2 Tawarikh 13:3

13:3 Abijah launched the attack with 400,000 well-trained warriors, ¹  while Jeroboam deployed against him 800,000 well-trained warriors. ² 

2 Tawarikh 13:12

13:12 Now look, God is with us as our leader. His priests are ready to blow the trumpets to signal the attack against you. ³  You Israelites, don’t fight against the Lord God of your ancestors, ⁴  for you will not win!”

2 Tawarikh 28:6

28:6 In one day King Pekah son of Remaliah of Israel killed 120,000 warriors in Judah, because they had abandoned the Lord God of their ancestors. ⁵ 

Yesaya 10:16-19

10:16 For this reason ⁶  the sovereign master, the Lord who commands armies, will make his healthy ones emaciated. ⁷  His majestic glory will go up in smoke. ⁸ 

10:17 The light of Israel ⁹  will become a fire,

their Holy One ¹⁰  will become a flame;

it will burn and consume the Assyrian king’s ¹¹  briers

and his thorns in one day.

10:18 The splendor of his forest and his orchard

will be completely destroyed, ¹² 

as when a sick man’s life ebbs away. ¹³ 

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

a child will be able to count them. ¹⁴ 

Yesaya 37:36

37:36 The Lord’s messenger ¹⁵  went out and killed 185,000 troops ¹⁶  in the Assyrian camp. When they ¹⁷  got up early the next morning, there were all the corpses! ¹⁸ 

Nahum 1:5

1:5 The mountains tremble before him, ¹⁹ 

the hills convulse; ²⁰ 

the earth is laid waste ²¹  before him,

the world and all its inhabitants ²²  are laid waste. ²³ 

Nahum 1:1

Introduction

1:1 The oracle against Nineveh; ²⁴ 

the book of the vision of Nahum the Elkoshite: ²⁵ 

Kolose 1:22

1:22 but now he has reconciled you ²⁶  by his physical body through death to present you holy, without blemish, and blameless before him –

[13:3]  ¹ tn Heb “and Abijah bound [i.e., began] the battle with a force of warriors, four hundred thousand chosen men.”

[13:3]  ² tn Heb “and Jeroboam arranged with him [for] battle with eight hundred thousand chosen men, strong warrior[s].”

[13:12]  ³ tn Heb “and his priests and the trumpets of the war alarm [are ready] to sound out against you.”

[13:12]  ⁴ tn Heb “fathers” (also in v. 18).

[28:6]  ⁵ tn Heb “fathers” (also in vv. 9, 25).

[10:16]  ⁶ sn The irrational arrogance of the Assyrians (v. 15) will prompt the judgment about to be described.

[10:16]  ⁷ tn Heb “will send leanness against his healthy ones”; NASB, NIV “will send a wasting disease.”

[10:16]  ⁸ tc Heb “and in the place of his glory burning will burn, like the burning of fire.” The highly repetitive text (יֵקַד יְקֹד כִּיקוֹד אֵשׁ, yeqad yiqod kiqod ’esh) may be dittographic; if the second consonantal sequence יקד is omitted, the text would read “and in the place of his glory, it will burn like the burning of fire.”

[10:17]  ⁹ 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]  ¹⁰ sn See the note on the phrase “the Holy One of Israel” in 1:4.

[10:17]  ¹¹ 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]  ¹² 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]  ¹³ 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]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “and the rest of the trees of his forest will be counted, and a child will record them.”

[37:36]  ¹⁵ tn Traditionally, “the angel of the Lord” (so NASB, NIV, NRSV, NLT).

[37:36]  ¹⁶ tn The word “troops” is supplied in the translation for smoothness and clarity.

[37:36]  ¹⁷ tn This refers to the Israelites and/or the rest of the Assyrian army.

[37:36]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “look, all of them were dead bodies”; NLT “they found corpses everywhere.”

[1:5]  ¹⁹ tn Or “because of him.” The Hebrew preposition מִמֶּנּוּ (mimmenu) is taken in a causal sense (“because of him”) by NASB, NJPS; however, it is taken in a locative sense (“before him”) by KJV, NKJV, NRSV, NIV. On the other hand, the LXX rendered it in a separative sense: ἀπ' αὐτοῦ (ap autou, “from him”). The parallelism between 1:5a and 1:5b seems to favor the locative nuance: “The mountains quake before him (מִמֶּנּוּ), the earth is laid waste before him (מִפָּנָיו, mifanayv).”

