Luke 23:5

23:5 But they persisted ¹  in saying, “He incites ²  the people by teaching throughout all Judea. It started in Galilee and ended up here!” ³ 

Psalms 22:12-13

22:12 Many bulls ⁴  surround me;

powerful bulls of Bashan ⁵  hem me in.

22:13 They ⁶  open their mouths to devour me ⁷ 

like a roaring lion that rips its prey. ⁸ 

Psalms 57:4

57:4 I am surrounded by lions;

I lie down ⁹  among those who want to devour me; ¹⁰ 

men whose teeth are spears and arrows,

whose tongues are a sharp sword. ¹¹ 

Zechariah 11:8

11:8 Next I eradicated the three shepherds in one month, ¹²  for I ran out of patience with them and, indeed, they detested me as well.

[23:5]  ¹ tn Or “were adamant.” For “persisted in saying,” see L&N 68.71.

[23:5]  ² sn He incites the people. The Jewish leadership claimed that Jesus was a political threat and had to be stopped. By reiterating this charge of stirring up rebellion, they pressured Pilate to act, or be accused of overlooking political threats to Rome.

[23:5]  ³ tn Grk “beginning from Galilee until here.”

[22:12]  ⁴ sn The psalmist figuratively compares his enemies to dangerous bulls.

[22:12]  ⁵ sn Bashan, located east of the Jordan River, was well-known for its cattle. See Ezek 39:18; Amos 4:1.

[22:13]  ⁶ tn “They” refers to the psalmist’s enemies, who in the previous verse are described as “powerful bulls.”

[22:13]  ⁷ tn Heb “they open against me their mouth[s].” To “open the mouth against” is a Hebrew idiom associated with eating and swallowing (see Ezek 2:8; Lam 2:16).

[22:13]  ⁸ tn Heb “a lion ripping and roaring.”

[57:4]  ⁹ tn The cohortative form אֶשְׁכְּבָה (’eshkÿvah, “I lie down”) is problematic, for it does not seem to carry one of the normal functions of the cohortative (resolve or request). One possibility is that the form here is a “pseudo-cohortative” used here in a gnomic sense (IBHS 576-77 §34.5.3b).

[57:4]  ¹⁰ tn The Hebrew verb לָהַט (lahat) is here understood as a hapax legomenon meaning “devour” (see HALOT 521 s.v. II להט), a homonym of the more common verb meaning “to burn.” A more traditional interpretation takes the verb from this latter root and translates, “those who are aflame” (see BDB 529 s.v.; cf. NASB “those who breathe forth fire”).

[57:4]  ¹¹ tn Heb “my life, in the midst of lions, I lie down, devouring ones, sons of mankind, their teeth a spear and arrows and their tongue a sharp sword.” The syntax of the verse is difficult. Another option is to take “my life” with the preceding verse. For this to make sense, one must add a verb, perhaps “and may he deliver” (cf. the LXX), before the phrase. One might then translate, “May God send his loyal love and faithfulness and deliver my life.” If one does take “my life” with v. 4, then the parallelism of v. 5 is altered and one might translate: “in the midst of lions I lie down, [among] men who want to devour me, whose teeth….”

[11:8]  ¹² sn Zechariah is only dramatizing what God had done historically (see the note on the word “cedars” in 11:1). The “one month” probably means just any short period of time in which three kings ruled in succession. Likely candidates are Elah, Zimri, Tibni (1 Kgs 16:8-20); Zechariah, Shallum, Menahem (2 Kgs 15:8-16); or Jehoiakim, Jehoiachin, Zedekiah (2 Kgs 24:1–25:7).