2 Kings 17:18-23

17:18 So the Lord was furious ¹  with Israel and rejected them; ²  only the tribe of Judah was left. 17:19 Judah also failed to keep the commandments of the Lord their God; they followed Israel’s example. ³  17:20 So the Lord rejected all of Israel’s descendants; he humiliated ⁴  them and handed them over to robbers, until he had thrown them from his presence. 17:21 He tore Israel away from David’s dynasty, and Jeroboam son of Nebat became their king. ⁵  Jeroboam drove Israel away ⁶  from the Lord and encouraged them to commit a serious sin. ⁷  17:22 The Israelites followed in the sinful ways of Jeroboam son of Nebat and did not repudiate ⁸  them. 17:23 Finally ⁹  the Lord rejected Israel ¹⁰  just as he had warned he would do ¹¹  through all his servants the prophets. Israel was deported from its land to Assyria and remains there to this very day.

Isaiah 1:4-6

1:4 ¹² The sinful nation is as good as dead, ¹³ 

the people weighed down by evil deeds.

They are offspring who do wrong,

children ¹⁴  who do wicked things.

They have abandoned the Lord,

and rejected the Holy One of Israel. ¹⁵ 

They are alienated from him. ¹⁶ 

1:5 ¹⁷ Why do you insist on being battered?

Why do you continue to rebel? ¹⁸ 

Your head has a massive wound, ¹⁹ 

your whole body is weak. ²⁰ 

1:6 From the soles of your feet to your head,

there is no spot that is unharmed. ²¹ 

There are only bruises, cuts,

and open wounds.

They have not been cleansed ²²  or bandaged,

nor have they been treated ²³  with olive oil. ²⁴ 

Jeremiah 8:5-10

8:5 Why, then, do these people of Jerusalem ²⁵ 

continually turn away from me in apostasy?

They hold fast to their deception. ²⁶ 

They refuse to turn back to me. ²⁷ 

8:6 I have listened to them very carefully, ²⁸ 

but they do not speak honestly.

None of them regrets the evil he has done.

None of them says, “I have done wrong!” ²⁹ 

All of them persist in their own wayward course ³⁰ 

like a horse charging recklessly into battle.

8:7 Even the stork knows

when it is time to move on. ³¹ 

The turtledove, swallow, and crane ³² 

recognize ³³  the normal times for their migration.

But my people pay no attention

to ³⁴  what I, the Lord, require of them. ³⁵ 

8:8 How can you say, “We are wise!

We have the law of the Lord”?

The truth is, ³⁶  those who teach it ³⁷  have used their writings

to make it say what it does not really mean. ³⁸ 

8:9 Your wise men will be put to shame.

They will be dumbfounded and be brought to judgment. ³⁹ 

Since they have rejected the word of the Lord,

what wisdom do they really have?

8:10 ⁴⁰ So I will give their wives to other men

and their fields to new owners.

For from the least important to the most important of them,

all of them are greedy for dishonest gain.

Prophets and priests alike,

all practice deceit.

Jeremiah 9:26

9:26 That is, I will punish the Egyptians, the Judeans, the Edomites, the Ammonites, the Moabites, and all the desert people who cut their hair short at the temples. ⁴¹  I will do so because none of the people of those nations are really circumcised in the Lord’s sight. ⁴²  Moreover, none of the people of Israel ⁴³  are circumcised when it comes to their hearts.” ⁴⁴ 

Ezekiel 22:26-31

22:26 Her priests abuse my law and have desecrated my holy things. They do not distinguish between the holy and the profane, ⁴⁵  or recognize any distinction between the unclean and the clean. They ignore ⁴⁶  my Sabbaths and I am profaned in their midst. 22:27 Her officials are like wolves in her midst rending their prey – shedding blood and destroying lives – so they can get dishonest profit. 22:28 Her prophets coat their messages with whitewash. ⁴⁷  They see false visions and announce lying omens for them, saying, ‘This is what the sovereign Lord says,’ when the Lord has not spoken. 22:29 The people of the land have practiced extortion and committed robbery. They have wronged the poor and needy; they have oppressed the foreigner who lives among them and denied them justice. ⁴⁸ 

22:30 “I looked for a man from among them who would repair the wall and stand in the gap before me on behalf of the land, so that I would not destroy it, but I found no one. ⁴⁹  22:31 So I have poured my anger on them, and destroyed them with the fire of my fury. I hereby repay them for what they have done, ⁵⁰  declares the sovereign Lord.”

[17:18]  ¹ tn Heb “very angry.”

[17:18]  ² tn Heb “turned them away from his face.”

