Hosea 8:1

God Will Raise Up the Assyrians to Attack Israel

8:1 Sound the alarm! ¹ 

An eagle ²  looms over the temple of the Lord!

For they have broken their covenant with me, ³ 

and have rebelled against my law.

Hosea 8:10

8:10 Even though they have hired lovers among the nations, ⁴ 

I will soon gather them together for judgment. ⁵ 

Then ⁶  they will begin to waste away

under the oppression of a mighty king. ⁷ 

Jeremiah 16:16

16:16 But for now I, the Lord, say: ⁸  “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. ⁹ 

Jeremiah 21:4

21:4 that the Lord, the God of Israel, says, ¹⁰  ‘The forces at your disposal ¹¹  are now outside the walls fighting against King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon and the Babylonians ¹²  who have you under siege. I will gather those forces back inside the city. ¹³ 

Ezekiel 16:37

16:37 therefore, take note: I am about to gather all your lovers whom you enjoyed, both all those you loved and all those you hated. I will gather them against you from all around, and I will expose your nakedness to them, and they will see all your nakedness. ¹⁴ 

Ezekiel 23:9

23:9 Therefore I handed her over to her lovers, the Assyrians ¹⁵  for whom she lusted.

Ezekiel 23:46

23:46 “For this is what the sovereign Lord says: Bring up an army ¹⁶  against them and subject them ¹⁷  to terror and plunder.

Micah 4:10-13

4:10 Twist and strain, ¹⁸  Daughter Zion, as if you were in labor!

For you will leave the city

and live in the open field.

You will go to Babylon,

but there you will be rescued.

There the Lord will deliver ¹⁹  you

from the power ²⁰  of your enemies.

4:11 Many nations have now assembled against you.

They say, “Jerusalem must be desecrated, ²¹ 

so we can gloat over Zion!” ²² 

4:12 But they do not know what the Lord is planning;

they do not understand his strategy.

He has gathered them like stalks of grain to be threshed ²³  at the threshing floor.

4:13 “Get up and thresh, Daughter Zion!

For I will give you iron horns; ²⁴ 

I will give you bronze hooves,

and you will crush many nations.” ²⁵ 

You will devote to the Lord the spoils you take from them,

and dedicate their wealth to the sovereign Ruler ²⁶  of the whole earth. ²⁷ 

Zechariah 14:2-3

14:2 For I will gather all the nations against Jerusalem ²⁸  to wage war; the city will be taken, its houses plundered, and the women raped. Then half of the city will go into exile, but the remainder of the people will not be taken away. ²⁹ 

14:3 Then the Lord will go to battle ³⁰  and fight against those nations, just as he fought battles in ancient days. ³¹ 

Matthew 22:7

22:7 The ³²  king was furious! He sent his soldiers, and they put those murderers to death ³³  and set their city ³⁴  on fire.

[8:1]  ¹ tn Heb “A horn unto your gums!”; NAB “A trumpet to your lips!”

[8:1]  ² tn Or perhaps “A vulture.” Some identify the species indicated by the Hebrew term נֶשֶׁר (nesher) as the griffon vulture (cf. NEB, NRSV).

[8:1]  ³ tn Heb “my covenant” (so NAB, NIV, NRSV); TEV “the covenant I made with them.”

[8:10]  ⁴ tn Or “they have hired themselves out to lovers”; cf. NASB “they hire allies among the nations.”

[8:10]  ⁵ tn The Piel stem of קָבַץ (qavats) is often used in a positive sense, meaning “to regather” a dispersed people (HALOT 1063 s.v. קבץ 3.a; BDB 868 s.v. קָבַץ 1.α). However, in Hosea 8:10 it is used in a negative sense, meaning “to assemble (people) for judgment” (e.g., Ezek 20:34; Hos 9:6; HALOT 1063 s.v. 3.e.i). Cf. JPS “I will hold them fast” (in judgment, see the parallel in 9:6).

[8:10]  ⁶ tn The vav consecutive + preterite וַיָּחֵלּוּ (vayyakhellu, Hiphil preterite 3rd person common plural from חָלַל, khalal, “to begin”]) denotes temporal subordination to the preceding clause: “then…” (so NLT); cf. TEV, CEV “Soon.”

[8:10]  ⁷ tn Heb “a king of princes” (cf. KJV, NASB); TEV “the emperor of Assyria.”

[16:16]  ⁸ 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]  ⁹ 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.”

[21:4]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “Tell Zedekiah, ‘Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel.’” Using the indirect quote eliminates one level of embedded quotation and makes it easier for the reader to follow.

