Mazmur 69:22-28

69:22 May their dining table become a trap before them!

May it be a snare for that group of friends! ¹ 

69:23 May their eyes be blinded! ² 

Make them shake violently! ³ 

69:24 Pour out your judgment ⁴  on them!

May your raging anger ⁵  overtake them!

69:25 May their camp become desolate,

their tents uninhabited! ⁶ 

69:26 For they harass ⁷  the one whom you discipline; ⁸ 

they spread the news about the suffering of those whom you punish. ⁹ 

69:27 Hold them accountable for all their sins! ¹⁰ 

Do not vindicate them! ¹¹ 

69:28 May their names be deleted from the scroll of the living! ¹² 

Do not let their names be listed with the godly! ¹³ 

Yeremia 15:2-3

15:2 If they ask you, ‘Where should we go?’ tell them the Lord says this:

“Those who are destined to die of disease will go to death by disease.

Those who are destined to die in war will go to death in war.

Those who are destined to die of starvation will go to death by starvation.

Those who are destined to go into exile will go into exile.” ¹⁴ 

15:3 “I will punish them in four different ways: I will have war kill them. I will have dogs drag off their dead bodies. I will have birds and wild beasts devour and destroy their corpses. ¹⁵ 

Yeremia 43:11

43:11 He will come and attack Egypt. Those who are destined to die of disease will die of disease. Those who are destined to be carried off into exile will be carried off into exile. Those who are destined to die in war will die in war. ¹⁶ 

Matius 15:14

15:14 Leave them! They are blind guides. ¹⁷  If someone who is blind leads another who is blind, ¹⁸  both will fall into a pit.”

Matius 21:19

21:19 After noticing a fig tree ¹⁹  by the road he went to it, but found nothing on it except leaves. He said to it, “Never again will there be fruit from you!” And the fig tree withered at once.

Wahyu 22:11

22:11 The evildoer must continue to do evil, ²⁰  and the one who is morally filthy ²¹  must continue to be filthy. The ²²  one who is righteous must continue to act righteously, and the one who is holy must continue to be holy.”

[69:22]  ¹ tc Heb “and to the friends for a snare.” The plural of שָׁלוֹם (shalom, “peace”) is used in Ps 55:20 of one’s “friends.” If the reading of the MT is retained here, the term depicts the psalmist’s enemies as a close-knit group of friends who are bound together by their hatred for the psalmist. Some prefer to revocalize the text as וּלְשִׁלּוּמִים (ulÿshillumim, “and for retribution”). In this case the noun stands parallel to פַּח (pakh, “trap”) and מוֹקֵשׁ (moqesh, “snare”), and one might translate, “may their dining table become a trap before them, [a means of] retribution and a snare” (cf. NIV).

[69:23]  ² tn Heb “may their eyes be darkened from seeing.”

[69:23]  ³ tn Heb “make their hips shake continually.”

[69:24]  ⁴ tn Heb “anger.” “Anger” here refers metonymically to divine judgment, which is the practical effect of God’s anger.

[69:24]  ⁵ tn Heb “the rage of your anger.” The phrase “rage of your anger” employs an appositional genitive. Synonyms are joined in a construct relationship to emphasize the single idea. For a detailed discussion of the grammatical point with numerous examples, see Y. Avishur, “Pairs of Synonymous Words in the Construct State (and in Appositional Hendiadys) in Biblical Hebrew,” Semitics 2 (1971), 17-81.

[69:25]  ⁶ tn Heb “in their tents may there not be one who dwells.”

[69:25]  sn In Acts 1:20 Peter applies the language of this verse to Judas’ experience. By changing the pronouns from plural to singular, he is able to apply the ancient curse, pronounced against the psalmist’s enemies, to Judas in particular.

[69:26]  ⁷ tn Or “persecute”; Heb “chase.”

[69:26]  ⁸ tn Heb “for you, the one whom you strike, they chase.”

[69:26]  ⁹ tn Heb “they announce the pain of your wounded ones” (i.e., “the ones whom you wounded,” as the parallel line makes clear).

[69:26]  sn The psalmist is innocent of the false charges made by his enemies (v. 4), but he is also aware of his sinfulness (v. 5) and admits that he experiences divine discipline (v. 26) despite his devotion to God (v. 9). Here he laments that his enemies take advantage of such divine discipline by harassing and slandering him. They “kick him while he’s down,” as the expression goes.

