Isaiah 11:12

11:12 He will lift a signal flag for the nations;

he will gather Israel’s dispersed people ¹ 

and assemble Judah’s scattered people

from the four corners of the earth.

Isaiah 16:3-4

16:3 “Bring a plan, make a decision! ² 

Provide some shade in the middle of the day! ³ 

Hide the fugitives! Do not betray ⁴  the one who tries to escape!

16:4 Please let the Moabite fugitives live ⁵  among you.

Hide them ⁶  from the destroyer!”

Certainly ⁷  the one who applies pressure will cease, ⁸ 

the destroyer will come to an end,

those who trample will disappear ⁹  from the earth.

Isaiah 56:8

56:8 The sovereign Lord says this,

the one who gathers the dispersed of Israel:

“I will still gather them up.” ¹⁰ 

Jeremiah 43:7

43:7 They went on to Egypt ¹¹  because they refused to obey the Lord, and came to Tahpanhes. ¹² 

Jeremiah 44:28

44:28 Some who survive in battle will return to the land of Judah from the land of Egypt. But they will be very few indeed! ¹³  Then the Judean remnant who have come to live in the land of Egypt will know whose word proves true, ¹⁴  mine or theirs.’

Hosea 8:13

8:13 They offer up sacrificial gifts to me,

and eat the meat,

but the Lord does not accept their sacrifices. ¹⁵ 

Soon he will remember their wrongdoing,

he will punish their sins,

and they will return to Egypt.

[11:12]  ¹ tn Or “the banished of Israel,” i.e., the exiles.

[16:3]  ² sn It is unclear who is being addressed in this verse. Perhaps the prophet, playing the role of a panic stricken Moabite refugee, requests the leaders of Judah (the imperatives are plural) to take pity on the fugitives.

[16:3]  ³ tn Heb “Make your shade like night in the midst of noonday.” “Shade” here symbolizes shelter, while the heat of noonday represents the intense suffering of the Moabites. By comparing the desired shade to night, the speaker visualizes a huge dark shadow cast by a large tree that would provide relief from the sun’s heat.

[16:3]  ⁴ tn Heb “disclose, uncover.”

[16:4]  ⁵ tn That is, “live as resident foreigners.”

[16:4]  ⁶ tn Heb “Be a hiding place for them.”

[16:4]  ⁷ tn The present translation understands כִּי (ki) as asseverative, but one could take it as explanatory (“for,” KJV, NASB) or temporal (“when,” NAB, NRSV). In the latter case, v. 4b would be logically connected to v. 5.

[16:4]  ⁸ tn A perfect verbal form is used here and in the next two lines for rhetorical effect; the demise of the oppressor(s) is described as if it had already occurred.

[16:4]  ⁹ tc The Hebrew text has, “they will be finished, the one who tramples, from the earth.” The plural verb form תַּמּוּ, (tammu, “disappear”) could be emended to agree with the singular subject רֹמֵס (romes, “the one who tramples”) or the participle can be emended to a plural (רֹמֵסִם, romesim) to agree with the verb. The translation assumes the latter. Haplography of mem (ם) seems likely; note that the word after רֹמֵס begins with a mem.

[56:8]  ¹⁰ tn The meaning of the statement is unclear. The text reads literally, “Still I will gather upon him to his gathered ones.” Perhaps the preposition -לְ (lamed) before “gathered ones” introduces the object of the verb, as in Jer 49:5. The third masculine singular suffix on both עָלָיו (’alayv) and נִקְבָּצָיו (niqbatsayv) probably refers to “Israel.” In this case one can translate literally, “Still I will gather to him his gathered ones.”

[43:7]  ¹¹ sn This had been their intention all along (41:17). Though they consulted the Lord and promised to do what he told them whether they agreed with it or not (42:5-6), it is clear that they had no intention of doing so. Jeremiah could see that (42:19-22). They refused to believe that the Lord had really said what Jeremiah told them (43:4) and feared reprisal from the Babylonians more than any potential destruction from the Lord (43:3).

[43:7]  ¹² sn Tahpanhes was an important fortress city on the northern border of Egypt in the northeastern Nile delta. It is generally equated with the Greek city of Daphne. It has already been mentioned in 2:16 in conjunction with Memphis (the Hebrew name is “Noph”) as a source of soldiers who did violence to the Israelites in the past.

[44:28]  ¹³ tn Heb “The survivors of the sword will return from the land of Egypt to the land of Judah few in number [more literally, “men of number”; for the idiom see BDB 709 s.v. מִסְפָּר 1.a].” The term “survivors of the sword” may be intended to represent both those who survive death in war or death by starvation or disease, a synecdoche of species for all three genera.

[44:28]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “will stand,” i.e., in the sense of being fulfilled, proving to be true, or succeeding (see BDB 878 s.v. קוּם 7.g).

[8:13]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “does not accept them”; the referent (their sacrifices) has been specified in the translation for clarity.