[1:5]  ²⁰ tn Traditionally, “the hills melt.” English versions typically render הִתְמֹגָגוּ (hitmogagu) as “melt” (KJV, NRSV, NIV, NJPS) or “dissolve” (NASB). The LXX renders it ἐσαλεύθησαν (esaleuqhsan, “are shaken”). The Hebrew root has a range of meanings: (1) “to melt,” of courage (Ps 107:26) or troops retreating (“melting away” in fear) in battle (1 Sam 14:16); (2) “to dissolve,” of mountains dissolving due to erosion (Amos 9:13); (3) “to quake, shake apart,” of mountains quaking, swaying backwards and forwards, coming apart, and collapsing in an earthquake (Amos 9:5; Pss 46:6 [7]; 75:3 [4]). The latter fits the imagery of v. 5 (violent earthquakes): the earth trembles in fear at the approach of the Divine Warrior (e.g., Hab 3:6).

[1:5]  ²¹ tn Or “is upheaved”; or “heaves.” There is debate whether the originally unpointed Hebrew verb וַתִּשָּׂא (vattissa’) should be vocalized as וְתִּשָּׂא (vÿttissa’; NASB “is upheaved”; NRSV, NJPS “heaves”) from the root נָשָׂא (nasa’, “to lift up”) or as וַתִּשָּׁא (vattisha’, “is devastated, laid waste”) from the root שֹׁאָה (sho’ah, “to devastate, lay waste”). The vocalization וְתִּשָּׂא is attested in the Masoretic tradition and the Greek versions: Origen (“was raised up”), Symmachus (“was moved”), and Aquila (“shivered”). However, וְתִּשָּׂא demands an intransitive (“heaves”) or passive (“is upheaved”) sense which is not attested for the Qal stem. The vocalization וַתִּשָּׁא (“is devastated, laid waste”) is supported by the Syriac and Vulgate. The revocalization of the MT וְתִּשָּׂא (“is lifted up”) to וַתִּשָּׁא (“is devastated”) is suggested by the BHS editors and several Hebrew lexicons (HALOT 726 s.v. נשׁא; BDB 670-71 s.v. נָשָׂא). The revocalization involves only the difference between the form שׂ (sin) and שׁ (shin) and is followed in the present translation.

[1:5]  ²² sn The phrase “the world and all its inhabitants” is used to stress the universal dimensions of God’s revelation of his glory and his acts of judgment (e.g., Pss 33:8; 98:7; Isa 18:3; 26:9, 18; Lam 4:12).

[1:5]  ²³ tn The words “are laid waste” are not in the Hebrew text, but are an implied repetition from the previous line.

[1:1]  ²⁴ tn Heb “of Nineveh.”

[1:1]  ²⁵ tn Or “Nahum of Elkosh” (NAB, NRSV).

[1:22]  ²⁶ tc Some of the better representatives of the Alexandrian and Western texts have a passive verb here instead of the active ἀποκατήλλαξεν (apokathllaxen, “he has reconciled”): ἀποκατηλλάγητε (apokathllaghte) in (Ì⁴⁶) B, ἀποκατήλλακται [sic] (apokathllaktai) in 33, and ἀποκαταλλαγέντες (apokatallagente") in D* F G. Yet the active verb is strongly supported by א A C D² Ψ 048 075 [0278] 1739 1881 Ï lat sy. Internally, the passive creates an anacoluthon in that it looks back to the accusative ὑμᾶς (Juma", “you”) of v. 21 and leaves the following παραστῆσαι (parasthsai) dangling (“you were reconciled…to present you”). The passive reading is certainly the harder reading. As such, it may well explain the rise of the other readings. At the same time, it is possible that the passive was produced by scribes who wanted some symmetry between the ποτε (pote, “at one time”) of v. 21 and the νυνὶ δέ (nuni de, “but now”) of v. 22: Since a passive periphrastic participle is used in v. 21, there may have a temptation to produce a corresponding passive form in v. 22, handling the ὑμᾶς of v. 21 by way of constructio ad sensum. Since παραστῆσαι occurs ten words later, it may not have been considered in this scribal modification. Further, the Western reading (ἀποκαταλλαγέντες) hardly seems to have arisen from ἀποκατηλλάγητε (contra TCGNT 555). As difficult as this decision is, the preferred reading is the active form because it is superior externally and seems to explain the rise of all forms of the passive readings.

[1:22]  tn The direct object is omitted in the Greek text, but it is clear from context that “you” (ὑμᾶς, Jumas) is implied.