Psalms 21:8-9

21:8 You ¹  prevail over ²  all your enemies;

your power is too great for those who hate you. ³ 

21:9 You burn them up like a fiery furnace ⁴  when you appear; ⁵ 

the Lord angrily devours them; ⁶ 

the fire consumes them.

Psalms 89:23

89:23 I will crush his enemies before him;

I will strike down those who hate him.

Psalms 110:5-6

110:5 O sovereign Lord, ⁷  at your right hand

he strikes down ⁸  kings in the day he unleashes his anger. ⁹ 

110:6 He executes judgment ¹⁰  against ¹¹  the nations;

he fills the valleys with corpses; ¹² 

he shatters their heads over the vast battlefield. ¹³ 

Isaiah 30:14

30:14 It shatters in pieces like a clay jar,

so shattered to bits that none of it can be salvaged. ¹⁴ 

Among its fragments one cannot find a shard large enough ¹⁵ 

to scoop a hot coal from a fire ¹⁶ 

or to skim off water from a cistern.” ¹⁷ 

Isaiah 60:12

60:12 Indeed, ¹⁸  nations or kingdoms that do not serve you will perish;

such nations will be totally destroyed. ¹⁹ 

Jeremiah 19:11

19:11 Tell them the Lord who rules over all says, ²⁰  ‘I will do just as Jeremiah has done. ²¹  I will smash this nation and this city as though it were a potter’s vessel which is broken beyond repair. ²²  The dead will be buried here in Topheth until there is no more room to bury them.’ ²³ 

Daniel 2:44

2:44 In the days of those kings the God of heaven will raise up an everlasting kingdom that will not be destroyed and a kingdom that will not be left to another people. It will break in pieces and bring about the demise of all these kingdoms. But it will stand forever.

Matthew 21:44

21:44 The one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces, and the one on whom it falls will be crushed.” ²⁴ 

Revelation 2:26-27

2:26 And to the one who conquers ²⁵  and who continues in ²⁶  my deeds until the end, I will give him authority over the nations ²⁷  –

2:27 he ²⁸  will rule ²⁹  them with an iron rod ³⁰ 

and like clay jars he will break them to pieces, ³¹ 

Revelation 12:5

12:5 So ³²  the woman gave birth to a son, a male child, ³³  who is going to rule ³⁴  over all the nations ³⁵  with an iron rod. ³⁶  Her ³⁷  child was suddenly caught up to God and to his throne,

[21:8]  ¹ tn The king is now addressed. One could argue that the Lord is still being addressed, but v. 9 militates against this proposal, for there the Lord is mentioned in the third person and appears to be distinct from the addressee (unless, of course, one takes “Lord” in v. 9 as vocative; see the note on “them” in v. 9b). Verse 7 begins this transition to a new addressee by referring to both the king and the Lord in the third person (in vv. 1-6 the Lord is addressed and only the king referred to in the third person).

[21:8]  ² tn Heb “your hand finds.” The idiom pictures the king grabbing hold of his enemies and defeating them (see 1 Sam 23:17). The imperfect verbal forms in vv. 8-12 may be translated with the future tense, as long as the future is understood as generalizing.

[21:8]  ³ tn Heb “your right hand finds those who hate you.”

[21:9]  ⁴ tn Heb “you make them like a furnace of fire.” Although many modern translations retain the literal Hebrew, the statement is elliptical. The point is not that he makes them like a furnace, but like an object burned in a furnace (cf. NEB, “at your coming you shall plunge them into a fiery furnace”).

[21:9]  ⁵ tn Heb “at the time of your face.” The “face” of the king here refers to his angry presence. See Lam 4:16.

[21:9]  ⁶ tn Heb “the Lord, in his anger he swallows them, and fire devours them.” Some take “the Lord” as a vocative, in which case he is addressed in vv. 8-9a. But this makes the use of the third person in v. 9b rather awkward, though the king could be the subject (see vv. 1-7).

[110:5]  ⁷ tn As pointed in the Hebrew text, this title refers to God (many medieval Hebrew mss read יְהוָה, yehveh, “Lord” here). The present translation assumes that the psalmist here addresses the Lord as he celebrates what the king is able to accomplish while positioned at God’s “right hand.” According to this view the king is the subject of the third person verb forms in vv. 5b-7. (2) Another option is to understand the king as the addressee (as in vv. 2-3). In this case “the Lord” is the subject of the third person verbs throughout vv. 5-7 and is depicted as a warrior in a very anthropomorphic manner. In this case the Lord is pictured as being at the psalmist’s right hand (just the opposite of v. 1). See Pss 16:8; 121:5. (3) A third option is to revocalize אֲדֹנָי (’adonay, “Lord”) as אֲדֹנִי (’adoniy, “my lord”; see v. 1). In this case one may translate, “My lord, at his [God’s] right hand, strikes down.” In this case the king is the subject of the third person verbs in vv. 5b-7.

