Discovery BoxJeremiah 27:2
Context27:2 The Lord told me, 1 “Make a yoke 2 out of leather straps and wooden crossbars and put it on your neck.
Jeremiah 28:4
Context28:4 I will also bring back to this place Jehoiakim’s son King Jeconiah of Judah and all the exiles who were taken to Babylon.’ Indeed, the Lord affirms, 3 ‘I will break the yoke of servitude to the king of Babylon.’”
Jeremiah 28:10
Context28:10 The prophet Hananiah then took the yoke off the prophet Jeremiah’s neck and broke it.
Jeremiah 28:13
Context28:13 “Go and tell Hananiah that the Lord says, 4 ‘You have indeed broken the wooden yoke. But you have 5 only succeeded in replacing it with an iron one! 6
Isaiah 9:4
Context9:4 For their oppressive yoke
and the club that strikes their shoulders,
the cudgel the oppressor uses on them, 7
you have shattered, as in the day of Midian’s defeat. 8
Isaiah 10:27
Contextthe Lord will remove their burden from your shoulders, 10
and their yoke from your neck;
the yoke will be taken off because your neck will be too large. 11
Isaiah 14:25
Context14:25 I will break Assyria 12 in my land,
I will trample them 13 underfoot on my hills.
Their yoke will be removed from my people,
the burden will be lifted from their shoulders. 14
Ezekiel 34:27
Context34:27 The trees of the field will yield their fruit and the earth will yield its crops. They will live securely on their land; they will know that I am the Lord, when I break the bars of their yoke and rescue them from the hand of those who enslaved them.
Nahum 1:13
Context1:13 And now, 15 I will break Assyria’s 16 yoke bar 17 from your neck; 18
[27:2] 1 tn There is some disjunction in the narrative of this chapter. The introduction in v. 1 presents this as a third person narrative. But the rest of the passage reports the narrative in first person. Thus the text reads here “Thus the
[27:2] 2 sn The yoke is a common biblical symbol of political servitude (see, e.g., Deut 28:48; 1 Kgs 12:4, 9, 10). From the context of 1 Kgs 12 it is clear that it applied to taxation and the provision of conscript labor. In international political contexts it involved the payment of heavy tribute which was often conscripted from the citizens (see, e.g., 2 Kgs 15:19-20; 23:34-35) and the furnishing of military contingents for the sovereign’s armies (see, e.g., 2 Kgs 24:2). Jeremiah’s message here combines both a symbolic action (the wearing of a yoke) and words of explanation as in Jer 19:1-13. (See Isa 20:1-6 for an example outside of Jeremiah.) The casting off of the yoke has been used earlier in Jer 2:20, 5:5 to refer to Israel’s failure to remain spiritually “subject” or faithful to God.
[28:4] 3 tn Heb “Oracle of the
[28:13] 4 tn Heb “Hananiah, ‘Thus says the
[28:13] 5 tn The Greek version reads “I have made/put” rather than “you have made/put.” This is the easier reading and is therefore rejected.
[28:13] 6 tn Heb “the yoke bars of wood you have broken, but you have made in its stead yoke bars of iron.”
[9:4] 7 tn Heb “for the yoke of his burden, and the staff of his shoulder, the scepter of the oppressor against him.” The singular pronouns are collective, referring to the people. The oppressed nation is compared to an ox weighed down by a heavy yoke and an animal that is prodded and beaten.
[9:4] 8 sn This alludes to Gideon’s victory over Midian (Judg 7-8), when the Lord delivered Israel from an oppressive foreign invader.
[10:27] 9 tn Or “in that day” (KJV). The verb that introduces this verse serves as a discourse particle and is untranslated; see note on “in the future” in 2:2.
[10:27] 10 tn Heb “he [i.e., the Lord] will remove his [i.e, Assyria’s] burden from upon your shoulder.”
[10:27] 11 tc The meaning of this line is uncertain. The Hebrew text reads literally, “and the yoke will be destroyed (or perhaps, “pulled down”) because of fatness.” Perhaps this is a bizarre picture of an ox growing so fat that it breaks the yoke around its neck or can no longer fit into its yoke. Fatness would symbolize the Lord’s restored blessings; the removal of the yoke would symbolize the cessation of Assyrian oppression. Because of the difficulty of the metaphor, many prefer to emend the text at this point. Some emend וְחֻבַּל (vÿkhubbal, “and it will be destroyed,” a perfect with prefixed vav), to יִחְבֹּל (yikhbol, “[it] will be destroyed,” an imperfect), and take the verb with what precedes, “and their yoke will be destroyed from your neck.” Proponents of this view (cf. NAB, NRSV) then emend עֹל (’ol, “yoke”) to עָלָה (’alah, “he came up”) and understand this verb as introducing the following description of the Assyrian invasion (vv. 28-32). מִפְּנֵי־שָׁמֶן (mippÿney-shamen, “because of fatness”) is then emended to read “from before Rimmon” (NAB, NRSV), “from before Samaria,” or “from before Jeshimon.” Although this line may present difficulties, it appears best to regard the line as a graphic depiction of God’s abundant blessings on his servant nation.
[14:25] 12 tn Heb “to break Assyria.”
[14:25] 13 tn Heb “him.” This is a collective singular referring to the nation, or a reference to the king of Assyria who by metonymy stands for the entire nation.
[14:25] 14 tn Heb “and his [i.e., Assyria’s] yoke will be removed from them [the people?], and his [Assyria’s] burden from his [the nation’s?] shoulder will be removed.” There are no antecedents in this oracle for the suffixes in the phrases “from them” and “from his shoulder.” Since the Lord’s land and hills are referred to in the preceding line and the statement seems to echo 10:27, it is likely that God’s people are the referents of the suffixes; the translation uses “my people” to indicate this.
[1:13] 15 tn The particle וְעַתָּה (vÿ’attah, “And now”) often introduces a transition in a prophetic oracle (HALOT 902 s.v. 3.a). It often draws a contrast between a past condition (as described in v. 12) and what will happen in the immediate future (as described in v. 13; see, e.g., Gen 11:6; 2 Sam 2:6; 2 Kgs 12:8). See H. A. Brongers, “Bemerkungen zum Gebrauch des adverbialen we’attah im Alten Testament,” VT 15 (1965): 289-99.
[1:13] 16 tn Heb “his”; the referent (Assyria) has been supplied from context.
[1:13] 17 tc The BHS editors propose revocalizing the MT מֹטֵהוּ (motehu, “his yoke bar”) to מַטַּהַוּ (mattahu, “his scepter”). The threat of breaking an enemy’s scepter was a common ancient Near Eastern treaty curse (see D. Hillers, Treaty-Curses and the Old Testament Prophets [BibOr], 61). This proposed revocalization has no external support. The MT is supported by the use of the parallel word pair מוֹטָה/מוֹסֵר (motah, “scepter”/moser, “bonds”) elsewhere (Jer 27:2). The term מוֹטָה is never used in parallelism with מוֹסֵר elsewhere.
[1:13] 18 tn Heb “from you”; the word “neck” is supplied in the translation as a clarification for the modern reader who may be less familiar with the imagery of a yoke around the neck of farm animals or draft animals.
[1:13] 19 sn The phrase the shackles that are on you draws an implied comparison between the chains and stocks of prisoners or slaves with the burden of international vassaldom to a tyrannical suzerain who demands absolute obedience and requires annual tributary offerings (e.g., Ps 2:3; Isa 52:2; Jer 27:2; 30:8). “Shackles” were the agent of covenantal discipline (e.g., Deut 28:48). Isaiah stated that the Assyrian “yoke” was the
