Isaiah 41:15-16

41:15 “Look, I am making you like ¹  a sharp threshing sledge,

new and double-edged. ² 

You will thresh the mountains and crush them;

you will make the hills like straw. ³ 

41:16 You will winnow them and the wind will blow them away;

the wind will scatter them.

You will rejoice in the Lord;

you will boast in the Holy One of Israel.

Isaiah 41:2

41:2 Who stirs up this one from the east? ⁴ 

Who ⁵  officially commissions him for service? ⁶ 

He hands nations over to him, ⁷ 

and enables him to subdue ⁸  kings.

He makes them like dust with his sword,

like windblown straw with his bow. ⁹ 

Isaiah 13:7

13:7 For this reason all hands hang limp, ¹⁰ 

every human heart loses its courage. ¹¹ 

Jeremiah 51:33

51:33 For the Lord God of Israel who rules over all says,

‘Fair Babylon ¹²  will be like a threshing floor

which has been trampled flat for harvest.

The time for her to be cut down and harvested

will come very soon.’ ¹³ 

Micah 4:13

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

For I will give you iron horns; ¹⁴ 

I will give you bronze hooves,

and you will crush many nations.” ¹⁵ 

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

and dedicate their wealth to the sovereign Ruler ¹⁶  of the whole earth. ¹⁷ 

Habakkuk 3:12

3:12 You furiously stomp on the earth,

you angrily trample down the nations.

Matthew 3:12

3:12 His winnowing fork ¹⁸  is in his hand, and he will clean out his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the storehouse, ¹⁹  but the chaff he will burn up with inextinguishable fire.” ²⁰ 

[41:15]  ¹ tn Heb “into” (so NIV); ASV “have made thee to be.”

[41:15]  ² tn Heb “owner of two-mouths,” i.e., double-edged.

[41:15]  ³ sn The mountains and hills symbolize hostile nations that are obstacles to Israel’s restoration.

[41:2]  ⁴ sn The expression this one from the east refers to the Persian conqueror Cyrus, as later texts indicate (see 44:28-45:6; 46:11; 48:14-16).

[41:2]  ⁵ tn The interrogative particle is understood by ellipsis.

[41:2]  ⁶ tn Heb “[in] righteousness called him to his foot.”

[41:2]  ⁷ tn Heb “he [the Lord] places before him [Cyrus] nations.”

[41:2]  ⁸ tn The verb יַרְדְּ (yardÿ) is an otherwise unattested Hiphil form from רָדָה (radah, “rule”). But the Hiphil makes no sense with “kings” as object; one must understand an ellipsis and supply “him” (Cyrus) as the object. The Qumran scroll 1QIsa^a has יוֹרִד (yorid), which appears to be a Hiphil form from יָרַד (yarad, “go down”). Others suggest reading יָרֹד (yarod), a Qal form from רָדַד (radad, “beat down”).

[41:2]  ⁹ sn The point is that they are powerless before Cyrus’ military power and scatter before him.

[13:7]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “drop”; KJV “be faint”; ASV “be feeble”; NAB “fall helpless.”

[13:7]  ¹¹ tn Heb “melts” (so NAB).

[51:33]  ¹² sn Heb “Daughter Babylon.” See the study note at 50:42 for explanation.

[51:33]  ¹³ tn Heb “Daughter Babylon will be [or is; there is no verb and the tense has to be supplied from the context] like a threshing floor at the time one tramples it. Yet a little while and the time of the harvest will come for her.” It is generally agreed that there are two figures here: one of leveling the threshing floor and stamping it into a smooth, hard surface and the other of the harvest where the grain is cut, taken to the threshing floor, and threshed by trampling the sheaves of grain to loosen the grain from the straw, and finally winnowed by throwing the mixture into the air (cf., e.g., J. A. Thompson, Jeremiah [NICOT], 760). The translation has sought to convey those ideas as clearly as possible without digressing too far from the literal.

[4:13]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “I will make your horn iron.”

[4:13]  ¹⁵ 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]  ¹⁶ tn Or “the Lord” (so many English versions); Heb “the master.”

[4:13]  ¹⁷ 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.

[3:12]  ¹⁸ 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]  ¹⁹ tn Or “granary,” “barn” (referring to a building used to store a farm’s produce rather than a building to house livestock).

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