Jeremiah 32:17

32:17 ‘Oh, Lord God, ¹  you did indeed ²  make heaven and earth by your mighty power and great strength. ³  Nothing is too hard for you!

Exodus 6:6

6:6 Therefore, tell the Israelites, ‘I am the Lord. I will bring you out ⁴  from your enslavement to ⁵  the Egyptians, I will rescue you from the hard labor they impose, ⁶  and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with great judgments.

Exodus 9:15

9:15 For by now I could have stretched out ⁷  my hand and struck you and your people with plague, and you would have been destroyed ⁸  from the earth.

Deuteronomy 4:23

4:23 Be on guard so that you do not forget the covenant of the Lord your God that he has made with you, and that you do not make an image of any kind, just as he ⁹  has forbidden ¹⁰  you.

Isaiah 5:25

5:25 So the Lord is furious ¹¹  with his people;

he lifts ¹²  his hand and strikes them.

The mountains shake,

and corpses lie like manure ¹³  in the middle of the streets.

Despite all this, his anger does not subside,

and his hand is ready to strike again. ¹⁴ 

Isaiah 9:12

9:12 Syria from the east,

and the Philistines from the west,

they gobbled up Israelite territory. ¹⁵ 

Despite all this, his anger does not subside,

and his hand is ready to strike again. ¹⁶ 

Isaiah 9:17

9:17 So the sovereign master was not pleased ¹⁷  with their young men,

he took no pity ¹⁸  on their orphans and widows;

for the whole nation was godless ¹⁹  and did wicked things, ²⁰ 

every mouth was speaking disgraceful words. ²¹ 

Despite all this, his anger does not subside,

and his hand is ready to strike again. ²² 

Isaiah 9:21

9:21 Manasseh fought against ²³  Ephraim,

and Ephraim against Manasseh;

together they fought against Judah.

Despite all this, his anger does not subside,

and his hand is ready to strike again. ²⁴ 

Isaiah 10:4

10:4 You will have no place to go, except to kneel with the prisoners,

or to fall among those who have been killed. ²⁵ 

Despite all this, his anger does not subside,

and his hand is ready to strike again. ²⁶ 

Ezekiel 20:33-34

20:33 As surely as I live, declares the sovereign Lord, with a powerful hand and an outstretched arm, ²⁷  and with an outpouring of rage, I will be king over you. 20:34 I will bring you out from the nations, and will gather you from the lands where you are scattered, with a powerful hand and an outstretched arm and with an outpouring of rage!

Nahum 1:5-6

1:5 The mountains tremble before him, ²⁸ 

the hills convulse; ²⁹ 

the earth is laid waste ³⁰  before him,

the world and all its inhabitants ³¹  are laid waste. ³² 

1:6 No one can withstand ³³  his indignation! ³⁴ 

No one can resist ³⁵  his fierce anger! ³⁶ 

His wrath is poured out like volcanic fire,

boulders are broken up ³⁷  as he approaches. ³⁸ 

[32:17]  ¹ tn Heb “Lord Yahweh.” For an explanation of the rendering here see the study note on 1:6.

[32:17]  ² tn This is an attempt to render the Hebrew particle normally translated “behold.” See the translator’s note on 1:6 for the usage of this particle.

[32:17]  ³ tn Heb “by your great power and your outstretched arm.” See 21:5; 27:5 and the marginal note on 27:5 for this idiom.

[6:6]  ⁴ sn The verb וְהוֹצֵאתִי (vÿhotse’ti) is a perfect tense with the vav (ו) consecutive, and so it receives a future translation – part of God’s promises. The word will be used later to begin the Decalogue and other covenant passages – “I am Yahweh who brought you out….”

[6:6]  ⁵ tn Heb “from under the burdens of” (so KJV, NASB); NIV “from under the yoke of.”

[6:6]  ⁶ tn Heb “from labor of them.” The antecedent of the pronoun is the Egyptians who have imposed slave labor on the Hebrews.

[9:15]  ⁷ tn The verb is the Qal perfect שָׁלַחְתִּי (shalakhti), but a past tense, or completed action translation does not fit the context at all. Gesenius lists this reference as an example of the use of the perfect to express actions and facts, whose accomplishment is to be represented not as actual but only as possible. He offers this for Exod 9:15: “I had almost put forth” (GKC 313 §106.p). Also possible is “I should have stretched out my hand.” Others read the potential nuance instead, and render it as “I could have…” as in the present translation.

[9:15]  ⁸ tn The verb כָּחַד (kakhad) means “to hide, efface,” and in the Niphal it has the idea of “be effaced, ruined, destroyed.” Here it will carry the nuance of the result of the preceding verbs: “I could have stretched out my hand…and struck you…and (as a result) you would have been destroyed.”

