Yeremia 20:8
Konteks20:8 For whenever I prophesy, 1 I must cry out, 2
“Violence and destruction are coming!” 3
This message from the Lord 4 has made me
an object of continual insults and derision.
Mazmur 55:9-11
KonteksFrustrate their plans! 6
For I see violence and conflict in the city.
55:10 Day and night they walk around on its walls, 7
while wickedness and destruction 8 are within it.
55:11 Disaster is within it;
violence 9 and deceit do not depart from its public square.
Yehezkiel 7:11
Konteks7:11 Violence 10 has grown into a staff that supports wickedness. Not one of them will be left 11 – not from their crowd, not from their wealth, not from their prominence. 12
Yehezkiel 7:23
Konteks7:23 (Make the chain, 13 because the land is full of murder 14 and the city is full of violence.)
Yehezkiel 22:3-12
Konteks22:3 Then say, ‘This is what the sovereign Lord says: O city, who spills blood within herself (which brings on her doom), 15 and who makes herself idols (which results in impurity), 22:4 you are guilty because of the blood you shed and defiled by the idols you made. You have hastened the day of your doom; 16 the end of your years has come. 17 Therefore I will make 18 you an object of scorn to the nations, an object to be mocked by all lands. 22:5 Those both near and far from you will mock you, you with your bad reputation, 19 full of turmoil.
22:6 “‘See how each of the princes of Israel living within you has used his authority to shed blood. 20 22:7 They have treated father and mother with contempt 21 within you; they have oppressed the foreigner among you; they have wronged the orphan and the widow 22 within you. 22:8 You have despised my holy things and desecrated my Sabbaths! 22:9 Slanderous men shed blood within you. 23 Those who live within you eat pagan sacrifices on the mountains; 24 they commit obscene acts among you. 25 22:10 They have sex with their father’s wife within you; 26 they violate women during their menstrual period within you. 27 22:11 One 28 commits an abominable act with his neighbor’s wife; another obscenely defiles his daughter-in-law; another violates 29 his sister – his father’s daughter 30 – within you. 22:12 They take bribes within you to shed blood. You engage in usury and charge interest; 31 you extort money from your neighbors. You have forgotten me, 32 declares the sovereign Lord. 33
Yehezkiel 24:7
Konteks24:7 For her blood was in it;
she poured it on an exposed rock;
she did not pour it on the ground to cover it up with dust.
Mikha 2:1-2
Konteks2:1 Those who devise sinful plans are as good as dead, 34
those who dream about doing evil as they lie in bed. 35
As soon as morning dawns they carry out their plans, 36
because they have the power to do so.
2:2 They confiscate the fields they desire,
and seize the houses they want. 37
They defraud people of their homes, 38
and deprive people of the land they have inherited. 39
Mikha 2:8-10
Konteks2:8 but you rise up as an enemy against my people. 40
You steal a robe from a friend, 41
from those who pass by peacefully as if returning from a war. 42
2:9 You wrongly evict widows 43 among my people from their cherished homes.
You defraud their children 44 of their prized inheritance. 45
2:10 But you are the ones who will be forced to leave! 46
For this land is not secure! 47
Sin will thoroughly destroy it! 48
Mikha 3:1-3
Konteks3:1 I said,
“Listen, you leaders 49 of Jacob,
you rulers of the nation 50 of Israel!
You ought to know what is just, 51
3:2 yet you 52 hate what is good, 53
and love what is evil. 54
You flay my people’s skin 55
and rip the flesh from their bones. 56
3:3 You 57 devour my people’s flesh,
strip off their skin,
and crush their bones.
You chop them up like flesh in a pot 58 –
like meat in a kettle.
Mikha 3:9-12
Konteks3:9 Listen to this, you leaders of the family 59 of Jacob,
you rulers of the nation 60 of Israel!
You 61 hate justice
and pervert all that is right.
3:10 You 62 build Zion through bloody crimes, 63
Jerusalem 64 through unjust violence.
3:11 Her 65 leaders take bribes when they decide legal cases, 66
her priests proclaim rulings for profit,
and her prophets read omens for pay.
Yet they claim to trust 67 the Lord and say,
“The Lord is among us. 68
Disaster will not overtake 69 us!”
