6:1 “Run for safety, people of Benjamin!
Get out of Jerusalem! 1
Sound the trumpet 2 in Tekoa!
Light the signal fires at Beth Hakkerem!
For disaster lurks 3 out of the north;
it will bring great destruction. 4
6:2 I will destroy 5 Daughter Zion, 6
who is as delicate and defenseless as a young maiden. 7
1 tn Heb “Flee for safety, people of Benjamin, out of the midst of Jerusalem.”
2 tn Heb “ram’s horn,” but the modern equivalent is “trumpet” and is more readily understandable.
3 tn Heb “leans down” or “looks down.” This verb personifies destruction leaning/looking down from its window in the sky, ready to attack.
4 tn Heb “[It will be] a severe fracture.” The nation is pictured as a limb being fractured.
5 tn The verb here is another example of the Hebrew verb form that indicates the action is as good as done (a Hebrew prophetic perfect).
6 sn Jerusalem is personified as a young maiden who is helpless in the hands of her enemies.
7 tn Heb “The beautiful and delicate one I will destroy, the daughter of Zion. The English versions and commentaries are divided over the rendering of this verse because (1) there are two verbs with these same consonants, one meaning “to be like” and the other meaning “to be destroyed” (intransitive) or “to destroy” (transitive), and (2) the word rendered “beautiful” (נָוָה, navah) can be understood as a noun meaning “pasture” or as a defective writing of an adjective meaning “beautiful, comely” (נָאוָה, na’vah). Hence some render “Fair Zion, you are like a lovely pasture,” reading the verb form as an example of the old second feminine singular perfect. Although this may fit the imagery of the next verse, that rendering ignores the absence of a preposition (לְ or אֶל, lÿ or ’el, both of which can be translated “to”) that normally goes with the verb “be like” and drops the conjunction in front of the adjective “delicate.” The parallel usage of the verb in Hos 4:5 argues for the meaning “destroy.”