Psalms 68:2

68:2 As smoke is driven away by the wind, so you drive them away. ¹ 

As wax melts before fire,

so the wicked are destroyed before God.

Isaiah 9:18

9:18 For ²  evil burned like a fire, ³ 

it consumed thorns and briers;

it burned up the thickets of the forest,

and they went up in smoke. ⁴ 

Isaiah 10:17-19

10:17 The light of Israel ⁵  will become a fire,

their Holy One ⁶  will become a flame;

it will burn and consume the Assyrian king’s ⁷  briers

and his thorns in one day.

10:18 The splendor of his forest and his orchard

will be completely destroyed, ⁸ 

as when a sick man’s life ebbs away. ⁹ 

10:19 There will be so few trees left in his forest,

a child will be able to count them. ¹⁰ 

Isaiah 27:4

27:4 I am not angry.

I wish I could confront some thorns and briers!

Then I would march against them ¹¹  for battle;

I would set them ¹²  all on fire,

Malachi 4:1

4:1 (3:19) ¹³  “For indeed the day ¹⁴  is coming, burning like a furnace, and all the arrogant evildoers will be chaff. The coming day will burn them up,” says the Lord who rules over all. “It ¹⁵  will not leave even a root or branch.

[68:2]  ¹ tn Heb “as smoke is scattered, you scatter [them].”

[9:18]  ² tn Or “Indeed” (cf. NIV “Surely”). The verb that introduces this verse serves as a discourse particle and is untranslated; see note on “in the future” in 2:2.

[9:18]  ³ sn Evil was uncontrollable and destructive, and so can be compared to a forest fire.

[9:18]  ⁴ tn Heb “and they swirled [with] the rising of the smoke” (cf. NRSV).

[10:17]  ⁵ tn In this context the “Light of Israel” is a divine title (note the parallel title “his holy one”). The title points to God’s royal splendor, which overshadows and, when transformed into fire, destroys the “majestic glory” of the king of Assyria (v. 16b).

[10:17]  ⁶ sn See the note on the phrase “the Holy One of Israel” in 1:4.

[10:17]  ⁷ tn Heb “his.” In vv. 17-19 the Assyrian king and his empire is compared to a great forest and orchard that are destroyed by fire (symbolic of the Lord).

[10:18]  ⁸ tn Heb “from breath to flesh it will destroy.” The expression “from breath to flesh” refers to the two basic components of a person, the immaterial (life’s breath) and the material (flesh). Here the phrase is used idiomatically to indicate totality.

[10:18]  ⁹ tn The precise meaning of this line is uncertain. מָסַס (masas), which is used elsewhere of substances dissolving or melting, may here mean “waste away” or “despair.” נָסַס (nasas), which appears only here, may mean “be sick” or “stagger, despair.” See BDB 651 s.v. I נָסַס and HALOT 703 s.v. I נסס. One might translate the line literally, “like the wasting away of one who is sick” (cf. NRSV “as when an invalid wastes away”).

[10:19]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “and the rest of the trees of his forest will be counted, and a child will record them.”

[27:4]  ¹¹ tn Heb “it.” The feminine singular suffix apparently refers back to the expression “thorns and briers,” understood in a collective sense. For other examples of a cohortative expressing resolve after a hypothetical statement introduced by נָתַן with מִי (miwith natan), see Judg 9:29; Jer 9:1-2; Ps 55:6.

[27:4]  ¹² tn Heb “it.” The feminine singular suffix apparently refers back to the expression “thorns and briers,” understood in a collective sense.

[4:1]  ¹³ sn Beginning with 4:1, the verse numbers through 4:6 in the English Bible differ from the verse numbers in the Hebrew text (BHS), with 4:1 ET = 3:19 HT, 4:2 ET = 3:20 HT, etc., through 4:6 ET = 3:24 HT. Thus the book of Malachi in the Hebrew Bible has only three chapters, with 24 verses in ch. 3.

[4:1]  ¹⁴ sn This day is the well-known “day of the Lord” so pervasive in OT eschatological texts (see Joel 2:30-31; Amos 5:18; Obad 15). For the believer it is a day of grace and salvation; for the sinner, a day of judgment and destruction.

[4:1]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “so that it” (so NASB, NRSV). For stylistic reasons a new sentence was begun here in the translation.