3:12 Therefore, because of you, 70 Zion will be plowed up like 71 a field,
Jerusalem will become a heap of ruins,
and the Temple Mount 72 will become a hill overgrown with brush! 73
Mikha 7:2-3
Konteks7:2 Faithful men have disappeared 74 from the land;
there are no godly men left. 75
They all wait in ambush so they can shed blood; 76
they hunt their own brother with a net. 77
7:3 They are determined to be experts at doing evil; 78
government officials and judges take bribes, 79
prominent men make demands,
and they all do what is necessary to satisfy them. 80
[20:8] 1 tn Heb “speak,” but the speaking is in the context of speaking as a prophet.
[20:8] 2 tn Heb “I cry out, I proclaim.”
[20:8] 3 tn Heb “Violence and destruction.”
[20:8] sn The words “Violence and destruction…” are a synopsis of his messages of judgment. Jeremiah is lamenting that his ministry up to this point has been one of judgment and has brought him nothing but ridicule because the
[20:8] 4 tn Heb “the word of the
[55:9] 5 tn Traditionally בַּלַּע (bala’) has been taken to mean “swallow” in the sense of “devour” or “destroy” (cf. KJV), but this may be a homonym meaning “confuse” (see BDB 118 s.v. בַּלַּע; HALOT 135 s.v. III *בֶּלַע). “Their tongue” is the understood object of the verb (see the next line).
[55:9] 6 tn Heb “split their tongue,” which apparently means “confuse their speech,” or, more paraphrastically, “frustrate the plans they devise with their tongues.”
[55:10] 7 tn Heb “day and night they surround it, upon its walls.” Personified “violence and conflict” are the likely subjects. They are compared to watchmen on the city’s walls.
[55:10] 8 sn Wickedness and destruction. These terms are also closely associated in Ps 7:14.
[55:11] 9 tn Or “injury, harm.”
[7:11] 10 tn Heb “the violence.”
[7:11] 11 tc The LXX reads “he will crush the wicked rod without confusion or haste.”
[7:11] tn The verb has been supplied for the Hebrew text to clarify the sense.
[7:11] 12 tn The Hebrew word occurs only here in the OT.
[7:23] 13 tc The Hebrew word “the chain” occurs only here in the OT. The reading of the LXX (“and they will make carnage”) seems to imply a Hebrew text of ַהבַּתּוֹק (habbattoq, “disorder, slaughter”) instead of הָרַתּוֹק (haratoq, “the chain”). The LXX is also translating the verb as a third person plural future and taking this as the end of the preceding verse. As M. Greenberg (Ezekiel [AB], 1:154) notes, this may refer to a chain for a train of exiles but “the context does not speak of exile but of the city’s fall. The versions guess desperately and we can do little better.”
[7:23] 14 tn Heb “judgment for blood,” i.e., indictment or accountability for bloodshed. The word for “judgment” does not appear in the similar phrase in 9:9.
[22:3] 15 tn Heb “her time”; this refers to the time of impending judgment (see the note on “doom” in v. 4).
[22:4] 16 tn Heb “you have brought near your days.” The expression “bring near your days” appears to be an adaptation of the idiom “days draw near,” which is used to indicate that an event, such as death, is imminent (see Gen 27:41; 47:29; Deut 31:14; 1 Kgs 2:1; Ezek 12:23). Here “your days” probably refers to the days of the personified city’s life, which was about to come to an end through God’s judgment.
[22:4] 17 tn Heb “and you have come to your years.” This appears to mean that she has arrived at the time when her years (i.e., life) would end, though it may mean that her years of punishment will begin. Because “day” and “time” are so closely associated in the immediate context (see 21:25, 29) some prefer to emend the text and read “you have brought near your time.” See L. C. Allen, Ezekiel (WBC), 2:31, as well as the translator’s note on verse 3.
[22:4] 18 tn The Hebrew verb is a prophetic perfect, emphasizing that the action is as good as done from the speaker’s perspective.
[22:5] 19 tn Heb “unclean of name.”
[22:6] 20 tn Heb “Look! The princes of Israel, each according to his arm, were in you in order to shed blood.”
