Psalms 21:9

21:9 You burn them up like a fiery furnace ¹  when you appear; ² 

the Lord angrily devours them; ³ 

the fire consumes them.

Psalms 27:2

27:2 When evil men attack me ⁴ 

to devour my flesh, ⁵ 

when my adversaries and enemies attack me, ⁶ 

they stumble and fall. ⁷ 

Psalms 35:25

35:25 Do not let them say to themselves, ⁸  “Aha! We have what we wanted!” ⁹ 

Do not let them say, “We have devoured him!”

Psalms 57:3

57:3 May he send help from heaven and deliver me ¹⁰ 

from my enemies who hurl insults! ¹¹  (Selah)

May God send his loyal love and faithfulness!

Psalms 106:17

106:17 The earth opened up and swallowed Dathan;

it engulfed ¹²  the group led by Abiram. ¹³ 

Psalms 124:3

124:3 they would have swallowed us alive,

when their anger raged against us.

Proverbs 1:12

1:12 We will swallow them alive ¹⁴  like Sheol, ¹⁵ 

those full of vigor ¹⁶  like those going down to the Pit.

Lamentations 2:2

ב (Bet)

2:2 The Lord ¹⁷  destroyed ¹⁸  mercilessly ¹⁹ 

all the homes of Jacob’s descendants. ²⁰ 

In his anger he tore down

the fortified cities ²¹  of Daughter Judah.

He knocked to the ground and humiliated

the kingdom and its rulers. ²² 

Lamentations 2:5

ה (He)

2:5 The Lord, ²³  like an enemy,

destroyed ²⁴  Israel.

He destroyed ²⁵  all her palaces;

he ruined her ²⁶  fortified cities.

He made everyone in Daughter Judah

mourn and lament. ²⁷ 

Lamentations 2:16

פ (Pe)

2:16 All your enemies

gloated over you. ²⁸ 

They sneered and gnashed their teeth;

they said, “We have destroyed ²⁹  her!

Ha! We have waited a long time for this day.

We have lived to see it!” ³⁰ 

Hosea 8:8

8:8 Israel will be swallowed up among the nations;

they will be like a worthless piece of pottery.

Hosea 8:1

God Will Raise Up the Assyrians to Attack Israel

8:1 Sound the alarm! ³¹ 

An eagle ³²  looms over the temple of the Lord!

For they have broken their covenant with me, ³³ 

and have rebelled against my law.

Colossians 1:1

Salutation

1:1 From Paul, ³⁴  an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and Timothy our brother,

[21:9]  ¹ 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]  ² 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]  ³ 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).

[27:2]  ⁴ tn Heb “draw near to me.”

[27:2]  ⁵ sn To devour my flesh. The psalmist compares his enemies to dangerous, hungry predators (see 2 Kgs 9:36; Ezek 39:17).

[27:2]  ⁶ tn Heb “my adversaries and my enemies against me.” The verb “draw near” (that is, “attack”) is understood by ellipsis; see the previous line.

[27:2]  ⁷ tn The Hebrew verbal forms are perfects. The translation assumes the psalmist is generalizing here, but another option is to take this as a report of past experience, “when evil men attacked me…they stumbled and fell.”

[35:25]  ⁸ tn Heb “in their heart[s].”

[35:25]  ⁹ tn Heb “Aha! Our desire!” The “desire” of the psalmist’s enemies is to triumph over him.

[57:3]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “may he send from heaven and deliver me.” The prefixed verbal forms are understood as jussives expressing the psalmist’s prayer. The second verb, which has a vav (ו) conjunctive prefixed to it, probably indicates purpose. Another option is to take the forms as imperfects expressing confidence, “he will send from heaven and deliver me” (cf. NRSV).

[57:3]  ¹¹ tn Heb “he hurls insults, one who crushes me.” The translation assumes that this line identifies those from whom the psalmist seeks deliverance. (The singular is representative; the psalmist is surrounded by enemies, see v. 4.) Another option is to understand God as the subject of the verb חָרַף (kharaf), which could then be taken as a homonym of the more common root חָרַף (“insult”) meaning “confuse.” In this case “one who crushes me” is the object of the verb. One might translate, “he [God] confuses my enemies.”

[106:17]  ¹² tn Or “covered.”

[106:17]  ¹³ tn Or “the assembly of Abiram.”

[1:12]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “lives.” The noun חַיִּים (khayyim, “lives”) functions as an adverbial accusative of manner: “alive.” The form is a plural of state, used to describe a condition of life which encompasses a long period of time – in this case a person’s entire life. Murder cuts short a person’s life.