[110:5]  ⁸ tn The perfect verbal forms in vv. 5-6 are understood here as descriptive-dramatic or as generalizing. Another option is to take them as rhetorical. In this case the psalmist describes anticipated events as if they had already taken place.

[110:5]  ⁹ tn Heb “in the day of his anger.”

[110:6]  ¹⁰ tn The imperfect verbal forms in vv. 6-7 are understood here as descriptive-dramatic or as generalizing, though they could be taken as future.

[110:6]  ¹¹ tn Or “among.”

[110:6]  ¹² tn Heb “he fills [with] corpses,” but one expects a double accusative here. The translation assumes an emendation to גְוִיּוֹת גֵאָיוֹת(בִּ) מִלֵּא or מִלֵּא גֵאָיוֹת גְּוִיוֹת (for a similar construction see Ezek 32:5). In the former case גֵאָיוֹת(ge’ayot) has accidentally dropped from the text due to homoioteleuton; in the latter case it has dropped out due to homoioarcton.

[110:6]  ¹³ tn Heb “he strikes [the verb is מָחַץ (makhats), translated “strikes down” in v. 5] head[s] over a great land.” The Hebrew term רַבָּה (rabbah, “great”) is here used of distance or spatial measurement (see 1 Sam 26:13).

[30:14]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “Its shattering is like the shattering of a jug of [i.e., “made by”] potters, [so] shattered one cannot save [any of it].”

[30:14]  ¹⁵ tn The words “large enough” are supplied in the translation for clarification.

[30:14]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “to remove fire from the place of kindling.”

[30:14]  ¹⁷ tn On the meaning of גֶבֶא (geveh, “cistern”) see HALOT 170 s.v.

[60:12]  ¹⁸ tn Or “For” (KJV, NAB, NASB, NIV, NRSV, NLT); TEV “But.”

[60:12]  ¹⁹ tn The infinitive absolute appears before the finite verb for emphasis.

[19:11]  ²⁰ tn Heb “Thus says Yahweh of armies.” For this title see the study note on 2:19. The translation attempts to avoid the confusion of embedding quotes within quotes by reducing this one to an indirect quote.

[19:11]  ²¹ tn The adverb “Thus” or “Like this” normally points back to something previously mentioned. See, e.g., Exod 29:35; Num 11:15; 15:11; Deut 25:9.

[19:11]  ²² tn Heb “Like this I will break this people and this city, just as one breaks the vessel of a potter which is not able to be repaired.”

[19:11]  ²³ sn See Jer 7:22-23 for parallels.

[21:44]  ²⁴ tc A few witnesses, especially of the Western text (D 33 it sy^s Or Eus^syr), do not contain 21:44. However, the verse is found in א B C L W Z (Θ) 0102 Ë^1,13 Ï lat sy^c,p,h co and should be included as authentic.

[2:26]  ²⁵ tn Or “who is victorious”; traditionally, “who overcomes.”

[2:26]  ²⁶ tn Grk “keeps.” In a context that speaks of “holding on to what you have,” the idea here is one of continued faithful behavior (BDAG 1002 s.v. τηρέω 3 has “ὁ τηρῶν τὰ ἔργα μου the one who takes my deeds to heart Rv 2:26”).

[2:26]  ²⁷ tn Or “over the Gentiles” (the same Greek word may be translated “Gentiles” or “nations”).

[2:27]  ²⁸ tn Here καί (kai) has not been translated because of differences between Greek and English style.

[2:27]  ²⁹ tn Grk “will shepherd.”

[2:27]  ³⁰ tn Or “scepter.” The Greek term ῥάβδος (rJabdo") can mean either “rod” or “scepter.”

[2:27]  ³¹ sn A quotation from Ps 2:9 (with the line introducing the quotation containing a partial allusion to Ps 2:8). See also Rev 12:5, 19:15.

[12:5]  ³² tn Here καί (kai) has been translated as “so” to indicate the conclusion of the anticipated birth.

[12:5]  ³³ tn On this term BDAG 135 s.v. ἄρσην states: “male…The neut. ἄρσεν Rv 12:5, difft. vs. 13, comes fr. Is 66:7 and is in apposition to υἱόν. On the juxtaposition s. FBoll, ZNW 15, 1914, 253; BOlsson, Glotta 23, ’34, 112.”

[12:5]  ³⁴ tn Grk “shepherd.”

[12:5]  ³⁵ tn Or “all the Gentiles” (the same Greek word may be translated “Gentiles” or “nations”).

[12:5]  ³⁶ tn Or “scepter.” The Greek term ῥάβδος (rJabdo") can mean either “rod” or “scepter.”

[12:5]  ³⁷ tn Here καί (kai) has not been translated because of differences between Greek and English style.