[22:7] 21 tn Heb “treated lightly, cursed.”
[22:7] 22 tn Widows and orphans are often coupled together in the OT (Deut 14:29; 16:11, 14; 24:19-21; 26:12-13; Jer 7:6; 22:3). They represented all who were poor and vulnerable to economic exploitation.
[22:9] 23 tn Heb “men of slander are in you in order to shed blood.”
[22:9] 24 tn Heb “and on the mountains they eat within you.” The mountains mentioned here were the site of pagan sacrifices. See 18:6.
[22:9] 25 sn This statement introduces vv. 10-11 and refers in general terms to the sexual sins described there. For the legal background of vv. 10-11, see Lev 18:7-20; 20:10-21; Deut 22:22-23, 30; 27:22.
[22:10] 26 tn Heb “the nakedness of a father one uncovers within you.” The ancient versions read the verb as plural (“they uncover”). If the singular is retained, it must be taken as indefinite and representative of the entire group. The idiomatic expression “uncover the nakedness” refers here to sexual intercourse (cf. Lev 18:6). To uncover a father’s nakedness could include sexual relations with one’s own mother (Lev 18:7), but more likely it refers to having intercourse with another wife of one’s father, such as a stepmother (Lev 18:8; cf. Gen 35:22; 49:4).
[22:10] 27 tn Heb “(one who is) unclean due to the impurity they humble within you.” The use of the verb “to humble” suggests that these men forced themselves upon women during menstruation. Having sexual relations with a woman during her period was forbidden by the Law (Lev 18:19; 20:18).
[22:11] 29 tn The verb is the same one used in verse 10b and suggests forcible sexual violation of the woman.
[22:11] 30 sn Sexual relations with one’s half-sister may be primarily in view here. See Lev 18:9; 20:17.
[22:12] 31 tn Heb “usury and interest you take.” See 18:13, 17. This kind of economic exploitation violated the law given in Lev 25:36.
[22:12] 32 sn Forgetting the Lord is also addressed in Deut 6:12; 8:11, 14; Jer 3:21; 13:25; Ezek 23:35; Hos 2:15; 8:14; 13:6.
[22:12] 33 tn The second person verb forms are feminine singular in Hebrew, indicating that the personified city is addressed here as representing its citizens.
[2:1] 34 tn Heb “Woe to those who plan sin.” The Hebrew term הוֹי (hoy, “woe”; “ah”) was a cry used in mourning the dead.
[2:1] 35 tn Heb “those who do evil upon their beds.”
[2:1] 36 tn Heb “at the light of morning they do it.”
[2:2] 37 tn Heb “they desire fields and rob [them], and houses and take [them] away.”
[2:2] 38 tn Heb “and they oppress a man and his home.”
[2:2] 39 tn Heb “and a man and his inheritance.” The verb עָשַׁק (’ashaq, “to oppress”; “to wrong”) does double duty in the parallel structure and is understood by ellipsis in the second line.
[2:8] 40 tc Heb “Recently my people rise up as an enemy.” The MT is problematic in light of v. 9, where “my people” are the object of oppression, not the perpetrators of it. The form וְאֶתְמוּל (vÿ’etmul, “and recently”) is probably the product of fusion and subsequent suppression of an (ע) ayin. The translation assumes an emendation to וְאַתֶּם עַל (vÿ’attem ’al, “and you against [my people]”). The second person plural pronoun fits well with the second plural verb forms of vv. 8b-10. If this emendation is accepted, then יְקוֹמֵם (yÿqomem, the imperfect of קוּם [qum]) should be emended to קָמִים (qamim; a participle from the same root).
[2:8] 41 tc Heb “From the front of a garment glory [or perhaps, “a robe”] you strip off,” but this makes little if any sense. The term מִמּוּל (mimmul, “from the front of”) is probably the product of dittography (note the preceding word, which ends in [ם] mem) and subsequent suppression of ע (ayin). The translation assumes an emendation to מֵעַל (me’al, “from upon”). The translation also assumes an emendation of שַׂלְמָה אֶדֶר (salmah ’eder, “a garment, glory [or robe]”) to שֹׁלְמִים אֲדֶרֶת (sholÿmim ’aderet, “[from] a friend the robe [you strip off]”). The MT’s אֶדֶר (’eder) is the result of misdivision (the article has erroneously been attached to the preceding word) and haplography (of the final tav, which also begins the following word).
