Lamentations 1:15

ס (Samek)

1:15 He rounded up ¹  all my mighty ones; ² 

The Lord ³  did this ⁴  in ⁵  my midst.

He summoned an assembly ⁶  against me

to shatter my young men.

The Lord has stomped like grapes ⁷ 

the virgin daughter, Judah. ⁸ 

Lamentations 1:18

Jerusalem Speaks:

צ (Tsade)

1:18 The Lord is right to judge me! ⁹ 

Yes, I rebelled against his commands. ¹⁰ 

Please listen, all you nations, ¹¹ 

and look at my suffering!

My young women and men

have gone into exile.

Psalms 78:63

78:63 Fire consumed their ¹²  young men,

and their ¹³  virgins remained unmarried. ¹⁴ 

Jeremiah 9:21

9:21 ‘Death has climbed in ¹⁵  through our windows.

It has entered into our fortified houses.

It has taken away our children who play in the streets.

It has taken away our young men who gather in the city squares.’

Jeremiah 11:22

11:22 So the Lord who rules over all ¹⁶  said, “I will surely ¹⁷  punish them! Their young men will be killed in battle. ¹⁸  Their sons and daughters will die of starvation.

Jeremiah 18:21

18:21 So let their children die of starvation.

Let them be cut down by the sword. ¹⁹ 

Let their wives lose their husbands and children.

Let the older men die of disease ²⁰ 

and the younger men die by the sword in battle.

Amos 4:10

4:10 “I sent against you a plague like one of the Egyptian plagues. ²¹ 

I killed your young men with the sword,

along with the horses you had captured.

I made the stench from the corpses ²²  rise up into your nostrils.

Still you did not come back to me.”

The Lord is speaking!

[1:15]  ¹ tn The verb סָלַה (salah) occurs only twice in OT; once in Qal (Ps 119:118) and once here in Piel. It is possibly a by-form of סָלַל (salal, “to heap up”). It may also be related to Aramaic סלא (sl’) meaning “to throw away” and Assyrian salu/shalu meaning “to hurl (away)” (AHw 1152) or “to kick up dust, shoot (arrows), reject, throw away?” (CAD 17:272). With people as its object shalu is used of people casting away their children, specifically meaning selling them on the market. The LXX translates סָלַה (salah) as ἐξῆρεν (exhren, “to remove, lead away”). Thus God is either (1) heaping them up (dead) in the city square, (2) putting them up for sale in the city square, or (3) leading them out of the city (into exile or to deprive it of defenders prior to attack). The English “round up” could accommodate any of these and is also a cattle term, which fits well with the use of the word “bulls” (see following note).

[1:15]  ² tn Heb “bulls.” Metaphorically, bulls may refer to mighty ones, leaders or warriors. F. W. Dobbs-Allsopp (Lamentations [IBC], 69) insightfully suggests that the Samek stanza presents an overarching dissonance by using terms associated with a celebratory feast (bulls, assembly, and a winepress) in sentences where God is abusing the normally expected celebrants, i.e. the “leaders” are the sacrifice.

[1:15]  ³ tc The MT reads אֲדֹנָי (’adonay, “the Lord”) here rather than יהוה (YHWH, “the Lord”); this occurs again a second time later in this verse. See the tc note at 1:14.

[1:15]  ⁴ tn The verb is elided and understood from the preceding colon. Naming “my Lord” as the subject of the verb late, as it were, emphasizes the irony of the action taken by a person in this position.

[1:15]  ⁵ tc The MT reads the preposition בּ (bet, “in”) prefixed to קִרְבִּי (qirbi, “my midst”): בְּקִרְבִּי (bÿkirbi, “in my midst”); however, the LXX reads ἐκ μέσου μου (ek mesou mou) which may reflect a Vorlage of the preposition מִן (min, “from”): מִקִּרְבִּי (miqqirbi, “from my midst”). The LXX may have chosen ἐκ to accommodate understanding סִלָּה (sillah) as ἐξῆρεν (exhren, “to remove, lead away”). The textual deviation may have been caused by an unusual orthographic confusion.

[1:15]  ⁶ tn Heb “an assembly.” The noun מוֹעֵד (mo’ed, “assembly”) is normally used in reference to the annual religious festive assemblies of Israel (Ezek 45:17; Hos 9:5; Zeph 3:18; Zech 8:19), though a number of English versions take this “assembly” to refer to the invading army which attacks the city (e.g., NAB, NIV, TEV, NLT).

[1:15]  ⁷ tn Heb “a winepress he has stomped.” The noun גַּת (gat, “winepress”) functions as an adverbial accusative of location: “in a winepress.” The translation reflects the synecdoche that is involved – one stomps the grapes that are in the winepress, not the winepress itself.

[1:15]  ⁸ sn The expression the virgin daughter, Judah is used as an epithet, i.e. Virgin Judah or Maiden Judah, further reinforcing the feminine anthrpomorphism.

[1:18]  ⁹ tn Heb “The Lord himself is right.” The phrase “to judge me” is not in the Hebrew, but is added in the translation to clarify the expression.

[1:18]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “His mouth.” The term “mouth” (פֶּה, peh) is a metonymy of instrument (= mouth) for the product (= words). The term פֶּה (peh) often stands for spoken words (Ps 49:14; Eccl 10:3; Isa 29:13), declaration (Gen 41:40; Exod 38:21; Num 35:30; Deut 17:6; Ezra 1:1) and commands of God (Exod 17:1; Num 14:41; 22:18; Josh 15:13; 1 Sam 15:24; 1 Chr 12:24; Prov 8:29; Isa 34:16; 62:2). When the verb מָרָה (marah, “to rebel”) is used with the accusative direct object פֶּה (peh, “mouth”) to connote disobedience to God’s commandments (Num 20:24; 1 Sam 12:14, 15; 1 Kgs 13:21) (BDB 805 s.v. פֶּה 2.c).

[1:18]  ¹¹ tc The Kethib is written עַמִּים (’ammim, “peoples”), but the Qere, followed by many medieval Hebrew mss and the ancient versions (LXX and Aramaic Targum), read הָעַמִּים (ha’ammim, “O peoples”). The Qere is probably the original reading.

[78:63]  ¹² tn Heb “his.” The singular pronominal suffix is collective, referring back to God’s “people” (v. 62).

[78:63]  ¹³ tn Heb “his.” The singular pronominal suffix is collective, referring back to God’s “people” (v. 62).

[78:63]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “were not praised,” that is, in wedding songs. The young men died in masses, leaving no husbands for the young women.

[9:21]  ¹⁵ sn Here Death is personified (treated as though it were a person). Some have seen as possible background to this lament an allusion to Mesopotamian mythology where the demon Lamastu climbs in through the windows of houses and over their walls to kill children and babies.

[11:22]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “Yahweh of armies.”

[11:22]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “Behold I will.” For the function of this particle see the translator’s note on 1:6.

[11:22]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “will die by the sword.” Here “sword” stands contextually for “battle” while “starvation” stands for death by starvation during siege.

[18:21]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “be poured out to the hand [= power] of the sword.” For this same expression see Ezek 35:5; Ps 63:10 (63:11 HT). Comparison with those two passages show that it involved death by violent means, perhaps death in battle.

[18:21]  ²⁰ tn Heb “be slain by death.” The commentaries are generally agreed that this refers to death by disease or plague as in 15:2. Hence, the reference is to the deadly trio of sword, starvation, and disease which were often connected with war. See the notes on 15:2.

[4:10]  ²¹ tn Heb “in the manner [or “way”] of Egypt.”

[4:10]  ²² tn Heb “of your camps [or “armies”].”