Psalms 44:13-16

44:13 You made us ¹  an object of disdain to our neighbors;

those who live on our borders taunt and insult us. ² 

44:14 You made us ³  an object of ridicule ⁴  among the nations;

foreigners treat us with contempt. ⁵ 

44:15 All day long I feel humiliated ⁶ 

and am overwhelmed with shame, ⁷ 

44:16 before the vindictive enemy

who ridicules and insults me. ⁸ 

Psalms 89:50-51

89:50 Take note, O Lord, ⁹  of the way your servants are taunted, ¹⁰ 

and of how I must bear so many insults from people! ¹¹ 

89:51 Your enemies, O Lord, hurl insults;

they insult your chosen king as they dog his footsteps. ¹² 

Nehemiah 4:2-4

4:2 and in the presence of his colleagues ¹³  and the army of Samaria ¹⁴  he said, “What are these feeble Jews doing? Will they be left to themselves? ¹⁵  Will they again offer sacrifice? Will they finish this in a day? Can they bring these burnt stones to life again from piles of dust?”

4:3 Then Tobiah the Ammonite, who was close by, said, “If even a fox were to climb up on what they are building, it would break down their wall of stones!”

4:4 Hear, O our God, for we are despised! Return their reproach on their own head! Reduce them to plunder in a land of exile!

Isaiah 53:3

53:3 He was despised and rejected by people, ¹⁶ 

one who experienced pain and was acquainted with illness;

people hid their faces from him; ¹⁷ 

he was despised, and we considered him insignificant. ¹⁸ 

Luke 16:14

More Warnings about the Pharisees

16:14 The Pharisees ¹⁹  (who loved money) heard all this and ridiculed ²⁰  him.

Luke 23:35

23:35 The people also stood there watching, but the rulers ridiculed ²¹  him, saying, “He saved others. Let him save ²²  himself if ²³  he is the Christ ²⁴  of God, his chosen one!”

[44:13]  ¹ tn The prefixed verbal form is a preterite (without vav [ו] consecutive).

[44:13]  ² tn Heb “an [object of] taunting and [of] mockery to those around us.”

[44:14]  ³ tn The prefixed verbal form is a preterite (without vav [ו] consecutive).

[44:14]  ⁴ tn Heb “a proverb,” or “[the subject of] a mocking song.”

[44:14]  ⁵ tn Heb “a shaking of the head among the peoples.” Shaking the head was a derisive gesture (see Jer 18:16; Lam 2:15).

[44:15]  ⁶ tn Heb “all the day my humiliation [is] in front of me.”

[44:15]  ⁷ tn Heb “and the shame of my face covers me.”

[44:16]  ⁸ tn Heb “from the voice of one who ridicules and insults, from the face of an enemy and an avenger.” See Ps 8:2.

[89:50]  ⁹ tc Many medieval Hebrew mss read here יְהוָה (yehvah, “the Lord”).

[89:50]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “remember, O Lord, the taunt against your servants.” Many medieval Hebrew mss read the singular here, “your servant” (that is, the psalmist).

[89:50]  ¹¹ tn Heb “my lifting up in my arms [or “against my chest”] all of the many, peoples.” The term רַבִּים (rabbim, “many”) makes no apparent sense here. For this reason some emend the text to רִבֵי (rivey, “attacks by”), a defectively written plural construct form of רִיב (riv, “dispute; quarrel”).

[89:51]  ¹² tn Heb “[by] which your enemies, O Lord, taunt, [by] which they taunt [at] the heels of your anointed one.”

[4:2]  ¹³ tn Heb “brothers.”

[4:2]  ¹⁴ map For location see Map2 B1; Map4 D3; Map5 E2; Map6 A4; Map7 C1.

[4:2]  ¹⁵ tc The Hebrew text is difficult here. The present translation follows the MT, but the text may be corrupt. H. G. M. Williamson (Ezra, Nehemiah [WBC], 213-14) translates these words as “Will they commit their cause to God?” suggesting that MT לָהֶם (lahem, “to them”) should be emended to לֵאלֹהִים (lelohim, “to God”), a proposal also found in the apparatus of BHS. In his view later scribes altered the phrase out of theological motivations. J. Blenkinsopp’s translation is similar: “Are they going to leave it all to God?” (Ezra–Nehemiah [OTL], 242-44). However, a problem for this view is the absence of external evidence to support the proposed emendation. The sense of the MT reading may be the notion that the workers – if left to their own limited resources – could not possibly see such a demanding and expensive project through to completion. This interpretation understands the collocation עָזַב (’azav, “to leave”) plus לְ (lÿ, “to”) to mean “commit a matter to someone,” with the sense in this verse “Will they leave the building of the fortified walls to themselves?”

[53:3]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “lacking of men.” If the genitive is taken as specifying (“lacking with respect to men”), then the idea is that he lacked company because he was rejected by people. Another option is to take the genitive as indicating genus or larger class (i.e., “one lacking among men”). In this case one could translate, “he was a transient” (cf. the use of חָדֵל [khadel] in Ps 39:5 HT [39:4 ET]).

[53:3]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “like a hiding of the face from him,” i.e., “like one before whom the face is hidden” (see BDB 712 s.v. מַסְתֵּר).

[53:3]  ¹⁸ sn The servant is likened to a seriously ill person who is shunned by others because of his horrible disease.

[16:14]  ¹⁹ sn See the note on Pharisees in 5:17.

[16:14]  ²⁰ tn A figurative extension of the literal meaning “to turn one’s nose up at someone”; here “ridicule, sneer at, show contempt for” (L&N 33.409).

[23:35]  ²¹ tn A figurative extension of the literal meaning “to turn one’s nose up at someone”; here “ridicule, sneer at, show contempt for” (L&N 33.409).

[23:35]  ²² sn The irony in the statement Let him save himself is that salvation did come, but later, not while on the cross.

[23:35]  ²³ tn This is a first class condition in the Greek text.

[23:35]  ²⁴ tn Or “Messiah”; both “Christ” (Greek) and “Messiah” (Hebrew and Aramaic) mean “one who has been anointed.”