Jeremiah 50:24

50:24 I set a trap for you, Babylon;

you were caught before you knew it.

You fought against me.

So you were found and captured. ¹ 

Jeremiah 50:29

50:29 “Call for archers ²  to come against Babylon!

Summon against her all who draw the bow!

Set up camp all around the city!

Do not allow anyone to escape!

Pay her back for what she has done.

Do to her what she has done to others.

For she has proudly defied me, ³ 

the Holy One of Israel. ⁴ 

Jeremiah 50:33

50:33 The Lord who rules over all ⁵  says,

“The people of Israel are oppressed.

So too are the people of Judah. ⁶ 

All those who took them captive are holding them prisoners.

They refuse to set them free.

Zechariah 2:8

2:8 For the Lord who rules over all says to me that for his own glory ⁷  he has sent me to the nations that plundered you – for anyone who touches you touches the pupil ⁸  of his ⁹  eye.

Acts 9:4

9:4 He ¹⁰  fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, “Saul, Saul, ¹¹  why are you persecuting me?” ¹² 

¹ tn Heb “You were found [or found out] and captured because you fought against the Lord.” The same causal connection is maintained by the order of the translation but it puts more emphasis on the cause and connects it also more closely with the first half of the verse. The first person is used because the Lord is speaking of himself first in the first person “I set” and then in the third. The first person has been maintained throughout. Though it would be awkward, perhaps one could retain the reference to the Lord by translating, “I, the Lord.”

² tn For this word see BDB 914 s.v. III רַב and compare usage in Prov 26:10 and Job 16:12 and compare the usage of the verb in Gen 49:23. Based on this evidence, it is not necessary to emend the form to רֹבִים (rovim) as many commentators contend.

³ tn Heb “for she has acted insolently against the Lord.” Once again there is the problem of the Lord speaking about himself in the third person (or the prophet dropping his identification with the Lord). As in several other places the present translation, along with several other modern English versions (TEV, CEV, NIrV), has substituted the first person to maintain consistency with the context.

⁴ sn The Holy One of Israel is a common title for the Lord in the book of Isaiah. It is applied to the Lord only here and in 51:5 in the book of Jeremiah. It is a figure where an attribute of a person is put as a title of a person (compare “your majesty” for a king). It pictures the Lord as the sovereign king who rules over his covenant people and exercises moral authority over them.

⁵ tn Heb “Yahweh of armies.” For an explanation of this title see the study note on 2:19.

⁶ tn Heb “Oppressed are the people of Israel and the people of Judah together,” i.e., both the people of Israel and Judah are oppressed. However, neither of these renderings is very poetic. The translation seeks to achieve the same meaning with better poetic expression.

⁷ tn Heb “After glory has he sent me” (similar KJV, NASB). What is clearly in view is the role of Zechariah who, by faithful proclamation of the message, will glorify the Lord.

⁸ tn Heb “gate” (בָּבָה, bavah) of the eye, that is, pupil. The rendering of this term by KJV as “apple” has created a well-known idiom in the English language, “the apple of his eye” (so ASV, NIV). The pupil is one of the most vulnerable and valuable parts of the body, so for Judah to be considered the “pupil” of the Lord’s eye is to raise her value to an incalculable price (cf. NLT “my most precious possession”).

⁹ tc A scribal emendation (tiqqun sopherim) has apparently altered an original “my eye” to “his eye” in order to allow the prophet to be the speaker throughout vv. 8-9. This alleviates the problem of the Lord saying, in effect, that he has sent himself on the mission to the nations.

¹⁰ tn Grk “and he.” Because of the length of the Greek sentence, the conjunction καί (kai) has not been translated here. Instead a new English sentence is begun.

¹¹ tn The double vocative suggests emotion.

¹² sn Persecuting me. To persecute the church is to persecute Jesus.