11:17 For though I, the Lord who rules over all, 5 planted you in the land, 6
I now decree that disaster will come on you 7
because the nations of Israel and Judah have done evil
and have made me angry by offering sacrifices to the god Baal.” 8
65:3 These people continually and blatantly offend me 12
as they sacrifice in their sacred orchards 13
and burn incense on brick altars. 14
8:9 He said to me, “Go in and see the evil abominations they are practicing here.” 8:10 So I went in and looked. I noticed every figure 15 of creeping thing and beast – detestable images 16 – and every idol of the house of Israel, engraved on the wall all around. 17 8:11 Seventy men from the elders of the house of Israel 18 (with Jaazaniah son of Shaphan standing among them) were standing in front of them, each with a censer in his hand, and fragrant 19 vapors from a cloud of incense were swirling upward.
11:2 But the more I summoned 20 them,
the farther they departed from me. 21
They sacrificed to the Baal idols
and burned incense to images.
1 tn Heb “Will you steal…then say, ‘We are safe’?” Verses 9-10 are one long sentence in the Hebrew text.
2 tn Heb “You go/follow after.” See the translator’s note at 2:5 for an explanation of the idiom involved here.
3 tn Heb “Then the towns of Judah and those living in Jerusalem will…”
4 tn The Hebrew construction is emphatic involving the use of an infinitive of the verb before the verb itself (Heb “saving they will not save”). For this construction to give emphasis to an antithesis, cf. GKC 343 §113.p.
5 tn Heb “Yahweh of armies.”
6 tn The words “in the land” are not in the text but are supplied in the translation to clarify the meaning of the metaphor.
7 tn Heb “For Yahweh of armies who planted you speaks disaster upon you.” Because of the way the term
8 tn Heb “pronounced disaster…on account of the evil of the house of Israel and the house of Judah which they have done to make me angry [or thus making me angry] by sacrificing to Baal.” The lines have been broken up in conformity with contemporary English style.
9 tn Heb “that went out of our mouth.” I.e., everything we said, promised, or vowed.
10 tn Heb “sacrifice to the Queen of Heaven and pour out drink offerings to her.” The expressions have been combined to simplify and shorten the sentence. The same combination also occurs in vv. 18, 19.
11 tn Heb “saw [or experienced] no disaster/trouble/harm.”
12 tn Heb “the people who provoke me to anger to my face continually.”
13 tn Or “gardens” (KJV, NASB, NIV, NRSV, NLT).
14 tn Or perhaps, “on tiles.”
15 tn Or “pattern.”
16 tn Heb “detestable.” The word is often used to describe the figures of foreign gods.
17 sn These engravings were prohibited in the Mosaic law (Deut 4:16-18).
18 sn Note the contrast between these seventy men who represented Israel and the seventy elders who ate the covenant meal before God, inaugurating the covenant relationship (Exod 24:1, 9).
19 tn The Hebrew word occurs only here in the OT.
20 tc The MT reads קָרְאוּ (qar’u, “they called”; Qal perfect 3rd person common plural from קָרַא, qara’, “to call”), cf. KJV, NASB; however, the LXX and Syriac reflect כְּקָרְאִי (kÿqar’i, “as I called”; preposition כְּ (kaf) + Qal infinitive construct from קָרַא + 1st person common singular suffix). The presence of the resumptive adverb כֵּן (ken, “even so”) in the following clause supports the alternate textual tradition reflected in the LXX and Syriac (cf. NAB, NIV, NCV, NRSV, TEV, NLT).
21 tc The MT reads מִפְּנֵיהֶם (mippÿnehem, “from them”; preposition + masculine plural noun + 3rd person masculine plural suffix), so KJV, ASV, NASB; however, the LXX and Syriac reflect an alternate Hebrew textual tradition of מִפָּנַי הֵם (mippanay hem, “they [went away] from me”; preposition + masculine plural noun + 1st person common singular suffix, followed by 3rd person masculine plural independent personal pronoun); cf. NAB, NIV, NRSV. The textual variant was caused simply by faulty word division.