Leviticus 26:8

26:8 Five of you will pursue a hundred, and a hundred of you will pursue ten thousand, and your enemies will fall before you by the sword.

Leviticus 26:36

26:36 “‘As for ¹  the ones who remain among you, I will bring despair into their hearts in the lands of their enemies. The sound of a blowing leaf will pursue them, and they will flee as one who flees the sword and fall down even though there is no pursuer.

Deuteronomy 28:25

Curses by Defeat and Deportation

28:25 “The Lord will allow you to be struck down before your enemies; you will attack them from one direction but flee from them in seven directions and will become an object of terror ²  to all the kingdoms of the earth.

Deuteronomy 32:30

32:30 How can one man chase a thousand of them, ³ 

and two pursue ten thousand;

unless their Rock had delivered them up, ⁴ 

and the Lord had handed them over?

Joshua 23:10

23:10 One of you makes a thousand run away, ⁵  for the Lord your God fights for you ⁶  as he promised you he would. ⁷ 

Proverbs 28:1

28:1 The wicked person flees when there is no one pursuing, ⁸ 

but the righteous person is as confident ⁹  as a lion.

Jeremiah 37:10

37:10 For even if you were to defeat all the Babylonian forces ¹⁰  fighting against you so badly that only wounded men were left lying in their tents, they would get up and burn this city down.”’” ¹¹ 

¹ tn Heb “And.”

² tc The meaningless MT reading זַעֲוָה (za’avah) is clearly a transposition of the more commonly attested Hebrew noun זְוָעָה (zÿva’ah, “terror”).

³ tn The words “man” and “of them” are not in the Hebrew text, but are supplied in the translation for clarity.

⁴ tn Heb “sold them” (so NAB, NIV, NRSV, NLT).

⁵ tn Or “chases a thousand.”

⁶ tn Heb “for the Lord your God, he [is] the one who fights for you.”

⁷ tn Heb “as he said to you.”

⁸ sn The line portrays the insecurity of a guilty person – he flees because he has a guilty conscience, or because he is suspicious of others around him, or because he fears judgment.

⁹ tn The verb בָּטַח (batakh) means “to trust; to be secure; to be confident.” Cf. KJV, NASB, NIV, NRSV, NLT “bold.”

¹⁰ tn Heb “all the army of the Chaldeans.” For the rendering “Babylonian” in place of Chaldean see the study note on 21:4.

¹¹ tn The length and complexity of this English sentence violates the more simple style that has been used to conform such sentences to contemporary English style. However, there does not seem to be any alternative that would enable a simpler style and still retain the causal and conditional connections that give this sentence the rhetorical force that it has in the original. The condition is, of course, purely hypothetical and the consequence a poetic exaggeration. The intent is to assure Zedekiah that there is absolutely no hope of the city being spared.