1:3 Look, 1 the Lord is coming out of his dwelling place!
He will descend and march on the earth’s mountaintops! 2
1:16 Shave your heads bald as you mourn for the children you love; 3
shave your foreheads as bald 4 as an eagle, 5
for they are taken from you into exile.
2:10 But you are the ones who will be forced to leave! 6
For this land is not secure! 7
Sin will thoroughly destroy it! 8
3:7 The prophets 9 will be ashamed;
the omen readers will be humiliated.
All of them will cover their mouths, 10
for they will receive no divine oracles.” 11
4:12 But they do not know what the Lord is planning;
they do not understand his strategy.
He has gathered them like stalks of grain to be threshed 12 at the threshing floor.
1 tn Or “For look.” The expression כִּי־הִנֵּה (ki-hinneh) may function as an explanatory introduction (“For look!”; Isa 26:21; 60:2; 65:17, 18: 66:15; Jer 1:15; 25:29; 30:10; 45:5; 46:27; 50:9; Ezek 30:9; 36:9; Zech 2:10; 3:8), or as an emphatic introduction (“Look!”; Jdgs 3:15; Isa 3:1; Jer 8:17; 30:3; 49:15; Hos 9:6; Joel 3:1 [HT 4:1]; Amos 4:2, 13; 6:11, 14; 9:9; Hab 1:6; Zech 2:9 [HT 2:13]; Zech 3:9; 11:16).
2 tn Or “high places” (KJV, NASB, NIV, NRSV, NLT).
3 tn Heb “over the sons of your delight.”
4 tn Heb “make wide your baldness.”
5 tn Or “a vulture” (cf. NIV, TEV); CEV “a buzzard.” The Hebrew term נֶשֶׁר (nesher) refers to the griffon vulture or eagle.
5 tn Heb “Arise and go!” These imperatives are rhetorical. Those who wrongly drove widows and orphans from their homes and land inheritances will themselves be driven out of the land (cf. Isa 5:8-17). This is an example of poetic justice.
6 tn Heb “for this is no resting place.” The
7 tn Heb “uncleanness will destroy, and destruction will be severe.”
7 tn Or “seers.”
8 tn Or “the mustache,” or perhaps “the beard.” Cf. KJV, NAB, NRSV “cover their lips.”
9 tn Heb “for there will be no answer from God.”
9 tn The words “to be threshed” are not in the Hebrew text, but have been supplied in the translation to make it clear that the