation has followed the suggestion of BHS and deleted the first one since the second is necessary for the syntactical connection, “Pharaoh and all who trust in him.”
4 tn Heb “Are you better than Thebes?”
5 tn Heb “No-Amon.” The name is transliterated by NAB, NASB; many other English versions employ the equivalent “Thebes.”
6 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).
7 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.
8 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.