Psalms 13:3

13:3 Look at me! ¹  Answer me, O Lord my God!

Revive me, ²  or else I will die! ³ 

Isaiah 37:36

37:36 The Lord’s messenger ⁴  went out and killed 185,000 troops ⁵  in the Assyrian camp. When they ⁶  got up early the next morning, there were all the corpses! ⁷ 

Jeremiah 51:39

51:39 When their appetites are all stirred up, ⁸ 

I will set out a banquet for them.

I will make them drunk

so that they will pass out, ⁹ 

they will fall asleep forever,

they will never wake up,” ¹⁰ 

says the Lord. ¹¹ 

Nahum 3:18

Concluding Dirge

3:18 Your shepherds ¹²  are sleeping, O king of Assyria!

Your officers ¹³  are slumbering! ¹⁴ 

Your people are scattered like sheep ¹⁵  on the mountains

and there is no one to regather them!

[13:3]  ¹ tn Heb “see.”

[13:3]  ² tn Heb “Give light [to] my eyes.” The Hiphil of אוּר (’ur), when used elsewhere with “eyes” as object, refers to the law of God giving moral enlightenment (Ps 19:8), to God the creator giving literal eyesight to all people (Prov 29:13), and to God giving encouragement to his people (Ezra 9:8). Here the psalmist pictures himself as being on the verge of death. His eyes are falling shut and, if God does not intervene soon, he will “fall asleep” for good.

[13:3]  ³ tn Heb “or else I will sleep [in?] the death.” Perhaps the statement is elliptical, “I will sleep [the sleep] of death,” or “I will sleep [with the sleepers in] death.”

[37:36]  ⁴ tn Traditionally, “the angel of the Lord” (so NASB, NIV, NRSV, NLT).

[37:36]  ⁵ tn The word “troops” is supplied in the translation for smoothness and clarity.

[37:36]  ⁶ tn This refers to the Israelites and/or the rest of the Assyrian army.

[37:36]  ⁷ tn Heb “look, all of them were dead bodies”; NLT “they found corpses everywhere.”

[51:39]  ⁸ tn Heb “When they are hot.”

[51:39]  ⁹ tc The translation follows the suggestion of KBL 707 s.v. עָלַז and a number of modern commentaries (e.g., Bright, J. A. Thompson, and W. L. Holladay) in reading יְעֻלְּפוּ (ye’ullÿfu) for יַעֲלֹזוּ (ya’alozu) in the sense of “swoon away” or “grow faint” (see KBL 710 s.v. עָלַף Pual). That appears to be the verb that the LXX (the Greek version) was reading when they translated καρωθῶσιν (karwqwsin, “they will be stupefied”). For parallel usage KBL cites Isa 51:20. This fits the context much better than “they will exult” in the Hebrew text.

[51:39]  ¹⁰ sn The central figure here is the figure of the cup of the Lord’s wrath (cf. 25:15-29, especially v. 26). Here the Babylonians have been made to drink so deeply of it that they fall into a drunken sleep from which they will never wake up (i.e., they die, death being compared to sleep [cf. Ps 13:3 (13:4 HT); 76:5 (76:6 HT); 90:5]). Compare the usage in Jer 51:57 for this same figure.

[51:39]  ¹¹ tn Heb “Oracle of the Lord.”

[3:18]  ¹² sn The term shepherd was frequently used in the ancient Near East in reference to kings and other leaders (royal, political, military). Here, the expression your shepherds is an implied comparison (hypocatastasis) referring to the royal/military leadership of Assyria.

[3:18]  ¹³ tn The Hebrew term אַדִּירֶיךָ (’addirekha, “your officers”) from the root אַדִּיר (’addir, “high noble, majestic one”) designates “prominent people” in society (Judg 5:13, 25; Jer 14:3; Ps 16:3; Neh 3:5; 10:30; 2 Chr 23:20) and prominent “officers” in the military (Nah 2:6; 3:18); see HALOT 14 s.v.; BDB 12 s.v. אַדִּיר. This is related to Assyrian adaru (“high noble official”).

[3:18]  ¹⁴ tn The MT reads יִשְׁכְּנוּ (yishkÿnu, “they are settling down; they are lying down”) from שָׁכַן (shakhan, “to settle down, to lie down”). The BHS editors suggest emending to יָשְׁנוּ (yashnu, “they are slumbering”) in order to produce a tighter parallelism with the parallel verb נָמוּ (namu, “they are sleeping”). However, the MT has an adequate parallelism because the verb שָׁכַן is often used in reference to the dead lying down in the grave (Job 4:19; 26:5; Ps 94:17; Isa 26:19; see BDB 1015 s.v. שָׁכַן Qal.2.b). This is a figurative expression (hypocatastasis) for someone dying. Although the LXX misunderstood the syntax of this line, the LXX translation ἐκοίμισε (ekoimise, “he has laid low”) points to a form of the Masoretic verbal root שָׁכַן.

[3:18]  ¹⁵ tn The words “like sheep” are not in the Hebrew text; they are added for clarification of the imagery. The previous line compares Assyria’s leaders to shepherds.