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.

Jeremiah 51:33

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

‘Fair Babylon ⁴  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.’ ⁵ 

[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.

[51:33]  ⁴ sn Heb “Daughter Babylon.” See the study note at 50:42 for explanation.

[51:33]  ⁵ 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.