68:23 so that your feet may stomp 1 in their blood,
and your dogs may eat their portion of the enemies’ corpses.” 2
29:6 when my steps 3 were bathed 4 with butter 5
and the rock poured out for me streams of olive oil! 6
1 tc Some (e.g. NRSV) prefer to emend מָחַץ (makhats, “smash; stomp”; see v. 21) to רָחַץ (rakhats, “bathe”; see Ps 58:10).
2 tn Heb “[and] the tongue of your dogs from [the] enemies [may eat] its portion.”
3 tn The word is a hapax legomenon, but the meaning is clear enough. It refers to the walking, the steps, or even the paths where one walks. It is figurative of his course of life.
4 tn The Hebrew word means “to wash; to bathe”; here it is the infinitive construct in a temporal clause, “my steps” being the genitive: “in the washing of my steps in butter.”
5 tn Again, as in Job 21:17, “curds.”
6 tn The MT reads literally, “and the rock was poured out [passive participle] for me as streams of oil.” There are some who delete the word “rock” to shorten the line because it seems out of place. But olive trees thrive in rocky soil, and the oil presses are cut into the rock; it is possible that by metonymy all this is intended here (H. H. Rowley, Job [NCBC], 186).
7 tn Here καί (kai) has been translated as “then” to indicate the implied sequence of events within the vision.
8 sn The winepress was stomped. See Isa 63:3, where Messiah does this alone (usually several individuals would join in the process).
9 tn L&N 6.7 states, “In Re 14:20 the reference to a bit and bridle is merely an indication of measurement, that is to say, the height of the bit and bridle from the ground, and one may reinterpret this measurement as ‘about a meter and a half’ or ‘about five feet.’”
10 tn Grk “1,600 stades.” A stade was a measure of length about 607 ft (185 m). Thus the distance here would be 184 mi or 296 km.