Psalms 79:5

79:5 How long will this go on, O Lord? ¹ 

Will you stay angry forever?

How long will your rage ²  burn like fire?

Isaiah 27:11

27:11 When its branches get brittle, ³  they break;

women come and use them for kindling. ⁴ 

For these people lack understanding, ⁵ 

therefore the one who made them has no compassion on them;

the one who formed them has no mercy on them.

Ezekiel 20:47-48

20:47 and say to the scrub land of the Negev, ‘Hear the word of the Lord: This is what the sovereign Lord says: Look here, ⁶  I am about to start a fire in you, ⁷  and it will devour every green tree and every dry tree in you. The flaming fire will not be extinguished, and the whole surface of the ground from the Negev to the north will be scorched by it. 20:48 And everyone ⁸  will see that I, the Lord, have burned it; it will not be extinguished.’”

John 15:6

15:6 If anyone does not remain ⁹  in me, he is thrown out like a branch, and dries up; and such branches are gathered up and thrown into the fire, ¹⁰  and are burned up. ¹¹ 

¹ tn Heb “How long, O Lord?”

² tn Or “jealous anger.”

³ tn Heb “are dry” (so NASB, NIV, NRSV).

⁴ tn Heb “women come [and] light it.” The city is likened to a dead tree with dried up branches that is only good for firewood.

⁵ tn Heb “for not a people of understanding [is] he.”

⁶ tn The word הִנֵּה (hinneh, traditionally “behold”) indicates becoming aware of something and has been translated here as a verb.

⁷ tn Fire also appears as a form of judgment in Ezek 15:4-7; 19:12, 14.

⁸ tn Heb “all flesh.”

⁹ tn Or “reside.”

¹⁰ sn Such branches are gathered up and thrown into the fire. The author does not tell who it is who does the gathering and throwing into the fire. Although some claim that realized eschatology is so prevalent in the Fourth Gospel that no references to final eschatology appear at all, the fate of these branches seems to point to the opposite. The imagery is almost certainly that of eschatological judgment, and recalls some of the OT vine imagery which involves divine rejection and judgment of disobedient Israel (Ezek 15:4-6, 19:12).

¹¹ tn Grk “they gather them up and throw them into the fire, and they are burned.”