Leviticus 26:16

26:16 I for my part ¹  will do this to you: I will inflict horror on you, consumption and fever, which diminish eyesight and drain away the vitality of life. ²  You will sow your seed in vain because ³  your enemies will eat it. ⁴ 

Deuteronomy 28:21-22

28:21 The Lord will plague you with deadly diseases ⁵  until he has completely removed you from the land you are about to possess. 28:22 He ⁶  will afflict you with weakness, ⁷  fever, inflammation, infection, ⁸  sword, ⁹  blight, and mildew; these will attack you until you perish.

Job 33:19-22

33:19 Or a person is chastened ¹⁰  by pain on his bed,

and with the continual strife of his bones, ¹¹ 

33:20 so that his life loathes food,

and his soul rejects appetizing fare. ¹² 

33:21 His flesh wastes away from sight,

and his bones, which were not seen,

are easily visible. ¹³ 

33:22 He ¹⁴  draws near to the place of corruption,

and his life to the messengers of death. ¹⁵ 

Psalms 107:17-18

107:17 They acted like fools in their rebellious ways, ¹⁶ 

and suffered because of their sins.

107:18 They lost their appetite for all food, ¹⁷ 

and they drew near the gates of death.

Isaiah 1:5-6

1:5 ¹⁸ Why do you insist on being battered?

Why do you continue to rebel? ¹⁹ 

Your head has a massive wound, ²⁰ 

your whole body is weak. ²¹ 

1:6 From the soles of your feet to your head,

there is no spot that is unharmed. ²² 

There are only bruises, cuts,

and open wounds.

They have not been cleansed ²³  or bandaged,

nor have they been treated ²⁴  with olive oil. ²⁵ 

Jeremiah 14:18

14:18 If I go out into the countryside,

I see those who have been killed in battle.

If I go into the city,

I see those who are sick because of starvation. ²⁶ 

For both prophet and priest go about their own business

in the land without having any real understanding.’” ²⁷ 

Acts 12:23

12:23 Immediately an angel of the Lord ²⁸  struck ²⁹  Herod ³⁰  down because he did not give the glory to God, and he was eaten by worms and died. ³¹ 

[26:16]  ¹ tn Or “I also” (see HALOT 76 s.v. אַף 6.b).

[26:16]  ² tn Heb “soul.” These expressions may refer either to the physical effects of consumption and fever as the rendering in the text suggests (e.g., J. E. Hartley, Leviticus [WBC], 452, 454, “diminishing eyesight and loss of appetite”), or perhaps the more psychological effects, “which exhausts the eyes” because of anxious hope “and causes depression” (Heb “causes soul [נֶפֶשׁ, nefesh] to pine away”), e.g., B. A. Levine, Leviticus (JPSTC), 185.

[26:16]  ³ tn Heb “and.” The Hebrew conjunction ו (vav, “and”) can be considered to have causal force here.

[26:16]  ⁴ tn That is, “your enemies will eat” the produce that grows from the sown seed.

[28:21]  ⁵ tn Heb “will cause pestilence to cling to you.”

[28:22]  ⁶ tn Heb “The Lord.” See note on “he” in 28:8.

[28:22]  ⁷ tn Or perhaps “consumption” (so KJV, NASB, NRSV). The term is from a verbal root that indicates a weakening of one’s physical strength (cf. NAB “wasting”; NIV, NLT “wasting disease”).

[28:22]  ⁸ tn Heb “hot fever”; NIV “scorching heat.”

[28:22]  ⁹ tn Or “drought” (so NIV, NRSV, NLT).

[33:19]  ¹⁰ tc The MT has the passive form, and so a subject has to be added: “[a man] is chastened.” The LXX has the active form, indicating “[God] chastens,” but the object “a man” has to be added. It is understandable why the LXX thought this was active, within this sequence of verbs; and that is why it is the inferior reading.

[33:19]  ¹¹ tc The Kethib “the strife of his bones is continual,” whereas the Qere has “the multitude of his bones are firm.” The former is the better reading in this passage. It indicates that the pain is caused by the ongoing strife.

[33:20]  ¹² tn Heb “food of desire.” The word “rejects” is not in the Hebrew text, but is supplied in the translation for clarity.

[33:21]  ¹³ tc Heb “are laid bare.” This is the Qere reading; the Kethib means “bare height.” Gordis reverses the word order: “his bones are bare [i.e., crushed] so that they cannot be looked upon.” But the sense of that is not clear.

[33:22]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “his soul [נֶפֶשׁ, nefesh, “life”] draws near.”

