Psalms 17:13

17:13 Rise up, Lord!

Confront him! ¹  Knock him down! ² 

Use your sword to rescue me from the wicked man! ³ 

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, ⁴ 

a cudgel with which I angrily punish. ⁵ 

Isaiah 13:5

13:5 They come from a distant land,

from the horizon. ⁶ 

It is the Lord with his instruments of judgment, ⁷ 

coming to destroy the whole earth. ⁸ 

Jeremiah 47:6-7

47:6 How long will you cry out, ⁹  ‘Oh, sword of the Lord,

how long will it be before you stop killing? ¹⁰ 

Go back into your sheath!

Stay there and rest!’ ¹¹ 

47:7 But how can it rest ¹² 

when I, the Lord, have ¹³  given it orders?

I have ordered it to attack

the people of Ashkelon and the seacoast. ¹⁴ 

Jeremiah 51:20-23

51:20 “Babylon, ¹⁵  you are my war club, ¹⁶ 

my weapon for battle.

I used you to smash nations. ¹⁷ 

I used you to destroy kingdoms.

51:21 I used you to smash horses and their riders. ¹⁸ 

I used you to smash chariots and their drivers.

51:22 I used you to smash men and women.

I used you to smash old men and young men.

I used you to smash young men and young women.

51:23 I used you to smash shepherds and their flocks.

I used you to smash farmers and their teams of oxen.

I used you to smash governors and leaders.” ¹⁹ 

[17:13]  ¹ tn Heb “Be in front of his face.”

[17:13]  ² tn Or “bring him to his knees.”

[17:13]  ³ tn Heb “rescue my life from the wicked [one] [by] your sword.”

[10:5]  ⁴ 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]  ⁵ 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.”

[13:5]  ⁶ tn Heb “from the end of the sky.”

[13:5]  ⁷ tn Or “anger”; cf. KJV, ASV “the weapons of his indignation.”

[13:5]  ⁸ 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.

[47:6]  ⁹ tn The words “How long will you cry out” are not in the text but some such introduction seems necessary because the rest of the speech assumes a personal subject.

[47:6]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “before you are quiet/at rest.”

[47:6]  ¹¹ sn The passage is highly figurative. The sword of the Lord, which is itself a figure of the destructive agency of the enemy armies, is here addressed as a person and is encouraged in rhetorical questions (the questions are designed to dissuade) to “be quiet,” “be at rest,” “be silent,” all of which is designed to get the Lord to call off the destruction against the Philistines.

[47:7]  ¹² tn The reading here follows the Greek, Syriac, and Latin versions. The Hebrew text reads “how can you rest” as a continuation of the second person in v. 6.

[47:7]  ¹³ tn Heb “When the Lord has.” The first person is again adopted because the Lord has been speaking.

[47:7]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “Against Ashkelon and the sea coast, there he has appointed it.” For the switch to the first person see the preceding translator’s note. “There” is poetical and redundant and the idea of “attacking” is implicit in “against.”

[51:20]  ¹⁵ tn Or “Media.” The referent is not identified in the text; the text merely says “you are my war club.” Commentators in general identify the referent as Babylon because Babylon has been referred to as a hammer in 50:23 and Babylon is referred to in v. 25 as a “destroying mountain” (compare v. 20d). However, S. R. Driver, Jeremiah, 317, n. c maintains that v. 24 speaks against this. It does seem a little inconsistent to render the vav consecutive perfect at the beginning of v. 24 as future while rendering those in vv. 20b-23 as customary past. However, change in person from second masculine singular (vv. 20b-23) to the second masculine plural in “before your very eyes” and its position at the end of the verse after “which they did in Zion” argue that a change in address occurs there. Driver has to ignore the change in person and take “before your eyes” with the verb “repay” at the beginning to maintain the kind of consistency he seeks. The vav (ו) consecutive imperfect can be used for either the customary past (GKC 335-36 §112.dd with cross reference back to GKC 331-32 §112.e) or the future (GKC 334 §112.x). Hence the present translation has followed the majority of commentaries (and English versions like TEV, NCV, CEV, NIrV) in understanding the referent as Babylon and v. 24 being a transition to vv. 25-26 (cf., e.g., J. Bright, Jeremiah [AB], 356-57, and J. A. Thompson, Jeremiah [NICOT], 756-57). If the referent is understood as Media then the verbs in vv. 20-23 should all be translated as futures. See also the translator’s note on v. 24.

[51:20]  ¹⁶ tn This Hebrew word (מַפֵּץ, mappets) only occurs here in the Hebrew Bible, but its meaning is assured from the use of the verbs that follow which are from the same root (נָפַץ, nafats) and there is a cognate noun מַפָּץ (mappats) that occurs in Ezek 9:2 in the sense of weapon of “smashing.”

[51:20]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “I smash nations with you.” This same structure is repeated throughout the series in vv. 20c-23.

[51:21]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “horse and its rider.” However, the terms are meant as generic or collective singulars (cf. GKC 395 §123.b) and are thus translated by the plural. The same thing is true of all the terms in vv. 21-23b. The terms in vv. 20c-d, 23c are plural.

[51:23]  ¹⁹ tn These two words are Akkadian loan words into Hebrew which often occur in this pairing (cf. Ezek 23:6, 12, 23; Jer 51:23, 28, 57). BDB 688 s.v. סָגָן (sagan) gives “prefect, ruler” as the basic definition for the second term but neither works very well in a modern translation because “prefect” would be unknown to most readers and “ruler” would suggest someone along the lines of a king, which these officials were not. The present translation has chosen “leaders” by default, assuming there is no other term that would be any more appropriate in light of the defects noted in “prefect” and “ruler.”