Leviticus 26:21-22

26:21 “‘If you walk in hostility against me ¹  and are not willing to obey me, I will increase your affliction ²  seven times according to your sins. 26:22 I will send the wild animals ³  against you and they will bereave you of your children, ⁴  annihilate your cattle, and diminish your population ⁵  so that your roads will become deserted.

Leviticus 26:1

Exhortation to Obedience

26:1 “‘You must not make for yourselves idols, ⁶  so you must not set up for yourselves a carved image or a pillar, and you must not place a sculpted stone in your land to bow down before ⁷  it, for I am the Lord your God.

Leviticus 19:17

19:17 You must not hate your brother in your heart. You must surely reprove your fellow citizen so that you do not incur sin on account of him. ⁸ 

Jeremiah 8:3

8:3 However, I will leave some of these wicked people alive and banish them to other places. But wherever these people who survive may go, they will wish they had died rather than lived,” ⁹  says the Lord who rules over all. ¹⁰ 

Jeremiah 48:43-44

48:43 Terror, pits, and traps ¹¹  are in store

for the people who live in Moab. ¹² 

I, the Lord, affirm it! ¹³ 

48:44 Anyone who flees at the sound of terror

will fall into a pit.

Anyone who climbs out of the pit

will be caught in a trap. ¹⁴ 

For the time is coming

when I will punish the people of Moab. ¹⁵ 

I, the Lord, affirm it! ¹⁶ 

Ezekiel 14:21

14:21 “For this is what the sovereign Lord says: How much worse will it be when I send my four terrible judgments – sword, famine, wild animals, and plague – to Jerusalem ¹⁷  to kill both people and animals!

¹ tn Heb “hostile with me,” but see the added preposition בְּ (bet) on the phrase “in hostility” in v. 24 and 27.

² tn Heb “your blow, stroke”; cf. TEV “punishment”; NLT “I will inflict you with seven more disasters.”

³ tn Heb “the animal of the field.” This collective singular has been translated as a plural. The expression “animal of the field” refers to a wild (i.e., nondomesticated) animal.

⁴ tn The words “of your children” are not in the Hebrew text, but are implied.

⁵ tn Heb “and diminish you.”

⁶ sn For the literature regarding the difficult etymology and meaning of the term for “idols” (אֱלִילִם, ’elilim), see the literature cited in the note on Lev 19:4. It appears to be a diminutive play on words with אֵל (’el, “god, God”) and, perhaps at the same time, recalls a common Semitic word for “worthless, weak, powerless, nothingness.” Snaith suggests a rendering of “worthless godlings.”

⁷ tn Heb “on.” The “sculpted stone” appears to be some sort of stone with images carved into (see B. A. Levine, Leviticus [JPSTC], 181, and J. E. Hartley, Leviticus [WBC], 449).

⁸ tn Heb “and you will not lift up on him sin.” The meaning of the line is somewhat obscure. It means either (1) that one should rebuke one’s neighbor when he sins lest one also becomes guilty, which is the way it is rendered here (see NIV, NRSV, NEB, JB; see also B. A. Levine, Leviticus [JPSTC], 129-30, and J. E. Hartley, Leviticus [WBC], 303, and the discussion on pp. 316-17), or (2) one may rebuke one’s neighbor without incurring sin just as long as he does not hate him in his heart (see the first part of the verse; cf. NASB, NAB).

⁹ tn Heb “Death will be chosen rather than life by the remnant who are left from this wicked family in all the places where I have banished them.” The sentence is broken up and restructured to avoid possible confusion because of the complexity of the English to some modern readers. There appears to be an extra “those who are left” that was inadvertently copied from the preceding line. It is missing from one Hebrew ms and from the Greek and Syriac versions and is probably not a part of the original text.

¹⁰ tn Heb “Yahweh of armies.”

¹¹ sn There is an extended use of assonance here and in the parallel passage in Isa 24:17. The Hebrew text reads פַּחַד וָפַחַת וָפָח (pakhad vafakhat vafakh). The assonance is intended to underscore the extensive trouble that is in store for them.

¹² tn Heb “are upon you, inhabitant of Moab.” This is another example of the rapid switch in person or direct address (apostrophe) in the midst of a third person description or prediction which the present translation typically keeps in the third person for smoother English style.

¹³ tn Heb “Oracle of the Lord.”

¹⁴ sn Jer 48:43-44a are in the main the same as Isa 24:17-18 which shows that the judgment was somewhat proverbial. For a very similar kind of argumentation see Amos 5:19; judgment is unavoidable.

¹⁵ tn Heb “For I will bring upon her, even upon Moab, the year of her punishment.”

¹⁶ tn Heb “Oracle of the Lord.”

¹⁷ map For location see Map5-B1; Map6-F3; Map7-E2; Map8-F2; Map10-B3; JP1-F4; JP2-F4; JP3-F4; JP4-F4.