Jeremiah 50:23

50:23 Babylon hammered the whole world to pieces.

But see how that ‘hammer’ has been broken and shattered! ¹ 

See what an object of horror

Babylon has become among the nations!

Isaiah 10:5

The Lord Turns on Arrogant Assyria

10:5 Assyria, the club I use to vent my anger, is as good as dead, ² 

a cudgel with which I angrily punish. ³ 

Isaiah 10:15

10:15 Does an ax exalt itself over the one who wields it,

or a saw magnify itself over the one who cuts with it? ⁴ 

As if a scepter should brandish the one who raises it,

or a staff should lift up what is not made of wood!

Isaiah 13:5

13:5 They come from a distant land,

from the horizon. ⁵ 

It is the Lord with his instruments of judgment, ⁶ 

coming to destroy the whole earth. ⁷ 

Isaiah 14:5-6

14:5 The Lord has broken the club of the wicked,

the scepter of rulers.

14:6 It ⁸  furiously struck down nations

with unceasing blows. ⁹ 

It angrily ruled over nations,

oppressing them without restraint. ¹⁰ 

Isaiah 37:26

37:26 ¹¹ Certainly you must have heard! ¹² 

Long ago I worked it out,

in ancient times I planned ¹³  it,

and now I am bringing it to pass.

The plan is this:

Fortified cities will crash

into heaps of ruins. ¹⁴ 

Isaiah 41:15-16

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

new and double-edged. ¹⁶ 

You will thresh the mountains and crush them;

you will make the hills like straw. ¹⁷ 

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.

Micah 4:13

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

For I will give you iron horns; ¹⁸ 

I will give you bronze hooves,

and you will crush many nations.” ¹⁹ 

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

and dedicate their wealth to the sovereign Ruler ²⁰  of the whole earth. ²¹ 

Zechariah 9:13-14

9:13 I will bend Judah as my bow; I will load the bow with Ephraim, my arrow! ²²  I will stir up your sons, Zion, against yours, Greece, and I will make you, Zion, ²³  like a warrior’s sword.

9:14 Then the Lord will appear above them, and his arrow will shoot forth like lightning; the Lord God will blow the trumpet and will sally forth on the southern storm winds.

Matthew 22:7

22:7 The ²⁴  king was furious! He sent his soldiers, and they put those murderers to death ²⁵  and set their city ²⁶  on fire.

[50:23]  ¹ tn Heb “How broken and shattered is the hammer of all the earth!” The “hammer” is a metaphor for Babylon who was God’s war club to shatter the nations and destroy kingdoms just like Assyria is represented in Isa 10:5 as a rod and a war club. Some readers, however, might not pick up on the metaphor or identify the referent, so the translation has incorporated an identification of the metaphor and the referent within it. “See how” and “See what” are an attempt to capture the nuance of the Hebrew particle אֵיךְ (’ekh) which here expresses an exclamation of satisfaction in a taunt song (cf. BDB 32 s.v. אֵיךְ 2 and compare usage in Isa 14:4, 12; Jer 50:23).

[10:5]  ² tn Heb “Woe [to] Assyria, the club of my anger.” On הוֹי (hoy, “woe, ah”) see the note on the first phrase of 1:4.

[10:5]  ³ tn Heb “a cudgel is he, in their hand is my anger.” It seems likely that the final mem (ם) on בְיָדָם (bÿyadam) is not a pronominal suffix (“in their hand”), but an enclitic mem. If so, one can translate literally, “a cudgel is he in the hand of my anger.”

[10:15]  ⁴ tn Heb “the one who pushes it back and forth”; KJV “him that shaketh it”; ASV “him that wieldeth it.”

[13:5]  ⁵ tn Heb “from the end of the sky.”

[13:5]  ⁶ tn Or “anger”; cf. KJV, ASV “the weapons of his indignation.”

[13:5]  ⁷ tn Or perhaps, “land” (so KJV, NAB, NASB, NLT). Even though the heading and subsequent context (see v. 17) indicate Babylon’s judgment is in view, the chapter has a cosmic flavor that suggests that the coming judgment is universal in scope. Perhaps Babylon’s downfall occurs in conjunction with a wider judgment, or the cosmic style is poetic hyperbole used to emphasize the magnitude and importance of the coming event.

[14:6]  ⁸ tn Or perhaps, “he” (cf. KJV; NCV “the king of Babylon”). The present translation understands the referent of the pronoun (“it”) to be the “club/scepter” of the preceding line.

[14:6]  ⁹ tn Heb “it was striking down nations in fury [with] a blow without ceasing.” The participle (“striking down”) suggests repeated or continuous action in past time.

[14:6]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “it was ruling in anger nations [with] oppression without restraint.” The participle (“ruling”) suggests repeated or continuous action in past time.

[37:26]  ¹¹ tn Having quoted the Assyrian king’s arrogant words in vv. 23-24, the Lord now speaks to the king.

[37:26]  ¹² tn Heb “Have you not heard?” The rhetorical question expresses the Lord’s amazement that anyone might be ignorant of what he is about to say.

[37:26]  ¹³ tn Heb “formed” (so KJV, ASV).

[37:26]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “and it is to cause to crash into heaps of ruins fortified cities.” The subject of the third feminine singular verb תְהִי (tÿhi) is the implied plan, referred to in the preceding lines with third feminine singular pronominal suffixes.

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

[41:15]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “owner of two-mouths,” i.e., double-edged.

[41:15]  ¹⁷ sn The mountains and hills symbolize hostile nations that are obstacles to Israel’s restoration.

[4:13]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “I will make your horn iron.”

[4:13]  ¹⁹ 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]  ²⁰ tn Or “the Lord” (so many English versions); Heb “the master.”

[4:13]  ²¹ 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.

[9:13]  ²² tn The words “my arrow” are not in the Hebrew text, but are supplied in the translation to clarify the imagery for the modern reader (cf. NRSV, NLT).

[9:13]  ²³ tn The word “Zion” is not repeated here in the Hebrew text, but is supplied in the translation to indicate that the statement refers to Zion and not to Greece.

[22:7]  ²⁴ tn Here δέ (de) has not been translated.

[22:7]  ²⁵ tn Grk “he sent his soldiers, destroyed those murderers.” The verb ἀπώλεσεν (apwlesen) is causative, indicating that the king was the one behind the execution of the murderers. In English the causative idea is not expressed naturally here; either a purpose clause (“he sent his soldiers to put those murderers to death”) or a relative clause (“he sent his soldier who put those murderers to death”) is preferred.

[22:7]  ²⁶ tn The Greek text reads here πόλις (polis), which could be translated “town” or “city.” The prophetic reference is to the city of Jerusalem, so “city” is more appropriate here.