[2:8] 42 tc The passive participle שׁוּבֵי (shuvey) is unattested elsewhere and should be emended to a participle שָׁבִים (shavim).
[2:8] tn Heb “from those passing by peacefully, returnees from war.” Actual refugees, however, are probably not in view. The second line compares those who pass by peacefully with individuals returning from war. The battle is over and they do not expect their own countrymen to attack them.
[2:9] 43 tn Heb “women.” This may be a synecdoche of the whole (women) for the part (widows).
[2:9] 44 tn Heb “her little children” or “her infants”; ASV, NRSV “young children.”
[2:9] 45 tn Heb “from their children you take my glory forever.” The yod (י) ending on הֲדָרִי (hadariy) is usually taken as a first person common singular suffix (“my glory”). But it may be the archaic genitive ending (“glory of”) in the construct expression “glory of perpetuity,” that is, “perpetual glory.” In either case, this probably refers to the dignity or honor the
[2:10] 46 tn Heb “Arise and go!” These imperatives are rhetorical. Those who wrongly drove widows and orphans from their homes and land inheritances will themselves be driven out of the land (cf. Isa 5:8-17). This is an example of poetic justice.
[2:10] 47 tn Heb “for this is no resting place.” The
[2:10] 48 tn Heb “uncleanness will destroy, and destruction will be severe.”
[3:1] 51 tn Heb “Should you not know justice?” The rhetorical question expects the answer, “Of course you should!”
[3:2] 52 tn Heb “the ones who.”
[3:2] 55 tn Heb “their skin from upon them.” The referent of the pronoun (“my people,” referring to Jacob and/or the house of Israel, with the
[3:2] 56 tn Heb “and their flesh from their bones.”
[3:2] sn Micah compares the social injustice perpetrated by the house of Jacob/Israel to cannibalism, because it threatens the very lives of the oppressed.
[3:3] 58 tc The MT reads “and they chop up as in a pot.” The translation assumes an emendation of כַּאֲשֶׁר (ka’asher, “as”) to כִּשְׁאֵר (kish’er, “like flesh”).
[3:9] 61 tn Heb “who.” A new sentence was begun here in the translation for stylistic reasons (also at the beginning of v. 10).
[3:10] 63 tn Heb “bloodshed” (so NAB, NASB, NIV); NLT “murder.”
[3:10] 64 map For location see Map5 B1; Map6 F3; Map7 E2; Map8 F2; Map10 B3; JP1 F4; JP2 F4; JP3 F4; JP4 F4.
[3:11] 65 sn The pronoun Her refers to Jerusalem (note the previous line).
[3:11] 66 tn Heb “judge for a bribe.”
[3:11] 67 tn Heb “they lean upon” (so KJV, NIV, NRSV); NAB “rely on.”
[3:11] 68 tn Heb “Is not the
[3:11] 69 tn Or “come upon” (so many English versions); NCV “happen to us”; CEV “come to us.”
[3:12] 70 tn The plural pronoun refers to the leaders, priests, and prophets mentioned in the preceding verse.
[3:12] 71 tn Or “into” (an adverbial accusative of result).
[3:12] 72 tn Heb “the mountain of the house” (so KJV, ASV, NRSV).
[3:12] 73 tn Heb “a high place of overgrowth.”
[7:2] 74 tn Or “have perished”; “have been destroyed.”
[7:2] 75 tn Heb “and an upright one among men there is not.”
[7:2] 76 tn Heb “for bloodshed” (so NASB); TEV “for a chance to commit murder.”
[7:2] 77 sn Micah compares these ungodly people to hunters trying to capture their prey with a net.
[7:3] 78 tn Heb “upon evil [are their] hands to do [it] well.”
[7:3] 79 tn Heb “the official asks – and the judge – for a bribe.”
[7:3] 80 tn More literally, “the great one announces what his appetite desires and they weave it together.” Apparently this means that subordinates plot and maneuver to make sure the prominent man’s desires materialize.