[17:19]  ³ tn Heb “they walked in the practices of Israel which they did.”

[17:20]  ⁴ tn Or “afflicted.”

[17:21]  ⁵ tn Heb “and they made Jeroboam son of Nebat king.”

[17:21]  ⁶ tc The consonantal text (Kethib) assumes the verb is נָדָא (nada’), an alternate form of נָדָה (nadah), “push away.” The marginal reading (Qere) assumes the verb נָדָח (nadakh), “drive away.”

[17:21]  ⁷ tn Heb “a great sin.”

[17:22]  ⁸ tn Heb “turn away from.”

[17:23]  ⁹ tn Heb “until.”

[17:23]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “the Lord turned Israel away from his face.”

[17:23]  ¹¹ tn Heb “just as he said.”

[1:4]  ¹² sn Having summoned the witnesses and announced the Lord’s accusation against Israel, Isaiah mourns the nation’s impending doom. The third person references to the Lord in the second half of the verse suggest that the quotation from the Lord (cf. vv. 2-3) has concluded.

[1:4]  ¹³ tn Heb “Woe [to the] sinful nation.” The Hebrew term הוֹי, (hoy, “woe, ah”) was used in funeral laments (see 1 Kgs 13:30; Jer 22:18; 34:5) and carries the connotation of death. In highly dramatic fashion the prophet acts out Israel’s funeral in advance, emphasizing that their demise is inevitable if they do not repent soon.

[1:4]  ¹⁴ tn Or “sons” (NASB). The prophet contrasts four terms of privilege – nation, people, offspring, children – with four terms that depict Israel’s sinful condition in Isaiah’s day – sinful, evil, wrong, wicked (see J. A. Motyer, The Prophecy of Isaiah, 43).

[1:4]  ¹⁵ sn Holy One of Israel is one of Isaiah’s favorite divine titles for God. It pictures the Lord as the sovereign king who rules over his covenant people and exercises moral authority over them.

[1:4]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “they are estranged backward.” The LXX omits this statement, which presents syntactical problems and seems to be outside the synonymous parallelistic structure of the verse.

[1:5]  ¹⁷ sn In vv. 5-9 Isaiah addresses the battered nation (5-8) and speaks as their representative (9).

[1:5]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “Why are you still beaten? [Why] do you continue rebellion?” The rhetorical questions express the prophet’s disbelief over Israel’s apparent masochism and obsession with sin. The interrogative construction in the first line does double duty in the parallelism. H. Wildberger (Isaiah, 1:18) offers another alternative by translating the two statements with one question: “Why do you still wish to be struck that you persist in revolt?”

[1:5]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “all the head is ill”; NRSV “the whole head is sick”; CEV “Your head is badly bruised.”

[1:5]  ²⁰ tn Heb “and all the heart is faint.” The “heart” here stands for bodily strength and energy, as suggested by the context and usage elsewhere (see Jer 8:18; Lam 1:22).

[1:6]  ²¹ tn Heb “there is not in it health”; NAB “there is no sound spot.”

[1:6]  ²² tn Heb “pressed out.”

[1:6]  ²³ tn Heb “softened” (so NASB, NRSV); NIV “soothed.”

[1:6]  ²⁴ sn This verse describes wounds like those one would receive in battle. These wounds are comprehensive and without remedy.

[8:5]  ²⁵ tc The text is quite commonly emended, changing שׁוֹבְבָה הָעָם (shovÿvah ha’am) to שׁוֹבָב הָעָם (shovav ha’am) and omitting יְרוּשָׁלַםִ (yÿrushalaim); this is due to the anomaly of a feminine singular verb with a masculine singular subject and the fact that the word “Jerusalem” is absent from one Hebrew ms and the LXX. However, it is possible that this is a case where the noun “Jerusalem” is a defining apposition to the word “these people,” an apposition which GKC 425 §131.k calls “permutation.” In this case the verb could be attracted to the appositional noun and there would be no reason to emend the text. The MT is undoubtedly the harder reading and is for that reason to be preferred.

[8:5]  ²⁶ tn Or “to their allegiance to false gods,” or “to their false professions of loyalty”; Heb “to deceit.” Either “to their mistaken beliefs” or “to their allegiance to false gods” would fit the preceding context. The former is more comprehensive than the latter and was chosen for that reason.

[8:5]  ²⁷ sn There is a continuing play on the same root word used in the preceding verse. Here the words “turn away from me,” “apostasy,” and “turn back to me” are all forms from the root that was translated “go the wrong way” and “turn around” in v. 4. The intended effect is to contrast Judah’s recalcitrant apostasy with the usual tendency to try and correct one’s mistakes.

