Deuteronomy 28:12

28:12 The Lord will open for you his good treasure house, the heavens, to give you rain for the land in its season and to bless all you do; ¹  you will lend to many nations but you will not borrow from any.

Genesis 19:24

19:24 Then the Lord rained down ²  sulfur and fire ³  on Sodom and Gomorrah. It was sent down from the sky by the Lord. ⁴ 

Job 18:15-21

18:15 Fire resides in his tent; ⁵ 

over his residence burning sulfur is scattered.

18:16 Below his roots dry up,

and his branches wither above.

18:17 His memory perishes from the earth,

he has no name in the land. ⁶ 

18:18 He is driven ⁷  from light into darkness

and is banished from the world.

18:19 He has neither children nor descendants ⁸  among his people,

no survivor in those places he once stayed. ⁹ 

18:20 People of the west ¹⁰  are appalled at his fate; ¹¹ 

people of the east are seized with horror, ¹²  saying, ¹³ 

18:21 ‘Surely such is the residence ¹⁴  of an evil man;

and this is the place of one who has not known God.’” ¹⁵ 

Isaiah 5:24

5:24 Therefore, as flaming fire ¹⁶  devours straw,

and dry grass disintegrates in the flames,

so their root will rot,

and their flower will blow away like dust. ¹⁷ 

For they have rejected the law of the Lord who commands armies,

they have spurned the commands ¹⁸  of the Holy One of Israel. ¹⁹ 

Amos 4:11

4:11 “I overthrew some of you the way God ²⁰  overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah. ²¹ 

You were like a burning stick ²²  snatched from the flames.

Still you did not come back to me.”

The Lord is speaking!

[28:12]  ¹ tn Heb “all the work of your hands.”

[19:24]  ² tn The disjunctive clause signals the beginning of the next scene and highlights God’s action.

[19:24]  ³ tn Or “burning sulfur” (the traditional “fire and brimstone”).

[19:24]  ⁴ tn Heb “from the Lord from the heavens.” The words “It was sent down” are supplied in the translation for stylistic reasons.

[18:15]  ⁵ tn This line is difficult as well. The verb, again a third feminine form, says “it dwells in his tent.” But the next part (מִבְּלִי לוֹ, mibbÿli lo) means something like “things of what are not his.” The best that can be made of the MT is “There shall live in his tent they that are not his” (referring to persons and animals; see J. E. Hartley, Job [NICOT], 279). G. R. Driver and G. B. Gray (Job [ICC], 2:161) refer “that which is naught of his” to weeds and wild animals. M. Dahood suggested a reading מַבֶּל (mabbel) and a connection to Akkadian nablu, “fire” (cf. Ugaritic nbl). The interchange of m and n is not a problem, and the parallelism with the next line makes good sense (“Some Northwest Semitic words in Job,” Bib 38 [1957]: 312ff.). Others suggest an emendation to get “night-hag” or vampire. This suggestion, as well as Driver’s “mixed herbs,” are linked to the idea of exorcism. But if a change is to be made, Dahood’s is the most compelling.

[18:17]  ⁶ tn Heb “outside.” Cf. ESV, “in the street,” referring to absence from his community’s memory.

[18:18]  ⁷ tn The verbs in this verse are plural; without the expressed subject they should be taken in the passive sense.

[18:19]  ⁸ tn The two words נִין (nin, “offspring”) and נֶכֶד (nekhed, “posterity”) are always together and form an alliteration. This is hard to capture in English, but some have tried: Moffatt had “son and scion,” and Tur-Sinai had “breed or brood.” But the words are best simply translated as “lineage and posterity” or as in the NIV “offspring or descendants.”

[18:19]  ⁹ tn Heb “in his sojournings.” The verb גּוּר (gur) means “to reside; to sojourn” temporarily, without land rights. Even this word has been selected to stress the temporary nature of his stay on earth.

[18:20]  ¹⁰ tn The word אַחֲרֹנִים (’akharonim) means “those [men] coming after.” And the next word, קַדְמֹנִים (qadmonim), means “those [men] coming before.” Some commentators have tried to see here references to people who lived before and people who lived after, but that does not explain their being appalled at the fate of the wicked. So the normal way this is taken is in connection to the geography, notably the seas – “the hinder sea” refers to the Mediterranean, the West, and “the front sea” refers to the Dead Sea (Zech 14:8), namely, the East. The versions understood this as temporal: “the last groaned for him, and wonder seized the first” (LXX).

[18:20]  ¹¹ tn Heb “his day.”

[18:20]  ¹² tn The expression has “they seize horror.” The RSV renders this “horror seizes them.” The same idiom is found in Job 21:6: “laid hold on shuddering.” The idiom would solve the grammatical problem, and not change the meaning greatly; but it would change the parallelism.

[18:20]  ¹³ tn The word “saying” is supplied in the translation to mark and introduce the following as a quotation of these people who are seized with horror. The alternative is to take v. 21 as Bildad’s own summary statement (cf. G. R. Driver and G. B. Gray, Job [ICC], 2:162; J. E. Hartley, Job [NICOT], 280).

[18:21]  ¹⁴ tn The term is in the plural, “the tabernacles”; it should be taken as a plural of local extension (see GKC 397 §124.b).

[18:21]  ¹⁵ tn The word “place” is in construct; the clause following it replaces the genitive: “this is the place of – he has not known God.”

[5:24]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “a tongue of fire” (so NASB), referring to a tongue-shaped flame.

[5:24]  ¹⁷ sn They are compared to a flowering plant that withers quickly in a hot, arid climate.

[5:24]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “the word.”

[5:24]  ¹⁹ sn See the note on the phrase “the Holy One of Israel” in 1:4.

[4:11]  ²⁰ tn Several English versions substitute the first person pronoun (“I”) here for stylistic reasons (e.g., NIV, NCV, TEV, CEV, NLT).

[4:11]  ²¹ tn Heb “like God’s overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah.” The divine name may be used in an idiomatic superlative sense here, in which case one might translate, “like the great [or “disastrous”] overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah.”

[4:11]  ²² tn Heb “like that which is burning.”