[33:22]  ¹⁵ tn The MT uses the Hiphil participle, “to those who cause death.” This seems to be a reference to the belief in demons that brought about death, an idea not mentioned in the Bible itself. Thus many proposals have been made for this expression. Hoffmann and Budde divide the word into לְמוֹ מֵתִּים (lÿmo metim) and simply read “to the dead.” Dhorme adds a couple of letters to get לִמְקוֹם מֵתִּים (limqom metim, “to the place [or abode] of the dead”).

[107:17]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “fools [they were] because of the way of their rebellion.”

[107:18]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “all food their appetite loathed.”

[1:5]  ¹⁸ sn In vv. 5-9 Isaiah addresses the battered nation (5-8) and speaks as their representative (9).

[1:5]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “Why are you still beaten? [Why] do you continue rebellion?” The rhetorical questions express the prophet’s disbelief over Israel’s apparent masochism and obsession with sin. The interrogative construction in the first line does double duty in the parallelism. H. Wildberger (Isaiah, 1:18) offers another alternative by translating the two statements with one question: “Why do you still wish to be struck that you persist in revolt?”

[1:5]  ²⁰ tn Heb “all the head is ill”; NRSV “the whole head is sick”; CEV “Your head is badly bruised.”

[1:5]  ²¹ tn Heb “and all the heart is faint.” The “heart” here stands for bodily strength and energy, as suggested by the context and usage elsewhere (see Jer 8:18; Lam 1:22).

[1:6]  ²² tn Heb “there is not in it health”; NAB “there is no sound spot.”

[1:6]  ²³ tn Heb “pressed out.”

[1:6]  ²⁴ tn Heb “softened” (so NASB, NRSV); NIV “soothed.”

[1:6]  ²⁵ sn This verse describes wounds like those one would receive in battle. These wounds are comprehensive and without remedy.

[14:18]  ²⁶ tn The word “starvation” has been translated “famine” elsewhere in this passage. It is the word which refers to hunger. The “starvation” here may be war induced and not simply that which comes from famine per se. “Starvation” will cover both.

[14:18]  ²⁷ tn The meaning of these last two lines is somewhat uncertain. The meaning of these two lines is debated because of the uncertainty of the meaning of the verb rendered “go about their business” (סָחַר, sakhar) and the last phrase translated here “without any real understanding.” The verb in question most commonly occurs as a participle meaning “trader” or “merchant” (cf., e.g., Ezek 27:21, 36; Prov 31:14). It occurs as a finite verb elsewhere only in Gen 34:10, 21; 42:34 and there in a literal sense of “trading,” “doing business.” While the nuance is metaphorical here it need not extend to “journeying into” (cf., e.g., BDB 695 s.v. סָחַר Qal.1) and be seen as a reference to exile as is sometimes assumed. That seems at variance with the causal particle which introduces this clause, the tense of the verb, and the surrounding context. People are dying in the land (vv. 17-18a) not because prophet and priest have gone (the verb is the Hebrew perfect or past) into exile but because prophet and priest have no true knowledge of God or the situation. The clause translated here “without having any real understanding” (Heb “and they do not know”) is using the verb in the absolute sense indicated in BDB 394 s.v. יָדַע Qal.5 and illustrated in Isa 1:3; 56:10. For a more thorough discussion of the issues one may consult W. McKane, Jeremiah (ICC), 1:330-31.

[12:23]  ²⁸ tn Or “the angel of the Lord.” See the note on the word “Lord” in 5:19.

[12:23]  ²⁹ sn On being struck…down by an angel, see Acts 23:3; 1 Sam 25:28; 2 Sam 12:15; 2 Kgs 19:35; 2 Chr 13:20; 2 Macc 9:5.

[12:23]  ³⁰ tn Grk “him”; the referent (Herod) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[12:23]  ³¹ sn He was eaten by worms and died. Josephus, Ant. 19.8.2 (19.343-352), states that Herod Agrippa I died at Caesarea in a.d. 44. The account by Josephus, while not identical to Luke’s account, is similar in many respects: On the second day of a festival, Herod Agrippa appeared in the theater with a robe made of silver. When it sparkled in the sun, the people cried out flatteries and declared him to be a god. The king, carried away by the flattery, saw an owl (an omen of death) sitting on a nearby rope, and immediately was struck with severe stomach pains. He was carried off to his house and died five days later. The two accounts can be reconciled without difficulty, since while Luke states that Herod was immediately struck down by an angel, his death could have come several days later. The mention of worms with death adds a humiliating note to the scene. The formerly powerful ruler had been thoroughly reduced to nothing (cf. Jdt 16:17; 2 Macc 9:9; cf. also Josephus, Ant. 17.6.5 [17.168-170], which details the sickness which led to Herod the Great’s death).