[4:23]  ⁹ tn Heb “the Lord your God.” See note on “he” in 4:3.

[4:23]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “commanded.”

[5:25]  ¹¹ tn Heb “the anger of the Lord rages.”

[5:25]  ¹² tn Or “extends”; KJV, ASV “he hath stretched forth.”

[5:25]  ¹³ tn Or “garbage” (NCV, CEV, NLT); NAB, NASB, NIV “refuse.”

[5:25]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “in all this his anger is not turned, and still his hand is outstretched.”

[9:12]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “and they devoured Israel with all the mouth”; NIV “with open mouth”; NLT “With bared fangs.”

[9:12]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “in all this his anger is not turned, and still his hand is outstretched.” One could translate in the past tense here (and in 9:17b and 21b), but the appearance of the refrain in 10:4b, where it follows a woe oracle prophesying a future judgment, suggests it is a dramatic portrait of the judge which did not change throughout this period of past judgment and will remain unchanged in the future. The English present tense is chosen to best reflect this dramatic mood. (See also 5:25b, where the refrain appears following a dramatic description of coming judgment.)

[9:17]  ¹⁷ tn The Qumran scroll 1QIsa^a has לא יחמול (“he did not spare”) which is an obvious attempt to tighten the parallelism (note “he took no pity” in the next line). Instead of taking שָׂמַח (samakh) in one of its well attested senses (“rejoice over, be pleased with”), some propose, with support from Arabic, a rare homonymic root meaning “be merciful.”

[9:17]  ¹⁸ tn The translation understands the prefixed verbs יִשְׂמַח (yismakh) and יְרַחֵם (yÿrakhem) as preterites without vav (ו) consecutive. (See v. 11 and the note on “he stirred up.”)

[9:17]  ¹⁹ tn Or “defiled”; cf. ASV “profane”; NAB “profaned”; NIV “ungodly.”

[9:17]  ²⁰ tn מֵרַע (mera’) is a Hiphil participle from רָעַע (ra’a’, “be evil”). The intransitive Hiphil has an exhibitive force here, indicating that they exhibited outwardly the evidence of an inward condition by committing evil deeds.

[9:17]  ²¹ tn Or “foolishness” (NASB), here in a moral-ethical sense.

[9:17]  ²² tn Heb “in all this his anger is not turned, and still his hand is outstretched.”

[9:21]  ²³ tn The words “fought against” are supplied in the translation both here and later in this verse for stylistic reasons.

[9:21]  ²⁴ tn Heb “in all this his anger is not turned, and still his hand is outstretched” (KJV and ASV both similar); NIV “his hand is still upraised.”

[10:4]  ²⁵ tn Heb “except one kneels in the place of the prisoner, and in the place of the slain [who] fall.” On the force of בִּלְתִּי (bilti, “except”) and its logical connection to what precedes, see BDB 116 s.v. בֵלֶת. On the force of תַּחַת (takhat, “in the place of”) here, see J. N. Oswalt, Isaiah (NICOT), 1:258, n. 6.

[10:4]  ²⁶ tn Heb “in all this his anger was not turned, and still his hand was outstretched”; KJV, ASV, NRSV “his had is stretched out still.”

[20:33]  ²⁷ sn This phrase occurs frequently in Deuteronomy (Deut 4:34; 5:15; 7:19; 11:2; 26:8).

[1:5]  ²⁸ tn Or “because of him.” The Hebrew preposition מִמֶּנּוּ (mimmenu) is taken in a causal sense (“because of him”) by NASB, NJPS; however, it is taken in a locative sense (“before him”) by KJV, NKJV, NRSV, NIV. On the other hand, the LXX rendered it in a separative sense: ἀπ' αὐτοῦ (ap autou, “from him”). The parallelism between 1:5a and 1:5b seems to favor the locative nuance: “The mountains quake before him (מִמֶּנּוּ), the earth is laid waste before him (מִפָּנָיו, mifanayv).”

[1:5]  ²⁹ tn Traditionally, “the hills melt.” English versions typically render הִתְמֹגָגוּ (hitmogagu) as “melt” (KJV, NRSV, NIV, NJPS) or “dissolve” (NASB). The LXX renders it ἐσαλεύθησαν (esaleuqhsan, “are shaken”). The Hebrew root has a range of meanings: (1) “to melt,” of courage (Ps 107:26) or troops retreating (“melting away” in fear) in battle (1 Sam 14:16); (2) “to dissolve,” of mountains dissolving due to erosion (Amos 9:13); (3) “to quake, shake apart,” of mountains quaking, swaying backwards and forwards, coming apart, and collapsing in an earthquake (Amos 9:5; Pss 46:6 [7]; 75:3 [4]). The latter fits the imagery of v. 5 (violent earthquakes): the earth trembles in fear at the approach of the Divine Warrior (e.g., Hab 3:6).