[8:6]  ²⁸ tn Heb “I have paid attention and I have listened.” This is another case of two concepts being joined by “and” where one expresses the main idea and the other acts as an adverbial or adjectival modifier (a figure called hendiadys).

[8:6]  ²⁹ tn Heb “What have I done?” The addition of the word “wrong” is implicit in the context and is supplied in the translation for clarity. The rhetorical question does not function as a denial of wrongdoing, but rather as contrite shock at one’s own wrongdoing. It is translated as a declaration for the sake of clarity.

[8:6]  ³⁰ tn Heb “each one of them turns aside into their own running course.”

[8:7]  ³¹ tn Heb “its appointed time.” The translation is contextually motivated to avoid lack of clarity.

[8:7]  ³² tn There is debate in the commentaries and lexicons about the identification of some of these birds, particularly regarding the identification of the “swallow” which is more likely the “swift” and the “crane” which some identify with the “thrush.” For a discussion see the Bible encyclopedias and the UBS handbook Fauna and Flora of the Bible. The identity of the individual birds makes little difference to the point being made and “swallow” is more easily identifiable to the average reader than the “swift.”

[8:7]  ³³ tn Heb “keep.” Ironically birds, which do not think, obey the laws of nature, but Israel does not obey the laws of God.

[8:7]  ³⁴ tn Heb “do not know.” But here as elsewhere the word “know” is more than an intellectual matter. It is intended here to summarize both “know” and “follow” (Heb “observe”) in the preceding lines.

[8:7]  ³⁵ tn Heb “the ordinance/requirement of the Lord.”

[8:8]  ³⁶ tn Heb “Surely, behold!”

[8:8]  ³⁷ tn Heb “the scribes.”

[8:8]  ³⁸ tn Heb “The lying pen of the scribes have made [it] into a lie.” The translation is an attempt to make the most common interpretation of this passage understandable for the average reader. This is, however, a difficult passage whose interpretation is greatly debated and whose syntax is capable of other interpretations. The interpretation of the NJPS, “Assuredly, for naught has the pen labored, for naught the scribes,” surely deserves consideration within the context; i.e. it hasn’t done any good for the scribes to produce a reliable copy of the law, which the people have refused to follow. That interpretation has the advantage of explaining the absence of an object for the verb “make” or “labored” but creates a very unbalanced poetic couplet.

[8:9]  ³⁹ tn Heb “be trapped.” However, the word “trapped” generally carries with it the connotation of divine judgment. See BDB 540 s.v. לָכַד Niph.2, and compare usage in Jer 6:11 for support. The verbs in the first two lines are again the form of the Hebrew verb that emphasizes that the action is as good as done (Hebrew prophetic perfects).

[8:10]  ⁴⁰ sn See Jer 6:12-15 for parallels to 8:10-12. The words of Jeremiah to the people may have been repeated on more than one occasion or have been found appropriate to more than one of his collection of messages in written and edited form. See Jer 36:4 and Jer 36:28 for reference to at least two of these collections.

[9:26]  ⁴¹ tn Heb “all those who are cut off on the side of the head who live in the desert.” KJV and some other English versions (e.g., NIV “who live in the desert in distant places”; NLT “who live in distant places”) have followed the interpretation that this is a biform of an expression meaning “end or remote parts of the [far] corners [of the earth].” This interpretation is generally abandoned by the more recent commentaries and lexicons (see, e.g. BDB 802 s.v. פֵּאָה 1 and HALOT 858 s.v. פֵּאָה 1.β). It occurs also in 25:33; 49:32.

[9:26]  ⁴² tn Heb “For all of these nations are uncircumcised.” The words “I will do so” are supplied in the translation to indicate the connection with the preceding statement.

[9:26]  ⁴³ tn Heb “house of Israel.”

[9:26]  ⁴⁴ tn Heb “And all the house of Israel is uncircumcised of heart.”

[22:26]  ⁴⁵ tn Or “between the consecrated and the common.”

[22:26]  ⁴⁶ tn Heb “hide their eyes from.” The idiom means to disregard or ignore something or someone (see Lev 20:4; 1 Sam 12:3; Prov 28:27; Isa 1:15).

[22:28]  ⁴⁷ tn Heb “her prophets coat for themselves with whitewash.” The expression may be based on Ezek 13:10-15.

[22:29]  ⁴⁸ tn Heb “and the foreigner they have oppressed without justice.”

[22:30]  ⁴⁹ tn Heb “I did not find.”

[22:31]  ⁵⁰ tn Heb “their way on their head I have placed.”