Yesaya 5:9-10

5:9 The Lord who commands armies told me this: ¹ 

“Many houses will certainly become desolate,

large, impressive houses will have no one living in them. ² 

5:10 Indeed, a large vineyard ³  will produce just a few gallons, ⁴ 

and enough seed to yield several bushels ⁵  will produce less than a bushel.” ⁶ 

Yesaya 6:11-12

6:11 I replied, “How long, sovereign master?” He said,

“Until cities are in ruins and unpopulated,

and houses are uninhabited,

and the land is ruined and devastated,

6:12 and the Lord has sent the people off to a distant place,

and the very heart of the land is completely abandoned. ⁷ 

Yesaya 24:1-3

The Lord Will Judge the Earth

24:1 Look, the Lord is ready to devastate the earth

and leave it in ruins;

he will mar its surface

and scatter its inhabitants.

24:2 Everyone will suffer – the priest as well as the people, ⁸ 

the master as well as the servant, ⁹ 

the elegant lady as well as the female attendant, ¹⁰ 

the seller as well as the buyer, ¹¹ 

the borrower as well as the lender, ¹² 

the creditor as well as the debtor. ¹³ 

24:3 The earth will be completely devastated

and thoroughly ransacked.

For the Lord has decreed this judgment. ¹⁴ 

Yesaya 24:12

24:12 The city is left in ruins; ¹⁵ 

the gate is reduced to rubble. ¹⁶ 

Yesaya 32:13-14

32:13 Mourn ¹⁷  over the land of my people,

which is overgrown with thorns and briers,

and over all the once-happy houses ¹⁸ 

in the city filled with revelry. ¹⁹ 

32:14 For the fortress is neglected;

the once-crowded ²⁰  city is abandoned.

Hill ²¹  and watchtower

are permanently uninhabited. ²² 

Wild donkeys love to go there,

and flocks graze there. ²³ 

Imamat 26:33-35

26:33 I will scatter you among the nations and unsheathe the sword ²⁴  after you, so your land will become desolate and your cities will become a waste.

26:34 “‘Then the land will make up for ²⁵  its Sabbaths all the days it lies desolate while you are in the land of your enemies; then the land will rest and make up its Sabbaths. 26:35 All the days of the desolation it will have the rest it did not have ²⁶  on your Sabbaths when you lived on it.

Ulangan 29:23

29:23 The whole land will be covered with brimstone, salt, and burning debris; it will not be planted nor will it sprout or produce grass. It will resemble the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboiim, which the Lord destroyed in his intense anger. ²⁷ 

Ulangan 29:2

The Exodus, Wandering, and Conquest Reviewed

29:2 Moses proclaimed to all Israel as follows: “You have seen all that the Lord did ²⁸  in the land of Egypt to Pharaoh, all his servants, and his land.

Ulangan 1:19-21

1:19 Then we left Horeb and passed through all that immense, forbidding wilderness that you saw on the way to the Amorite hill country as the Lord our God had commanded us to do, finally arriving at Kadesh Barnea. 1:20 Then I said to you, “You have come to the Amorite hill country which the Lord our God is about to give ²⁹  us. 1:21 Look, he ³⁰  has placed the land in front of you! ³¹  Go up, take possession of it, just as the Lord, the God of your ancestors, said to do. Do not be afraid or discouraged!”

Yeremia 25:11

25:11 This whole area ³²  will become a desolate wasteland. These nations will be subject to the king of Babylon for seventy years.’ ³³ 

Yeremia 45:4

45:4 The Lord told Jeremiah, ³⁴  “Tell Baruch, ³⁵  ‘The Lord says, “I am about to tear down what I have built and to uproot what I have planted. I will do this throughout the whole earth. ³⁶ 

Lukas 21:24

21:24 They ³⁷  will fall by the edge ³⁸  of the sword and be led away as captives ³⁹  among all nations. Jerusalem ⁴⁰  will be trampled down by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled. ⁴¹ 

[5:9]  ¹ tn Heb “in my ears, the Lord who commands armies [traditionally, the Lord of hosts].”

[5:9]  ² tn Heb “great and good [houses], without a resident.”

[5:10]  ³ tn Heb “a ten-yoke vineyard.” The Hebrew term צֶמֶד (tsemed, “yoke”) is here a unit of square measure. Apparently a ten-yoke vineyard covered the same amount of land it would take ten teams of oxen to plow in a certain period of time. The exact size is unknown.

[5:10]  ⁴ tn Heb “one bath.” A bath was a liquid measure. Estimates of its modern equivalent range from approximately six to twelve gallons.

[5:10]  ⁵ tn Heb “a homer.” A homer was a dry measure, the exact size of which is debated. Cf. NCV “ten bushels”; CEV “five bushels.”

[5:10]  ⁶ tn Heb “an ephah.” An ephah was a dry measure; there were ten ephahs in a homer. So this verse envisions major crop failure, where only one-tenth of the anticipated harvest is realized.

[6:12]  ⁷ tn Heb “and great is the abandonment in the midst of the land.”

[24:2]  ⁸ tn Heb “and it will be like the people, like the priest.”

[24:2]  ⁹ tn Heb “like the servant, like his master.”

[24:2]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “like the female servant, like her mistress.”

[24:2]  ¹¹ tn Heb “like the buyer, like the seller.”

