Psalms 107:40

107:40 He would pour¹ contempt upon princes,

and he made them wander in a wasteland with no road.

Isaiah 19:11

19:11 The officials of Zoan are nothing but fools;²

Pharaoh’s wise advisers give stupid advice.

How dare you say to Pharaoh,

“I am one of the sages,

one well-versed in the writings of the ancient kings?”³

Isaiah 19:22

19:22 The Lord will strike Egypt, striking and then healing them. They will turn to the Lord and he will listen to their prayers⁴ and heal them.

Isaiah 23:9

23:9 The Lord who commands armies planned it –

to dishonor the pride that comes from all her beauty,⁵

to humiliate all the dignitaries of the earth.

Daniel 4:37

4:37 Now I, Nebuchadnezzar, praise and exalt and glorify the King of heaven, for all his deeds are right and his ways are just. He is able to bring down those who live⁶ in pride.

Acts 12:22-23

12:22 But the crowd⁷ began to shout,⁸ “The voice of a god,⁹ and not of a man!” 12:23 Immediately an angel of the Lord¹⁰ struck¹¹ Herod¹² down because he did not give the glory to God, and he was eaten by worms and died.¹³

¹tn The active participle is understood as past durative here, drawing attention to typical action in a past time frame. However, it could be taken as generalizing (in which case one should translate using the English present tense), in which case the psalmist moves from narrative to present reality. Perhaps the participial form appears because the statement is lifted from Job 12:21.

²tn Or “certainly the officials of Zoan are fools.” אַךְ (’akh) can carry the sense, “only, nothing but,” or “certainly, surely.”

³tn Heb “A son of wise men am I, a son of ancient kings.” The term בֶּן (ben, “son of”) could refer to literal descent, but many understand the word, at least in the first line, in its idiomatic sense of “member [of a guild].” See HALOT 138 s.v. בֶּן and J. N. Oswalt, Isaiah (NICOT), 1:371. If this is the case, then one can take the word in a figurative sense in the second line as well, the “son of ancient kings” being one devoted to their memory as preserved in their literature.

⁴tn Heb “he will be entreated.” The Niphal has a tolerative sense here, “he will allow himself to be entreated.”

⁵tn Heb “the pride of all the beauty.”

⁶tn Aram “walk.”

⁷tn The translation “crowd” is given by BDAG 223 s.v. δῆμος; the word often means a gathering of citizens to conduct public business. Here it is simply the group of people gathered to hear the king’s speech.

⁸tn The imperfect verb ἐπεφώνει (epefwnei) is taken ingressively in the sequence of events. Presumably the king had started his speech when the crowd began shouting.

⁹sn The voice of a god. Contrast the response of Paul and Barnabas in Acts 14:13-15.

¹⁰tn Or “the angel of the Lord.” See the note on the word “Lord” in 5:19.

¹¹sn On being struck…down by an angel, see Acts 23:3; 1 Sam 25:28; 2 Sam 12:15; 2 Kgs 19:35; 2 Chr 13:20; 2 Macc 9:5.

¹²tn Grk “him”; the referent (Herod) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

¹³sn He was eaten by worms and died. Josephus, Ant. 19.8.2 (19.343-352), states that Herod Agrippa I died at Caesarea in a.d. 44. The account by Josephus, while not identical to Luke’s account, is similar in many respects: On the second day of a festival, Herod Agrippa appeared in the theater with a robe made of silver. When it sparkled in the sun, the people cried out flatteries and declared him to be a god. The king, carried away by the flattery, saw an owl (an omen of death) sitting on a nearby rope, and immediately was struck with severe stomach pains. He was carried off to his house and died five days later. The two accounts can be reconciled without difficulty, since while Luke states that Herod was immediately struck down by an angel, his death could have come several days later. The mention of worms with death adds a humiliating note to the scene. The formerly powerful ruler had been thoroughly reduced to nothing (cf. Jdt 16:17; 2 Macc 9:9; cf. also Josephus, Ant. 17.6.5 [17.168-170], which details the sickness which led to Herod the Great’s death).