Deuteronomy 28:48

28:48 instead in hunger, thirst, nakedness, and poverty ¹  you will serve your enemies whom the Lord will send against you. They ²  will place an iron yoke on your neck until they have destroyed you.

Proverbs 5:22

5:22 The wicked ³  will be captured by his ⁴  own iniquities, ⁵ 

and he will be held ⁶  by the cords of his own sin. ⁷ 

Isaiah 14:25

14:25 I will break Assyria ⁸  in my land,

I will trample them ⁹  underfoot on my hills.

Their yoke will be removed from my people,

the burden will be lifted from their shoulders. ¹⁰ 

Isaiah 47:6

47:6 I was angry at my people;

I defiled my special possession

and handed them over to you.

You showed them no mercy; ¹¹ 

you even placed a very heavy burden on old people. ¹² 

Jeremiah 27:8

27:8 But suppose a nation or a kingdom will not be subject to King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon. Suppose it will not submit to the yoke of servitude to ¹³  him. I, the Lord, affirm that ¹⁴  I will punish that nation. I will use the king of Babylon to punish it ¹⁵  with war, ¹⁶  starvation, and disease until I have destroyed it. ¹⁷ 

Jeremiah 27:12

27:12 I told King Zedekiah of Judah the same thing. I said, ¹⁸  “Submit ¹⁹  to the yoke of servitude to ²⁰  the king of Babylon. Be subject to him and his people. Then you will continue to live.

Jeremiah 28:14

28:14 For the Lord God of Israel who rules over all ²¹  says, “I have put an irresistible yoke of servitude on all these nations ²²  so they will serve King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon. And they will indeed serve him. I have even given him control over the wild animals.”’” ²³ 

[28:48]  ¹ tn Heb “lack of everything.”

[28:48]  ² tn Heb “he” (also later in this verse). The pronoun is a collective singular referring to the enemies (cf. CEV, NLT). Many translations understand the singular pronoun to refer to the Lord (cf. NAB, NASB, NIV, NCV, NRSV, TEV).

[5:22]  ³ tn The suffix on the verb is the direct object suffix; “the wicked” is a second object by apposition: They capture him, the wicked. Since “the wicked” is not found in the LXX, it could be an old scribal error; or the Greek translator may have simply smoothed out the sentence. C. H. Toy suggests turning the sentence into a passive idea: “The wicked will be caught in his iniquities” (Proverbs [ICC], 117).

[5:22]  ⁴ tn The word is the subject of the clause, but the pronominal suffix has no clear referent. The suffix is proleptic, referring to the wicked.

[5:22]  ⁵ tn Heb “his own iniquities will capture the wicked.” The translation shifts the syntax for the sake of smoothness and readability.

[5:22]  ⁶ sn The lack of discipline and control in the area of sexual gratification is destructive. The one who plays with this kind of sin will become ensnared by it and led to ruin.

[5:22]  ⁷ tn The Hebrew is structured chiastically: “his own iniquities will capture the wicked, by the cords of his own sin will he be held.”

[14:25]  ⁸ tn Heb “to break Assyria.”

[14:25]  ⁹ tn Heb “him.” This is a collective singular referring to the nation, or a reference to the king of Assyria who by metonymy stands for the entire nation.

[14:25]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “and his [i.e., Assyria’s] yoke will be removed from them [the people?], and his [Assyria’s] burden from his [the nation’s?] shoulder will be removed.” There are no antecedents in this oracle for the suffixes in the phrases “from them” and “from his shoulder.” Since the Lord’s land and hills are referred to in the preceding line and the statement seems to echo 10:27, it is likely that God’s people are the referents of the suffixes; the translation uses “my people” to indicate this.

[47:6]  ¹¹ tn Or “compassion.”

[47:6]  ¹² tn Heb “on the old you made very heavy your yoke.”

[27:8]  ¹³ tn Heb “put their necks in the yoke of.” See the study note on v. 2 for the figure.

[27:8]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “oracle of the Lord.”

[27:8]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “The nation and/or the kingdom which will not serve him, Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon, and which will not put its neck in the yoke of the king of Babylon, by sword, starvation, and disease I will punish [or more literally, “visit upon”] that nation, oracle of the Lord.” The long complex Hebrew sentence has been broken up in conformity with contemporary English style and the figures interpreted for the sake of clarity. The particle אֵת, the sign of the accusative, before “which will not put…” is a little unusual here. For its use to introduce a new topic (here a second relative clause) see BDB 85 s.v. אֵת 3.α.

[27:8]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “with/by the sword.”

[27:8]  ¹⁷ tc The verb translated “destroy” (תָּמַם, tamam) is usually intransitive in the stem of the verb used here. It is found in a transitive sense elsewhere only in Ps 64:7. BDB 1070 s.v. תָּמַם 7 emends both texts. In this case they recommend תִּתִּי (titi): “until I give them into his hand.” That reading is suggested by the texts of the Syriac and Targumic translations (see BHS fn c). The Greek translation supports reading the verb “destroy” but treats it as though it were intransitive “until they are destroyed by his hand” (reading תֻּמָּם [tummam]). The MT here is accepted as the more difficult reading and support is seen in the transitive use of the verb in Ps 64:7.

[27:12]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “I spoke to Zedekiah…according to all these words, saying.”

[27:12]  ¹⁹ sn The verbs in this verse are all plural. They are addressed to Zedekiah and his royal advisers (compare 22:2).

[27:12]  ²⁰ tn Heb “put their necks in the yoke of.” See the study note on v. 2 for the figure.

[28:14]  ²¹ tn Heb “Yahweh of armies, the God of Israel.” See the study notes on 2:19 and 7:3 for this title.

[28:14]  ²² tn Heb “An iron yoke I have put on the necks of all these nations.”

[28:14]  ²³ sn The emphasis is on the absoluteness of Nebuchadnezzar’s control. The statement is once again rhetorical and not to be taken literally. See the study note on 27:6.