[21:4]  ¹¹ tn Heb “the weapons which are in your hand.” Weapons stands here by substitution for the soldiers who wield them.

[21:4]  ¹² sn The Babylonians (Heb “the Chaldeans”). The Chaldeans were a group of people in the country south of Babylon from which Nebuchadnezzar came. The Chaldean dynasty his father established became the name by which the Babylonians are regularly referred to in the book of Jeremiah. Jeremiah’s contemporary Ezekiel uses both terms.

[21:4]  ¹³ tn The structure of the Hebrew sentence of this verse is long and complex and has led to a great deal of confusion and misunderstanding. There are two primary points of confusion: 1) the relation of the phrase “outside the walls,” and 2) the antecedent of “them” in the last clause of the verse that reads in Hebrew: “I will gather them back into the midst of the city.” Most take the phrase “outside the walls” with “the Babylonians….” Some take it with “turn back/bring back” to mean “from outside….” However, the preposition “from” is part of the idiom for “outside….” The phrase goes with “fighting” as J. Bright (Jeremiah [AB], 215) notes and as NJPS suggests. The antecedent of “them” has sometimes been taken mistakenly to refer to the Babylonians. It refers rather to “the forces at your disposal” which is literally “the weapons which are in your hands.” This latter phrase is a figure involving substitution (called metonymy) as Bright also correctly notes. The whole sentence reads in Hebrew: “I will bring back the weapons of war which are in your hand with which you are fighting Nebuchadrezzar the King of Babylon and the Chaldeans who are besieging you outside your wall and I will gather them into the midst of the city.” The sentence has been restructured to better reflect the proper relationships and to make the sentence conform more to contemporary English style.

[16:37]  ¹⁴ sn Harlots suffered degradation when their nakedness was exposed (Jer 13:22, 26; Hos 2:12; Nah 3:5).

[23:9]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “I gave her into the hand of her lovers, into the hand of the sons of Assyria.”

[23:46]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “assembly.”

[23:46]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “give them to.”

[4:10]  ¹⁸ tn Or perhaps “scream”; NRSV, TEV, NLT “groan.”

[4:10]  ¹⁹ tn Or “redeem” (KJV, NASB, NIV, NRSV, NLT).

[4:10]  ²⁰ tn Heb “hand.” The Hebrew idiom is a metonymy for power or control.

[4:11]  ²¹ tn Heb “let her be desecrated.” the referent (Jerusalem) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[4:11]  ²² tn Heb “and let our eye look upon Zion.”

[4:12]  ²³ tn The words “to be threshed” are not in the Hebrew text, but have been supplied in the translation to make it clear that the Lord is planning to enable “Daughter Zion” to “thresh” her enemies.

[4:13]  ²⁴ tn Heb “I will make your horn iron.”

[4:13]  ²⁵ sn Jerusalem (Daughter Zion at the beginning of the verse; cf. 4:8) is here compared to a powerful ox which crushes the grain on the threshing floor with its hooves.

[4:13]  ²⁶ tn Or “the Lord” (so many English versions); Heb “the master.”

[4:13]  ²⁷ tn Heb “and their wealth to the master of all the earth.” The verb “devote” does double duty in the parallelism and is supplied in the second line for clarification.

[14:2]  ²⁸ map For location see Map5 B1; Map6 F3; Map7 E2; Map8 F2; Map10 B3; JP1 F4; JP2 F4; JP3 F4; JP4 F4.

[14:2]  ²⁹ tn Heb “not be cut off from the city” (so NRSV); NAB “not be removed.”

[14:3]  ³⁰ sn The statement the Lord will go to battle introduces the conflict known elsewhere as the “battle of Armageddon,” a battle in which the Lord delivers his people and establishes his millennial reign (cf. Joel 3:12, 15-16; Ezek 38–39; Rev 16:12-21; 19:19-21).

[14:3]  ³¹ tn Heb “as he fights on a day of battle” (similar NASB, NIV, NRSV).

[22:7]  ³² tn Here δέ (de) has not been translated.

[22:7]  ³³ tn Grk “he sent his soldiers, destroyed those murderers.” The verb ἀπώλεσεν (apwlesen) is causative, indicating that the king was the one behind the execution of the murderers. In English the causative idea is not expressed naturally here; either a purpose clause (“he sent his soldiers to put those murderers to death”) or a relative clause (“he sent his soldier who put those murderers to death”) is preferred.

[22:7]  ³⁴ tn The Greek text reads here πόλις (polis), which could be translated “town” or “city.” The prophetic reference is to the city of Jerusalem, so “city” is more appropriate here.