Daniel 11:16

11:16 The one advancing against him will do as he pleases, and no one will be able to stand before him. He will prevail in the beautiful land, and its annihilation will be within his power. ¹ 

Daniel 11:41

11:41 Then he will enter the beautiful land. ²  Many ³  will fall, but these will escape: ⁴  Edom, Moab, and the Ammonite leadership.

Daniel 11:45

11:45 He will pitch his royal tents between the seas ⁵  toward the beautiful holy mountain. But he will come to his end, with no one to help him.

Psalms 48:2

48:2 It is lofty and pleasing to look at, ⁶ 

a source of joy to the whole earth. ⁷ 

Mount Zion resembles the peaks of Zaphon; ⁸ 

it is the city of the great king.

Psalms 105:24

105:24 The Lord ⁹  made his people very fruitful,

and made them ¹⁰  more numerous than their ¹¹  enemies.

Jeremiah 3:19

3:19 “I thought to myself, ¹² 

‘Oh what a joy it would be for me to treat you like a son! ¹³ 

What a joy it would be for me to give ¹⁴  you a pleasant land,

the most beautiful piece of property there is in all the world!’ ¹⁵ 

I thought you would call me, ‘Father’ ¹⁶ 

and would never cease being loyal to me. ¹⁷ 

Ezekiel 20:6

20:6 On that day I swore ¹⁸  to bring them out of the land of Egypt to a land which I had picked out ¹⁹  for them, a land flowing with milk and honey, ²⁰  the most beautiful of all lands.

Ezekiel 20:15

20:15 I also swore ²¹  to them in the wilderness that I would not bring them to the land I had given them – a land flowing with milk and honey, the most beautiful of all lands.

Zechariah 7:14

7:14 ‘Rather, I will sweep them away in a storm into all the nations they are not familiar with.’ Thus the land had become desolate because of them, with no one crossing through or returning, for they had made the fruitful ²²  land a waste.”

[11:16]  ¹ tn Heb “hand.”

[11:41]  ² sn The beautiful land is a cryptic reference to the land of Israel.

[11:41]  ³ tn This can be understood as “many people” (cf. NRSV) or “many countries” (cf. NASB, NIV, NLT).

[11:41]  ⁴ tn Heb “be delivered from his hand.”

[11:45]  ⁵ sn Presumably seas refers to the Mediterranean Sea and the Dead Sea.

[48:2]  ⁶ tn Heb “beautiful of height.” The Hebrew term נוֹף (nof, “height”) is a genitive of specification after the qualitative noun “beautiful.” The idea seems to be that Mount Zion, because of its lofty appearance, is pleasing to the sight.

[48:2]  ⁷ sn A source of joy to the whole earth. The language is hyperbolic. Zion, as the dwelling place of the universal king, is pictured as the world’s capital. The prophets anticipated this idealized picture becoming a reality in the eschaton (see Isa 2:1-4).

[48:2]  ⁸ tn Heb “Mount Zion, the peaks of Zaphon.” Like all the preceding phrases in v. 2, both phrases are appositional to “city of our God, his holy hill” in v. 1, suggesting an identification in the poet’s mind between Mount Zion and Zaphon. “Zaphon” usually refers to the “north” in a general sense (see Pss 89:12; 107:3), but here, where it is collocated with “peaks,” it refers specifically to Mount Zaphon, located in the vicinity of ancient Ugarit and viewed as the mountain where the gods assembled (see Isa 14:13). By alluding to West Semitic mythology in this way, the psalm affirms that Mount Zion is the real divine mountain, for it is here that the Lord God of Israel lives and rules over the nations. See P. Craigie, Psalms 1-50 (WBC), 353, and T. N. D. Mettinger, In Search of God, 103.

[105:24]  ⁹ tn Heb “and he”; the referent (the Lord) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[105:24]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “him,” referring to “his people.”

[105:24]  ¹¹ tn Heb “his,” referring to “his people.”

[3:19]  ¹² tn Heb “I, myself, said.” See note on “I thought that she might come back to me” in 3:7.

[3:19]  ¹³ tn Heb “How I would place you among the sons.” Israel appears to be addressed here contextually as the Lord’s wife (see the next verse). The pronouns of address in the first two lines are second feminine singular as are the readings of the two verbs preferred by the Masoretes (the Qere readings) in the third and fourth lines. The verbs that are written in the text in the third and fourth lines (the Kethib readings) are second masculine plural as is the verb describing Israel’s treachery in the next verse.

[3:19]  ¹⁴ tn The words “What a joy it would be for me to” are not in the Hebrew text but are implied in the parallel structure.

[3:19]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “the most beautiful heritage among the nations.”

[3:19]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “my father.”

[3:19]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “turn back from [following] after me.”

[20:6]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “I lifted up my hand to them.”

[20:6]  ¹⁹ tn Or “searched out.” The Hebrew word is used to describe the activity of the spies in “spying out” the land of Canaan (Num 13-14); cf. KJV “I had espied for them.”

[20:6]  ²⁰ sn The phrase “a land flowing with milk and honey,” a figure of speech describing the land’s abundant fertility, occurs in v. 15 as well as Exod 3:8, 17; 13:5; 33:3; Lev 20:24; Num 13:27; Deut 6:3; 11:9; 26:9; 27:3; Josh 5:6; Jer 11:5; 32:23 (see also Deut 1:25; 8:7-9).

[20:15]  ²¹ tn Heb “I lifted up my hand.”

[7:14]  ²² tn Or “desirable”; traditionally “pleasant” (so many English versions; cf. TEV “This good land”).