46:4 Harness the horses to the chariots!
Mount your horses!
Put on your helmets and take your positions!
Sharpen you spears!
Put on your armor!
3:3 The charioteers 1 will charge ahead; 2
their swords 3 will flash 4
and their spears 5 will glimmer! 6
There will be many people slain; 7
there will be piles of the dead,
and countless casualties 8 –
so many that people 9 will stumble over the corpses.
3:11 The sun and moon stand still in their courses; 10
the flash of your arrows drives them away, 11
the bright light of your lightning-quick spear. 12
1 tn Heb “a horseman.” Although the Hebrew term פָּרָס (paras, alternately spelled פָּרָשׂ [paras] here) could denote “horse” (1 Sam 8:11; Joel 2:4; Hab 1:8; Jer 46:4), the Hiphil participle מַעֲלֶה (ma’aleh, “cause to charge”) – the subject of which is פָּרָס – suggests that פָּרָס refers here to “horsemen” charging their horses (2 Sam 1:6; 1 Kgs 20:20; Jer 4:29; 46:4).
2 tn The term מַעֲלֶה (ma’aleh; the Hiphil participle “cause to charge”) refers to charioteers bringing war-horses up to a charge or attack (e.g., Jer 46:9; 51:27). On the other hand, the KJV translates this as “lifteth up [both the bright sword and the glittering sword],” while RV renders it as “mounts [his horse (or chariot)].”
3 tn Heb “a sword.”
4 tn Heb “flash of a sword.” Alternately, “swords flash.” Although לַהַב (lahav) can mean “blade” (Judg 3:22; 1 Sam 17:7), it means “flash [of the sword]” here (e.g., Hab 3:11; see HALOT 520 s.v.) as suggested by its parallelism with וּבְרַק (uvÿraq, “flashing, gleaming point [of the spear]”); cf. Job 20:25; Deut 32:41; Hab 3:11; Ezek 21:15.
5 tn Heb “a spear.”
6 tn Heb “and flash of a spear.” Alternately, “spears glimmer” (HALOT 162 s.v. בָּרָק).
7 tn Heb “many slain.”
8 tc The MT reads לַגְּוִיָּה (laggÿviyyah, “to the dead bodies”). The LXX reflects לְגוֹיָה (lÿgoyah, “to her nations”) which arose due to confusion between the consonant ו (vav) and the vowel וֹ (holem-vav) in an unpointed text.
9 tn Heb “they.”
10 tn Heb “in their lofty dwelling places.”
11 tn Or “at the light of your arrows they vanish.”
12 tn Heb “at the brightness of the lightning of your spear.”