[24:2]  ¹² tn Heb “like the lender, like the borrower.”

[24:2]  ¹³ tn Heb “like the creditor, just as the one to whom he lends.”

[24:3]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “for the Lord has spoken this word.”

[24:12]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “and there is left in the city desolation.”

[24:12]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “and [into] rubble the gate is crushed.”

[32:13]  ¹⁷ tn “Mourn” is supplied in the translation for stylistic reasons. In the Hebrew text vv. 12-13 are one long sentence.

[32:13]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “indeed, over all the houses of joy.” It is not certain if this refers to individual homes or to places where parties and celebrations were held.

[32:13]  ¹⁹ sn This same phrase is used in 22:2.

[32:14]  ²⁰ tn Or “noisy” (NAB, NIV, NCV).

[32:14]  ²¹ tn Hebrew עֹפֶל (’ofel), probably refers here to a specific area within the city of Jerusalem. See HALOT 861 s.v. II עֹפֶל.

[32:14]  ²² tn The Hebrew text has בְעַד מְעָרוֹת (vÿ’ad mÿ’arot). The force of בְעַד, which usually means “behind, through, round about,” or “for the benefit of,” is uncertain here. HALOT 616 s.v. *מְעָרָה takes מְעָרוֹת (mÿ’arot) as a homonym of “cave” and define it here as “cleared field.” Despite these lexical problems, the general point of the statement seems clear – the city will be uninhabited.

[32:14]  ²³ tn Heb “the joy of wild donkeys, a pasture for flocks.”

[26:33]  ²⁴ tn Heb “and I will empty sword” (see HALOT 1228 s.v. ריק 3).

[26:34]  ²⁵ tn There are two Hebrew roots רָצָה (ratsah), one meaning “to be pleased with; to take pleasure” (HALOT 1280-81 s.v. רצה; cf. “enjoy” in NASB, NIV, NRSV, and J. E. Hartley, Leviticus [WBC], 452), and the other meaning “to restore” (HALOT 1281-82 s.v. II רצה; cf. NAB “retrieve” and B. A. Levine, Leviticus [JPSTC], 189).

[26:35]  ²⁶ tn Heb “it shall rest which it did not rest.”

[29:23]  ²⁷ tn Heb “the anger and the wrath.” This construction is a hendiadys intended to intensify the emotion.

[29:2]  ²⁸ tn The Hebrew text includes “to your eyes,” but this is redundant in English style (cf. the preceding “you have seen”) and is omitted in the translation.

[1:20]  ²⁹ tn The Hebrew participle has an imminent future sense here, although many English versions treat it as a present tense (“is giving us,” NAB, NIV, NRSV) or a predictive future (“will give us,” NCV).

[1:21]  ³⁰ tn Heb “the Lord your God.” The pronoun (“he”) has been used in the translation for stylistic reasons, to avoid repetition.

[1:21]  ³¹ tn Or “has given you the land” (cf. NAB, NIV, NRSV).

[25:11]  ³² tn Heb “All this land.”

[25:11]  ³³ sn It should be noted that the text says that the nations will be subject to the king of Babylon for seventy years, not that they will lie desolate for seventy years. Though several proposals have been made for dating this period, many ignore this fact. This most likely refers to the period beginning with Nebuchadnezzar’s defeat of Pharaoh Necho at Carchemish in 605 b.c. and the beginning of his rule over Babylon. At this time Babylon became the dominant force in the area and continued to be so until the fall of Babylon in 538 b.c. More particularly Judah became a vassal state (cf. Jer 46:2; 2 Kgs 24:1) in 605 b.c. and was allowed to return to her homeland in 538 when Cyrus issued his edict allowing all the nations exiled by Babylon to return to their homelands. (See 2 Chr 36:21 and Ezra 1:2-4; the application there is made to Judah but the decree of Cyrus was broader.)

[45:4]  ³⁴ tn The words, “The Lord told Jeremiah” are not in the text but are implicit in the address that follows, “Thus you shall say to him.” These words are supplied in the translation for clarity.

[45:4]  ³⁵ tn Heb “Thus you shall say to him [i.e., Baruch].”

[45:4]  ³⁶ tn Heb “and this is with regard to the whole earth.” The feminine pronoun הִיא (hi’) at the end refers to the verbal concepts just mentioned, i.e., this process (cf. GKC 459 §144.b and compare the use of the feminine singular suffix in the same function GKC 440-41 §135.p). The particle אֶת (’et) is here functioning to introduce emphatically the object of the action (cf. BDB 85 s.v. I אֵת 3.α). There is some debate whether אֶרֶץ (’erets) here applies to the whole land of Israel or to the whole earth. However, the reference to “all mankind” (Heb “all flesh”) in the next verse as well as “anywhere you go” points to “the whole earth” as the referent.

[21:24]  ³⁷ tn Here καί (kai) has not been translated because of differences between Greek and English style.

[21:24]  ³⁸ tn Grk “by the mouth of the sword” (an idiom for the edge of a sword).

[21:24]  ³⁹ sn Here is the predicted judgment against the nation until the time of Gentile rule has passed: Its people will be led away as captives.

[21:24]  ⁴⁰ tn Grk “And Jerusalem.” Here καί (kai) has not been translated because of differences between Greek and English style.

[21:24]  ⁴¹ sn Until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled implies a time when Israel again has a central role in God’s plan.