7:12 If a person 2 does not repent, God sharpens his sword 3
and prepares to shoot his bow. 4
45:3 Strap your sword to your thigh, O warrior! 5
Appear in your majestic splendor! 6
27:1 At that time 7 the Lord will punish
with his destructive, 8 great, and powerful sword
Leviathan the fast-moving 9 serpent,
Leviathan the squirming serpent;
he will kill the sea monster. 10
34:5 He says, 11 “Indeed, my sword has slaughtered heavenly powers. 12
Look, it now descends on Edom, 13
on the people I will annihilate in judgment.”
34:6 The Lord’s sword is dripping with blood,
it is covered 14 with fat;
it drips 15 with the blood of young rams and goats
and is covered 16 with the fat of rams’ kidneys.
For the Lord is holding a sacrifice 17 in Bozrah, 18
a bloody 19 slaughter in the land of Edom.
12:12 A destructive army 20 will come marching
over the hilltops in the desert.
For the Lord will use them as his destructive weapon 21
against 22 everyone from one end of the land to the other.
No one will be safe. 23
47:6 How long will you cry out, 24 ‘Oh, sword of the Lord,
how long will it be before you stop killing? 25
Go back into your sheath!
Stay there and rest!’ 26
1 tn The participles in v. 20 have been variously interpreted. Some treat them imperativally or as attendant circumstance to the imperative in v. 21 (“maintain”): “build yourselves up…pray.” But they do not follow the normal contours of either the imperatival or attendant circumstance participles, rendering this unlikely. A better option is to treat them as the means by which the readers are to maintain themselves in the love of God. This both makes eminently good sense and fits the structural patterns of instrumental participles elsewhere.
2 tn Heb “If he”; the referent (a person who is a sinner) has been specified in the translation for clarity. The subject of the first verb is understood as the sinner who fails to repent of his ways and becomes the target of God’s judgment (vv. 9, 14-16).
3 tn Heb “if he does not return, his sword he sharpens.” The referent (God) of the pronominal subject of the second verb (“sharpens”) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
4 tn Heb “his bow he treads and prepares it.” “Treading the bow” involved stepping on one end of it in order to string it and thus prepare it for battle.
5 tn Or “mighty one.”
6 tn The Hebrew text has simply, “your majesty and your splendor,” which probably refers to the king’s majestic splendor when he appears in full royal battle regalia.
7 tn Heb “in that day” (so KJV).
8 tn Heb “hard, severe”; cf. NAB, NRSV “cruel”; KJV “sore”; NLT “terrible.”
9 tn Heb “fleeing” (so NAB, NASB, NRSV). Some translate “slippery” or “slithering.”
10 tn The description of Leviathan should be compared with the following excerpts from Ugaritic mythological texts: (1) “Was not the dragon (Ugaritic tnn, cognate with Hebrew תַנִּין [tannin, translated “sea monster” here]) vanquished and captured? I did destroy the wriggling (Ugaritic ’qltn, cognate to Hebrew עֲקַלָּתוֹן [’aqallaton, translated “squirming” here]) serpent, the tyrant with seven heads (cf. Ps 74:14).” (See CTA 3 iii 38-39.) (2) “for all that you smote Leviathan the slippery (Ugaritic brh, cognate to Hebrew בָּרִחַ [bariakh, translated “fast-moving” here]) serpent, [and] made an end of the wriggling serpent, the tyrant with seven heads” (See CTA 5 i 1-3.)
11 tn The words “he says” are supplied in the translation for clarification. The Lord speaks at this point.
12 tn Heb “indeed [or “for”] my sword is drenched in the heavens.” The Qumran scroll 1QIsaa has תראה (“[my sword] appeared [in the heavens]”), but this is apparently an attempt to make sense out of a difficult metaphor. Cf. NIV “My sword has drunk its fill in the heavens.”
13 sn Edom is mentioned here as epitomizing the hostile nations that oppose God.
14 tn The verb is a rare Hotpaal passive form. See GKC 150 §54.h.
15 tn The words “it drips” are supplied in the translation for stylistic reasons.
16 tn The words “and is covered” are supplied in the translation for stylistic reasons.
17 tn Heb “for there is a sacrifice to the Lord.”
18 sn The Lord’s judgment of Edom is compared to a bloody sacrificial scene.
19 tn Heb “great” (so KJV, NAB, NASB, NIV, NRSV).
20 tn Heb “destroyers.”
21 tn Heb “It is the
22 tn Heb “For a sword of the
23 tn Heb “There is no peace to all flesh.”
24 tn The words “How long will you cry out” are not in the text but some such introduction seems necessary because the rest of the speech assumes a personal subject.
25 tn Heb “before you are quiet/at rest.”
26 sn The passage is highly figurative. The sword of the
27 tn Grk “and having.” In the Greek text this is a continuation of the previous sentence, but because contemporary English style employs much shorter sentences, a new sentence was started here in the translation by supplying the pronoun “he.”
28 tn This is a continuation of the previous sentence in the Greek text, but a new sentence was started here in the translation.
29 tn Here καί (kai) has not been translated because of differences between Greek and English style.
30 tn On the translation of ἐχορτάσθησαν (ecortasqhsan) BDAG 1087 s.v. χορτάζω 1.a states, “of animals, pass. in act. sense πάντα τὰ ὄρνεα ἐχορτάσθησαν ἐκ τῶν σαρκῶν αὐτῶν all the birds gorged themselves with their flesh Rv 19:21 (cp. TestJud. 21:8).”