Isaiah 1:31

1:31 The powerful will be like ¹  a thread of yarn,

their deeds like a spark;

both will burn together,

and no one will put out the fire.

Amos 4:11

4:11 “I overthrew some of you the way God ²  overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah. ³ 

You were like a burning stick ⁴  snatched from the flames.

Still you did not come back to me.”

The Lord is speaking!

Malachi 4:1

4:1 (3:19) ⁵  “For indeed the day ⁶  is coming, burning like a furnace, and all the arrogant evildoers will be chaff. The coming day will burn them up,” says the Lord who rules over all. “It ⁷  will not leave even a root or branch.

Matthew 3:12

3:12 His winnowing fork ⁸  is in his hand, and he will clean out his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the storehouse, ⁹  but the chaff he will burn up with inextinguishable fire.” ¹⁰ 

Hebrews 12:29

12:29 For our God is indeed a devouring fire. ¹¹ 

[1:31]  ¹ tn Heb “will become” (so NASB, NIV).

[4:11]  ² tn Several English versions substitute the first person pronoun (“I”) here for stylistic reasons (e.g., NIV, NCV, TEV, CEV, NLT).

[4:11]  ³ 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]  ⁴ tn Heb “like that which is burning.”

[4:1]  ⁵ sn Beginning with 4:1, the verse numbers through 4:6 in the English Bible differ from the verse numbers in the Hebrew text (BHS), with 4:1 ET = 3:19 HT, 4:2 ET = 3:20 HT, etc., through 4:6 ET = 3:24 HT. Thus the book of Malachi in the Hebrew Bible has only three chapters, with 24 verses in ch. 3.

[4:1]  ⁶ sn This day is the well-known “day of the Lord” so pervasive in OT eschatological texts (see Joel 2:30-31; Amos 5:18; Obad 15). For the believer it is a day of grace and salvation; for the sinner, a day of judgment and destruction.

[4:1]  ⁷ tn Heb “so that it” (so NASB, NRSV). For stylistic reasons a new sentence was begun here in the translation.

[3:12]  ⁸ sn A winnowing fork was a pitchfork-like tool used to toss threshed grain in the air so that the wind blew away the chaff, leaving the grain to fall to the ground. The note of purging is highlighted by the use of imagery involving sifting though threshed grain for the useful kernels.

[3:12]  ⁹ tn Or “granary,” “barn” (referring to a building used to store a farm’s produce rather than a building to house livestock).

[3:12]  ¹⁰ sn The image of fire that cannot be extinguished is from the OT: Job 20:26; Isa 34:8-10; 66:24.

[12:29]  ¹¹ sn A quotation from Deut 4:24; 9:3.