[1:5]  ³⁰ tn Or “is upheaved”; or “heaves.” There is debate whether the originally unpointed Hebrew verb וַתִּשָּׂא (vattissa’) should be vocalized as וְתִּשָּׂא (vÿttissa’; NASB “is upheaved”; NRSV, NJPS “heaves”) from the root נָשָׂא (nasa’, “to lift up”) or as וַתִּשָּׁא (vattisha’, “is devastated, laid waste”) from the root שֹׁאָה (sho’ah, “to devastate, lay waste”). The vocalization וְתִּשָּׂא is attested in the Masoretic tradition and the Greek versions: Origen (“was raised up”), Symmachus (“was moved”), and Aquila (“shivered”). However, וְתִּשָּׂא demands an intransitive (“heaves”) or passive (“is upheaved”) sense which is not attested for the Qal stem. The vocalization וַתִּשָּׁא (“is devastated, laid waste”) is supported by the Syriac and Vulgate. The revocalization of the MT וְתִּשָּׂא (“is lifted up”) to וַתִּשָּׁא (“is devastated”) is suggested by the BHS editors and several Hebrew lexicons (HALOT 726 s.v. נשׁא; BDB 670-71 s.v. נָשָׂא). The revocalization involves only the difference between the form שׂ (sin) and שׁ (shin) and is followed in the present translation.

[1:5]  ³¹ sn The phrase “the world and all its inhabitants” is used to stress the universal dimensions of God’s revelation of his glory and his acts of judgment (e.g., Pss 33:8; 98:7; Isa 18:3; 26:9, 18; Lam 4:12).

[1:5]  ³² tn The words “are laid waste” are not in the Hebrew text, but are an implied repetition from the previous line.

[1:6]  ³³ tn Heb “stand before” (so KJV, NASB, NRSV, NLT). The Hebrew verb עָמַד (’amad, “stand”) here denotes “to resist, withstand.” It is used elsewhere of warriors taking a stand in battle to hold their ground against enemies (Judg 2:14; Josh 10:8; 21:44; 23:9; 2 Kgs 10:4; Dan 11:16; Amos 2:15). It is also used of people trying to protect their lives from enemy attack (Esth 8:11; 9:16). Like a mighty warrior, the Lord will attack his enemies, but none will be able to make a stand against him; none will be able to hold their ground against him; and none will be able to protect themselves from his onslaught (Pss 76:7[8]; 147:17; Mal 3:2).

[1:6]  ³⁴ tn Heb “Who can stand before his indignation?” The rhetorical question expects a negative answer; it is translated here as an emphatic denial. The Hebrew noun זַעַם (za’am, “indignation, curse”) connotes the angry wrath or indignant curse of God (Isa 10:5, 25; 13:5; 26:20; 30:27; Jer 10:10; 15:17; 50:25; Ezek 21:36; 22:24, 31; Hab 3:12; Zeph 3:8; Pss 38:4; 69:25; 78:49; 102:11; Lam 2:6; Dan 8:19; 11:36). It depicts anger expressed in the form of punishment (HALOT 276 s.v.; TWOT 1:247).

[1:6]  ³⁵ tn Heb “Who can rise up against…?” The verb יָקוּם (yaqum, “arise”) is here a figurative expression connoting resistance. Although the adversative sense of בְּ (bet) with יָקוּם (yaqum, “against him”) is attested, denoting hostile action taken against one’s enemy (Mic 7:6; Ps 27:12), the locative sense (“before him”) is preferred due to the parallelism with לִפְנֵי (lifney, “before him”).

[1:6]  ³⁶ tn Heb “Who can rise up against the heat of his anger?” The rhetorical question expects a negative answer which is translated as an emphatic denial to clarify the point.

[1:6]  ³⁷ tn Or “burst into flames.” The Niphal perfect נִתְּצוּ (nittÿtsu) from נָתַץ (natats, “to break up, throw down”) may denote “are broken up” or “are thrown down.” The BHS editors suggest emending the MT’s נִתְּצוּ (nittÿtsu) to נִצְּתּוּ (nitsÿtu, Niphal perfect from יָצַת [yatsat, “to burn, to kindle, to burst into flames”]): “boulders burst into flames.” This merely involves the simple transposition of the second and third consonants. This emendation is supported by a few Hebrew mss (cited in BHS apparatus). It is supported contextually by fire and heat motifs in 1:5-6. The same metathesis of נִתְּצוּ and נִצְּתּוּ occurs in Jer 4:26.

[1:6]  ³⁸ tn Heb “before him” (so NAB, NIV, TEV).