[69:27]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “place sin upon their sin.”

[69:27]  ¹¹ tn Heb “let them not come into your vindication.”

[69:28]  ¹² tn Heb “let them be wiped out of the scroll of the living.”

[69:28]  sn The phrase the scroll of the living occurs only here in the OT. It pictures a scroll or census list containing the names of the citizens of a community. When an individual died, that person’s name was removed from the list. So this curse is a very vivid way of asking that the enemies die.

[69:28]  ¹³ tn Heb “and with the godly let them not be written.”

[69:28]  sn Do not let their names be listed with the godly. This curse pictures a scroll in which God records the names of his loyal followers. The psalmist makes the point that his enemies have no right to be included in this list of the godly.

[15:2]  ¹⁴ tn It is difficult to render the rhetorical force of this passage in meaningful English. The text answers the question “Where should we go?” with four brief staccato-like expressions with a play on the preposition “to”: Heb “Who to the death, to the death and who to the sword, to the sword and who to the starvation, to the starvation and who to the captivity, to the captivity.” The word “death” here is commonly understood to be a poetic substitute for “plague” because of the standard trio of sword, famine, and plague (see, e.g., 14:12 and the notes there). This is likely here and in 18:21. For further support see W. L. Holladay, Jeremiah (Hermeneia), 1:440. The nuance “starvation” rather than “famine” has been chosen in the translation because the referents here are all things that accompany war.

[15:3]  ¹⁵ tn The translation attempts to render in understandable English some rather unusual uses of terms here. The verb translated “punish” is often used that way (cf. BDB 823 s.v. פָּקַד Qal.A.3 and compare usage in Jer 11:22, 13:21). However, here it is accompanied by a direct object and a preposition meaning “over” which is usually used in the sense of appointing someone over someone (cf. BDB 823 s.v. פָּקַד Qal.B.1 and compare usage in Jer 51:27). Moreover the word translated “different ways” normally refers to “families,” “clans,” or “guilds” (cf. BDB 1046-47 s.v. מִשְׁפָּחָה for usage). Hence the four things mentioned are referred to figuratively as officers or agents into whose power the Lord consigns them. The Hebrew text reads: “I will appoint over them four guilds, the sword to kill, the dogs to drag away, the birds of the skies and the beasts of the earth to devour and to destroy.”

[43:11]  ¹⁶ tn As in 15:2 the Hebrew is very brief and staccato-like: “those to death to death, and those to captivity to captivity, and those to the sword to the sword.” As in 15:2 most commentaries and English versions assume that the word “death” refers to death by disease. See the translator’s note on 15:2 and compare also 18:21 where the sword is distinctly connected with “war” or “battle” and is distinct from “killed by death [i.e., disease].”

[15:14]  ¹⁷ tc ‡ Most mss, some of which are significant, read “They are blind guides of the blind” (א¹ C L W Z Θ Ë^1,13 33 Ï lat). The shorter reading is read by א*^,2 B D 0237 Epiph. There is a distinct possibility of omission due to homoioarcton in א*; this manuscript has a word order variation which puts the word τυφλοί (tufloi, “blind”) right before the word τυφλῶν (tuflwn, “of the blind”). This does not explain the shorter reading, however, in the other witnesses, of which B and D are quite weighty. Internal considerations suggest that the shorter reading is original: “of the blind” was likely added by scribes to balance this phrase with Jesus’ following statement about the blind leading the blind, which clearly has two groups in view. A decision is difficult, but internal considerations here along with the strength of the witnesses argue that the shorter reading is more likely original. NA²⁷ places τυφλῶν in brackets, indicating doubts as to its authenticity.

[15:14]  ¹⁸ tn Grk “If blind leads blind.”

[21:19]  ¹⁹ tn Grk “one fig tree.”

[21:19]  sn The fig tree is a variation on the picture of a vine as representing the nation; see Isa 5:1-7.

[22:11]  ²⁰ tn Grk “must do evil still.”

[22:11]  ²¹ tn For this translation see L&N 88.258; the term refers to living in moral filth.

[22:11]  ²² tn Grk “filthy, and the.” This is a continuation of the previous sentence in Greek, but because of the length and complexity of the construction a new sentence was started in the translation.