Imamat 26:16

26:16 I for my part ¹  will do this to you: I will inflict horror on you, consumption and fever, which diminish eyesight and drain away the vitality of life. ²  You will sow your seed in vain because ³  your enemies will eat it. ⁴ 

Yosua 24:20

24:20 If ⁵  you abandon the Lord and worship ⁶  foreign gods, he will turn against you; ⁷  he will bring disaster on you and destroy you, ⁸  though he once treated you well.” ⁹ 

Yesaya 1:20

1:20 But if you refuse and rebel,

you will be devoured ¹⁰  by the sword.”

Know for certain that the Lord has spoken. ¹¹ 

Yeremia 4:17

4:17 They will surround Jerusalem ¹² 

like men guarding a field ¹³ 

because they have rebelled against me,”

says the Lord.

Yeremia 26:4

26:4 Tell them that the Lord says, ¹⁴  ‘You must obey me! You must live according to the way I have instructed you in my laws. ¹⁵ 

[26:16]  ¹ tn Or “I also” (see HALOT 76 s.v. אַף 6.b).

[26:16]  ² tn Heb “soul.” These expressions may refer either to the physical effects of consumption and fever as the rendering in the text suggests (e.g., J. E. Hartley, Leviticus [WBC], 452, 454, “diminishing eyesight and loss of appetite”), or perhaps the more psychological effects, “which exhausts the eyes” because of anxious hope “and causes depression” (Heb “causes soul [נֶפֶשׁ, nefesh] to pine away”), e.g., B. A. Levine, Leviticus (JPSTC), 185.

[26:16]  ³ tn Heb “and.” The Hebrew conjunction ו (vav, “and”) can be considered to have causal force here.

[26:16]  ⁴ tn That is, “your enemies will eat” the produce that grows from the sown seed.

[24:20]  ⁵ tn Or “when.”

[24:20]  ⁶ tn Or “and serve.”

[24:20]  ⁷ tn The words “against you” are added for clarification.

[24:20]  ⁸ tn Heb “bring you to an end.”

[24:20]  ⁹ tn Heb “after he did good for you.”

[1:20]  ¹⁰ sn The wordplay in the Hebrew draws attention to the options. The people can obey, in which case they will “eat” v. 19 (תֹּאכֵלוּ [to’khelu], Qal active participle of אָכַל) God’s blessing, or they can disobey, in which case they will be devoured (Heb “eaten,” תְּאֻכְּלוּ, [tÿ’ukkÿlu], Qal passive/Pual of אָכַל) by God’s judgment.

[1:20]  ¹¹ tn Heb “for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.” The introductory כִּי (ki) may be asseverative (as reflected in the translation) or causal/explanatory, explaining why the option chosen by the people will become reality (it is guaranteed by the divine word).

[4:17]  ¹² tn Heb “will surround her.” The antecedent is Jerusalem in the preceding verse. The referent is again made explicit in the translation to avoid any possible lack of clarity. The verb form here is a form of the verb that emphasizes the fact as being as good as done (i.e., it is a prophetic perfect).

[4:17]  ¹³ sn There is some irony involved in the choice of the simile since the men guarding a field were there to keep thieves from getting in and stealing the crops. Here the besiegers are guarding the city to keep people from getting out.

[26:4]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “thus says the Lord, ‘…’.” The use of the indirect quotation in the translation eliminates one level of embedded quotation to avoid confusion.

[26:4]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “by walking in my law which I set before you.”

[26:4]  sn Examples of those laws are found in Jer 7:5-6, 9. The law was summarized or epitomized in the ten commandments which are called the “words of the covenant” in Exod 34:28, but it contained much more. However, when Israel is taken to task by God, it often relates to their failure to live up to the standards of the ten commandments (Heb “the ten words”; see Hos 4:1-3; Jer 7:9).