[1:12]  ¹⁵ tn The noun שְׁאוֹל (shÿ’ol) can mean (1) “death,” cf. NCV; (2) “the grave,” cf. KJV, NIV, NLT (3) “Sheol” as the realm of departed spirits, cf. NAB “the nether world,” and (4) “extreme danger.” Here it is parallel to the noun בוֹר (vor, “the Pit”) so it is the grave or more likely “Sheol” (cf. ASV, NRSV). Elsewhere Sheol is personified as having an insatiable appetite and swallowing people alive as they descend to their death (e.g., Num 16:30, 33; Isa 5:14; Hab 2:5). In ancient Near Eastern literature, the grave is often personified in similar manner, e.g., in Ugaritic mythological texts Mot (= “death”) is referred to as “the great swallower.”

[1:12]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “and whole.” The vav (ו) is asseverative or appositional (“even”); it is omitted in the translation for the sake of style and smoothness. The substantival adjective תָּמִים (tamim, “whole; perfect; blameless”) is an adverbial accusative describing the condition and state of the object. Used in parallel to חַיִּים (khayyim, “alive”), it must mean “full of health” (BDB 1071 s.v. תָּמִים 2). These cutthroats want to murder a person who is full of vigor.

[2:2]  ¹⁷ tc The MT reads אֲדֹנָי (’adonay, “the Lord”) here rather than יהוה (YHWH, “the Lord”). See the tc note at 1:14.

[2:2]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “has swallowed up.”

[2:2]  ¹⁹ tc The Kethib is written לֹא חָמַל (lo’ khamal, “without mercy”), while the Qere reads וְלֹא חָמַל (vÿlo’ khamal, “and he has shown no mercy”). The Kethib is followed by the LXX, while the Qere is reflected in many Hebrew mss and the ancient versions (Syriac Peshitta, Aramaic Targum, Latin Vulgate). The English versions are split between the Kethib: “The Lord swallowed all the dwellings of Jacob without mercy” (cf. RSV, NRSV, NIV, TEV, NJPS) and the Qere: “The Lord swallowed all the dwellings of Jacob, and has shown no mercy” (cf. KJV, NASB, CEV). As these words occur between a verb and its object (חָמַל [khamal] is not otherwise followed by אֵת [’et, direct object marker]), an adverbial reading is the most natural, although interrupting the sentence with an insertion is possible. Compare 2:17, 21; 3:43. In contexts of harming, to show mercy often means to spare from harm.

[2:2]  ²⁰ tn Heb “all the dwellings of Jacob.”

[2:2]  ²¹ tn Heb “the strongholds.”

[2:2]  ²² tn Heb “He brought down to the ground in disgrace the kingdom and its princes.” The verbs חִלֵּל…הִגִּיע (higgi’…khillel, “he has brought down…he has profaned”) function as a verbal hendiadys, as the absence of the conjunction ו (vav) suggests. The first verb retains its full verbal force, while the second functions adverbially: “he has brought down [direct object] in disgrace.”

[2:5]  ²³ tc The MT reads אֲדֹנָי (’adonay, “the Lord”) here rather than יהוה (YHWH, “the Lord”). See the tc note at 1:14.

[2:5]  ²⁴ tn Heb “swallowed up.”

[2:5]  ²⁵ tn Heb “swallowed up.”

[2:5]  ²⁶ tn Heb “his.” For consistency this has been translated as “her.”

[2:5]  ²⁷ tn Heb “He increased in Daughter Judah mourning and lamentation.”

[2:16]  ²⁸ tn Heb “they have opened wide their mouth against you.”

[2:16]  ²⁹ tn Heb “We have swallowed!”

[2:16]  ³⁰ tn Heb “We have attained, we have seen!” The verbs מָצָאנוּ רָאִינוּ (matsa’nu ra’inu) form a verbal hendiadys in which the first retains its full verbal sense and the second functions as an object complement. It forms a Hebrew idiom that means something like, “We have lived to see it!” The three asyndetic 1st person common plural statements in 2:16 (“We waited, we destroyed, we saw!”) are spoken in an impassioned, staccato style reflecting the delight of the conquerors.

[8:1]  ³¹ tn Heb “A horn unto your gums!”; NAB “A trumpet to your lips!”

[8:1]  ³² tn Or perhaps “A vulture.” Some identify the species indicated by the Hebrew term נֶשֶׁר (nesher) as the griffon vulture (cf. NEB, NRSV).

[8:1]  ³³ tn Heb “my covenant” (so NAB, NIV, NRSV); TEV “the covenant I made with them.”

[1:1]  ³⁴ tn Grk “Paul.” The word “from” is not in the Greek text, but has been supplied to indicate the sender of the letter.