Lamentations 1:12

ל (Lamed)

1:12 Is it nothing to you, ¹  all you who pass by on the road? ² 

Look and see!

Is there any pain like mine?

The Lord ³  has afflicted me, ⁴ 

he ⁵  has inflicted it on me

when ⁶  he burned with anger. ⁷ 

Deuteronomy 29:22-28

29:22 The generation to come – your descendants who will rise up after you, as well as the foreigner who will come from distant places – will see ⁸  the afflictions of that land and the illnesses that the Lord has brought on it. 29:23 The whole land will be covered with brimstone, salt, and burning debris; it will not be planted nor will it sprout or produce grass. It will resemble the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboiim, which the Lord destroyed in his intense anger. ⁹  29:24 Then all the nations will ask, “Why has the Lord done all this to this land? What is this fierce, heated display of anger ¹⁰  all about?” 29:25 Then people will say, “Because they abandoned the covenant of the Lord, the God of their ancestors, which he made with them when he brought them out of the land of Egypt. 29:26 They went and served other gods and worshiped them, gods they did not know and that he did not permit them to worship. ¹¹  29:27 That is why the Lord’s anger erupted against this land, bringing on it all the curses ¹²  written in this scroll. 29:28 So the Lord has uprooted them from their land in anger, wrath, and great rage and has deported them to another land, as is clear today.”

Deuteronomy 29:1

Narrative Interlude

29:1 (28:69) ¹³  These are the words of the covenant that the Lord commanded Moses to make with the people of Israel in the land of Moab, in addition to the covenant he had made with them at Horeb. ¹⁴ 

Deuteronomy 9:8-9

9:8 At Horeb you provoked him and he was angry enough with you to destroy you. 9:9 When I went up the mountain to receive the stone tablets, the tablets of the covenant that the Lord made with you, I remained there ¹⁵  forty days and nights, eating and drinking nothing.

Jeremiah 22:8-9

22:8 “‘People from other nations will pass by this city. They will ask one another, “Why has the Lord done such a thing to this great city?” 22:9 The answer will come back, “It is because they broke their covenant with the Lord their God and worshiped and served other gods.”

Jeremiah 25:28-29

25:28 If they refuse to take the cup from your hand and drink it, tell them that the Lord who rules over all says ¹⁶  ‘You most certainly must drink it! ¹⁷  25:29 For take note, I am already beginning to bring disaster on the city that I call my own. ¹⁸  So how can you possibly avoid being punished? ¹⁹  You will not go unpunished! For I am proclaiming war against all who live on the earth. I, the Lord who rules over all, ²⁰  affirm it!’ ²¹ 

Jeremiah 49:12

49:12 For the Lord says, “If even those who did not deserve to drink from the cup of my wrath must drink from it, do you think you will go unpunished? You will not go unpunished, but must certainly drink from the cup of my wrath. ²² 

Ezekiel 14:22-23

14:22 Yet some survivors will be left in it, sons and daughters who will be brought out. They will come out to you, and when you see their behavior and their deeds, you will be consoled about the catastrophe I have brought on Jerusalem – for everything I brought on it. 14:23 They will console you when you see their behavior and their deeds, because you will know that it was not without reason that I have done everything which I have done in it, declares the sovereign Lord.”

¹ tc The Heb לוֹא אֲלֵיכֶם (lo’ ’alekhem, “not to you”) is awkward and often considered corrupt but there is no textual evidence yet adduced to certify a more original reading.

² tn The line as it stands is imbalanced, such that the reference to the passersby may belong here or as a vocative with the following verb translated “look.”

³ tn Heb “He.” The personal pronoun “he” and the personal name “the Lord,” both appearing in this verse, are transposed in the translation for the sake of readability. In the Hebrew text, “He” appears in the A-line and “the Lord” appears in the B-line – good Hebrew poetic style, but awkward English style.

⁴ tn Heb “which was afflicted on me.” The Polal of עָלַל (’alal) gives the passive voice of the Polel. The Polel of the verb עָלַל (’alal) occurs ten times in the Bible, appearing in agricultural passages for gleaning or some other harvest activity and also in military passages. Jer 6:9 plays on this by comparing an attack to gleaning. The relationship between the meaning in the two types of contexts is unclear, but the very neutral rendering “to treat” in some dictionaries and translations misses the nuance appropriate to the military setting. Indeed it is not at all feasible in a passage like Judges 20:45 where “they treated them on the highway” would make no sense but “they mowed them down on the highway” would fit the context. Accordingly the verb is sometimes rendered “treat” or “deal severely,” as HALOT 834 s.v. poel.3 suggests for Lam 3:51, although simply suggesting “to deal with” in Lam 1:22 and 2:20. A more injurious nuance is given to the translation here and in 1:22; 2:20 and 3:51.

⁵ sn The delay in naming the Lord as cause is dramatic. The natural assumption upon hearing the passive verb in the previous line, “it was dealt severely,” might well be the pillaging army, but instead the Lord is named as the tormentor.

⁶ tn Heb “in the day of.” The construction בְּיוֹם (bÿyom, “in the day of”) is a common Hebrew idiom, meaning “when” or “on the occasion of” (e.g., Gen 2:4; Lev 7:35; Num 3:1; Deut 4:15; 2 Sam 22:1; Pss 18:1; 138:3; Zech 8:9).

⁷ tn Heb “on the day of burning anger.”

⁸ tn Heb “will say and see.” One expects a quotation to appear, but it seems to be omitted. To avoid confusion in the translation, the verb “will say” is omitted.

⁹ tn Heb “the anger and the wrath.” This construction is a hendiadys intended to intensify the emotion.

¹⁰ tn Heb “this great burning of anger”; KJV “the heat of this great anger.”

¹¹ tn Heb “did not assign to them”; NASB, NRSV “had not allotted to them.”

¹² tn Heb “the entire curse.”

¹³ sn Beginning with 29:1, the verse numbers through 29:29 in the English Bible differ from the verse numbers in the Hebrew text (BHS), with 29:1 ET = 28:69 HT, 29:2 ET = 29:1 HT, 29:3 ET = 29:2 HT, etc., through 29:29 ET = 29:28 HT. With 30:1 the verse numbers in the ET and HT are again the same.

¹⁴ sn Horeb is another name for Mount Sinai (which some English versions substitute here for clarity, cf. NCV, TEV, CEV, NLT).

¹⁵ tn Heb “in the mountain.” The demonstrative pronoun has been used in the translation for stylistic reasons.

¹⁶ tn Heb “Tell them, ‘Thus says the Lord…’” The translation is intended to eliminate one level of imbedded quote marks to help avoid confusion.

¹⁷ tn The translation attempts to reflect the emphatic construction of the infinitive absolute preceding the finite verb which is here an obligatory imperfect. (See Joüon 2:371-72 §113.m and 2:423 §123.h, and compare usage in Gen 15:13.)

¹⁸ tn Heb “which is called by my name.” See translator’s note on 7:10 for support.

¹⁹ tn This is an example of a question without the formal introductory particle following a conjunctive vav introducing an opposition. (See Joüon 2:609 §161.a.) It is also an example of the use of the infinitive before the finite verb in a rhetorical question involving doubt or denial. (See Joüon 2:422-23 §123.f, and compare usage in Gen 37:8.)

²⁰ tn Heb “Yahweh of armies.”

²¹ tn Heb “Oracle of Yahweh of armies.”

²² tn The words “of my wrath” after “cup” in the first line and “from the cup of my wrath” in the last line are not in the text but are implicit in the metaphor. They have been supplied in the translation for clarity.