Lamentations 2:17

ע (Ayin)

2:17 The Lord has done what he planned;

he has fulfilled ¹  his promise ² 

that he threatened ³  long ago: ⁴ 

He has overthrown you without mercy ⁵ 

and has enabled the enemy to gloat over you;

he has exalted your adversaries’ power. ⁶ 

Lamentations 3:46

פ (Pe)

3:46 All our enemies have gloated over us; ⁷ 

Leviticus 26:17

26:17 I will set my face against you. You will be struck down before your enemies, those who hate you will rule over you, and you will flee when there is no one pursuing you.

Deuteronomy 28:43-44

28:43 The foreigners ⁸  who reside among you will become higher and higher over you and you will become lower and lower. 28:44 They will lend to you but you will not lend to them; they will become the head and you will become the tail!

Psalms 80:6

80:6 You have made our neighbors dislike us, ⁹ 

and our enemies insult us.

Psalms 89:42

89:42 You have allowed his adversaries to be victorious, ¹⁰ 

and all his enemies to rejoice.

Isaiah 63:18

63:18 For a short time your special ¹¹  nation possessed a land, ¹² 

but then our adversaries knocked down ¹³  your holy sanctuary.

Jeremiah 12:7

12:7 “I will abandon my nation. ¹⁴ 

I will forsake the people I call my own. ¹⁵ 

I will turn my beloved people ¹⁶ 

over to the power ¹⁷  of their enemies.

Micah 7:8-10

Jerusalem Will Be Vindicated

7:8 My enemies, ¹⁸  do not gloat ¹⁹  over me!

Though I have fallen, I will get up.

Though I sit in darkness, the Lord will be my light. ²⁰ 

7:9 I must endure ²¹  the Lord’s anger,

for I have sinned against him.

But then ²²  he will defend my cause, ²³ 

and accomplish justice on my behalf.

He will lead me out into the light;

I will experience firsthand ²⁴  his deliverance. ²⁵ 

7:10 When my enemies see this, they will be covered with shame.

They say ²⁶  to me, “Where is the Lord your God?”

I will gloat over them. ²⁷ 

Then they will be trampled down ²⁸ 

like mud in the streets.

[2:17]  ¹ tn The verb בָּצַע (batsa’) has a broad range of meanings: (1) “to cut off, break off,” (2) “to injure” a person, (3) “to gain by violence,” (4) “to finish, complete” and (5) “to accomplish, fulfill” a promise.

[2:17]  ² tn Heb “His word.” When used in collocation with the verb בָּצַע (batsa’, “to fulfill,” see previous tn), the accusative noun אִמְרָה (’imrah) means “promise.”

[2:17]  ³ tn Heb “commanded” or “decreed.” If a reference to prophetic oracles is understood, then “decreed” is preferable. If understood as a reference to the warnings in the covenant, then “threatened” is a preferable rendering.

[2:17]  ⁴ tn Heb “from days of old.”

[2:17]  ⁵ tn Heb “He has overthrown and has not shown mercy.” The two verbs חָרַס וְלֹא חָמָל (kharas vÿlo’ khamal) form a verbal hendiadys in which the first retains its verbal sense and the second functions adverbially: “He has overthrown you without mercy.” וְלֹא חָמָל (vÿlo’ khamal) alludes to 2:2.

[2:17]  ⁶ tn Heb “He has exalted the horn of your adversaries.” The term “horn” (קֶרֶן, qeren) normally refers to the horn of a bull, one of the most powerful animals in ancient Israel. This term is often used figuratively as a symbol of strength, usually in reference to the military might of an army (Deut 33:17; 1 Sam 2:1, 10; 2 Sam 22:3; Pss 18:3; 75:11; 89:18, 25; 92:11; 112:9; 1 Chr 25:5; Jer 48:25; Lam 2:3; Ezek 29:21), just as warriors are sometimes figuratively described as “bulls.” To lift up the horn often means to boast and to lift up someone else’s horn is to give victory or cause to boast.

[3:46]  ⁷ tn Heb “open wide their mouths.”

[28:43]  ⁸ tn Heb “the foreigner.” This is a collective singular and has therefore been translated as plural; this includes the pronouns in the following verse, which are also singular in the Hebrew text.

[80:6]  ⁹ tn Heb “you have made us an object of contention to our neighbors.”

[89:42]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “you have lifted up the right hand of his adversaries.” The idiom “the right hand is lifted up” refers to victorious military deeds (see Pss 89:13; 118:16).

[63:18]  ¹¹ tn Or “holy” (ASV, NASB, NRSV, TEV, NLT).

[63:18]  ¹² tn Heb “for a short time they had a possession, the people of your holiness.”

[63:18]  ¹³ tn Heb “your adversaries trampled on.”

[12:7]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “my house.” Or “I have abandoned my nation.” The word “house” has been used throughout Jeremiah for both the temple (e.g., 7:2, 10), the nation or people of Israel or of Judah (e.g. 3:18, 20), or the descendants of Jacob (i.e., the Israelites, e.g., 2:4). Here the parallelism argues that it refers to the nation of Judah. The translation throughout vv. 5-17 assumes that the verb forms are prophetic perfects, the form that conceives of the action as being as good as done. It is possible that the forms are true perfects and refer to a past destruction of Judah. If so, it may have been connected with the assaults against Judah in 598/7 b.c. by the Babylonians and the nations surrounding Judah recorded in 2 Kgs 24:14. No other major recent English version reflects these as prophetic perfects besides NIV and NCV, which does not use the future until v. 10. Hence the translation is somewhat tentative. C. Feinberg, “Jeremiah,” EBC 6:459 takes them as prophetic perfects and H. Freedman (Jeremiah [SoBB], 88) mentions that as a possibility for explaining the presence of this passage here. For another example of an extended use of the prophetic perfect without imperfects interspersed see Isa 8:23-9:6. The translation assumes they are prophetic and are part of the Lord’s answer to the complaint about the prosperity of the wicked; both the wicked Judeans and the wicked nations God will use to punish them will be punished.

[12:7]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “my inheritance.”

[12:7]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “the beloved of my soul.” Here “soul” stands for the person and is equivalent to “my.”

[12:7]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “will give…into the hands of.”

[7:8]  ¹⁸ tn The singular form is understood as collective.

[7:8]  ¹⁹ tn Or “rejoice” (KJV, NAB, NASB, NRSV); NCV “don’t laugh at me.”

[7:8]  ²⁰ sn Darkness represents judgment; light (also in v. 9) symbolizes deliverance. The Lord is the source of the latter.

[7:9]  ²¹ tn Heb “lift, bear.”

[7:9]  ²² tn Heb “until.”

[7:9]  ²³ tn Or “plead my case” (NASB and NIV both similar); NRSV “until he takes my side.”

[7:9]  ²⁴ tn Heb “see.”

[7:9]  ²⁵ tn Or “justice, vindication.”

[7:10]  ²⁶ tn Heb “who say.” A new sentence was begun here in the translation for stylistic reasons.

[7:10]  ²⁷ tn Heb “My eyes will look on them.”

[7:10]  ²⁸ tn Heb “a trampled-down place.”