Jeremiah 6:26

6:26 So I said, ¹  “Oh, my dear people, ²  put on sackcloth

and roll in ashes.

Mourn with painful sobs

as though you had lost your only child.

For any moment now ³  that destructive army ⁴ 

will come against us.”

Jeremiah 48:26

48:26 “Moab has vaunted itself against me.

So make him drunk with the wine of my wrath ⁵ 

until he splashes ⁶  around in his own vomit,

until others treat him as a laughingstock.

Ezekiel 27:30-31

27:30 They will lament loudly ⁷  over you and cry bitterly.

They will throw dust on their heads and roll in the ashes; ⁸ 

27:31 they will tear out their hair because of you and put on sackcloth,

and they will weep bitterly over you with intense mourning. ⁹ 

¹ tn These words are not in the text but are implicit from the context.

² tn Heb “daughter of my people.” For the translation given here see 4:11 and the translator’s note there.

³ tn Heb “suddenly.”

⁴ tn Heb “the destroyer.”

⁵ tn Heb “Make him drunk because he has magnified himself against the Lord.” The first person has again been adopted for consistency within a speech of the Lord. Almost all of the commentaries relate the figure of drunkenness to the figure of drinking the cup of God’s wrath spelled out in Jer 25 where reference is made at one point to the nations drinking, staggering, vomiting, and falling (25:27 and see G. L. Keown, P. J. Scalise, T. G. Smothers, Jeremiah 26-52 [WBC], 316, for a full list of references to this figure including this passage and 49:12-13; 51:6-10, 39, 57).

⁶ tn The meaning of this word is uncertain. It is usually used of clapping the hands or the thigh in helpless anger or disgust. Hence J. Bright (Jeremiah [AB], 321) paraphrases “shall vomit helplessly.” HALOT 722 s.v. II סָפַק relates this to an Aramaic word and see a homonym meaning “vomit” or “spew out.” The translation is that of BDB 706 s.v. סָפַק Qal.3, “splash (fall with a splash),” from the same root that refers to slapping or clapping the thigh.

⁷ tn Heb “make heard over you with their voice.”

⁸ tn Note a similar expression to “roll in the ashes” in Mic 1:10.

⁹ tn Heb “and they will weep concerning you with bitterness of soul, (with) bitter mourning.”