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.

Psalms 78:49

78:49 His raging anger lashed out against them, ³ 

He sent fury, rage, and trouble

as messengers who bring disaster. ⁴ 

Isaiah 10:5-7

The Lord Turns on Arrogant Assyria

10:5 Assyria, the club I use to vent my anger, is as good as dead, ⁵ 

a cudgel with which I angrily punish. ⁶ 

10:6 I sent him ⁷  against a godless ⁸  nation,

I ordered him to attack the people with whom I was angry, ⁹ 

to take plunder and to carry away loot,

to trample them down ¹⁰  like dirt in the streets.

10:7 But he does not agree with this,

his mind does not reason this way, ¹¹ 

for his goal is to destroy,

and to eliminate many nations. ¹² 

Jeremiah 16:16

16:16 But for now I, the Lord, say: ¹³  “I will send many enemies who will catch these people like fishermen. After that I will send others who will hunt them out like hunters from all the mountains, all the hills, and the crevices in the rocks. ¹⁴ 

Jeremiah 43:10

43:10 Then tell them, ¹⁵  ‘The Lord God of Israel who rules over all ¹⁶  says, “I will bring ¹⁷  my servant ¹⁸  King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon. I will set his throne over these stones which I ¹⁹  have buried. He will pitch his royal tent ²⁰  over them.

[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).

[78:49]  ³ tn Heb “he sent against them the rage of his anger.” The phrase “rage of his anger” employs an appositional genitive. Synonyms are joined in a construct relationship to emphasize the single idea. For a detailed discussion of the grammatical point with numerous examples, see Y. Avishur, “Pairs of Synonymous Words in the Construct State (and in Appositional Hendiadys) in Biblical Hebrew,” Semitics 2 (1971): 17-81.

[78:49]  ⁴ tn Heb “fury and indignation and trouble, a sending of messengers of disaster.”

[10:5]  ⁵ tn Heb “Woe [to] Assyria, the club of my anger.” On הוֹי (hoy, “woe, ah”) see the note on the first phrase of 1:4.

[10:5]  ⁶ tn Heb “a cudgel is he, in their hand is my anger.” It seems likely that the final mem (ם) on בְיָדָם (bÿyadam) is not a pronominal suffix (“in their hand”), but an enclitic mem. If so, one can translate literally, “a cudgel is he in the hand of my anger.”

[10:6]  ⁷ sn Throughout this section singular forms are used to refer to Assyria; perhaps the king of Assyria is in view (see v. 12).

[10:6]  ⁸ tn Or “defiled”; cf. ASV “profane”; NAB “impious”; NCV “separated from God.”

[10:6]  ⁹ tn Heb “and against the people of my anger I ordered him.”

[10:6]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “to make it [i.e., the people] a trampled place.”

[10:7]  ¹¹ tn Heb “but he, not so does he intend, and his heart, not so does it think.”

[10:7]  ¹² tn Heb “for to destroy [is] in his heart, and to cut off nations, not a few.”

[16:16]  ¹³ tn Heb “Oracle of the Lord.” The Lord has been speaking; the first person has been utilized in translation to avoid a shift which might create confusion.

[16:16]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “Behold I am about to send for many fishermen and they will catch them. And after that I will send for many hunters and they will hunt them from every mountain and from every hill and from the cracks in the rocks.”

[43:10]  ¹⁵ sn This is another of those symbolic prophecies of Jeremiah which involved an action and an explanation. Compare Jer 19, 27.

[43:10]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “Yahweh of armies, the God of Israel.” Compare 7:3 and see the study note on 2:19 for explanation of the translation and significance of this title.

[43:10]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “send and take/fetch.”

[43:10]  ¹⁸ sn See the study note on Jer 25:9 for the use of this epithet for foreign rulers. The term emphasizes God’s sovereignty over history.

[43:10]  ¹⁹ tn The Greek version reads the verbs in this sentence as third person, “he will set,” and second person, “you have buried.” This fits the context better but it is difficult to explain how the Hebrew could have arisen from this smoother reading. The figure of substitution (metonymy of cause for effect) is probably involved: “I will have him set” and “I have had you bury.” The effect of these substitutions is to emphasize the sovereignty of God.

[43:10]  ²⁰ tn The meaning of this word is uncertain. The word here (שַׁפְרִירוֹ [shafriro] Qere, שַׁפְרוּרוֹ [shafruro] Kethib) occurs only here in the Hebrew Bible. According to the lexicons it refers to either the carpet for his throne or the canopy over it. See, e.g., HALOT 1510 s.v. שַׁפְרִיר.