Ulangan 9:21

9:21 As for your sinful thing ¹  that you had made, the calf, I took it, melted it down, ²  ground it up until it was as fine as dust, and tossed the dust into the stream that flows down the mountain.

Yesaya 21:9

21:9 Look what’s coming!

A charioteer,

a team of horses.” ³ 

When questioned, he replies, ⁴ 

“Babylon has fallen, fallen!

All the idols of her gods lie shattered on the ground!”

Yeremia 10:11

10:11 You people of Israel should tell those nations this:

‘These gods did not make heaven and earth.

They will disappear ⁵  from the earth and from under the heavens.’ ⁶ 

Mikha 5:12

5:12 I will remove the sorcery ⁷  that you practice, ⁸ 

and you will no longer have omen readers living among you. ⁹ 

[9:21]  ¹ tn Heb “your sin.” This is a metonymy in which the effect (sin) stands for the cause (the metal calf).

[9:21]  ² tn Heb “burned it with fire.”

[21:9]  ³ tn Or “[with] teams of horses,” or perhaps, “with a pair of horsemen.”

[21:9]  ⁴ tn Heb “and he answered and said” (so KJV, ASV).

[10:11]  ⁵ tn Aram “The gods who did not make…earth will disappear…” The sentence is broken up in the translation to avoid a long, complex English sentence in conformity with contemporary English style.

[10:11]  ⁶ tn This verse is in Aramaic. It is the only Aramaic sentence in Jeremiah. Scholars debate the appropriateness of this verse to this context. Many see it as a gloss added by a postexilic scribe which was later incorporated into the text. Both R. E. Clendenen (“Discourse Strategies in Jeremiah 10,” JBL 106 [1987]: 401-8) and W. L. Holladay (Jeremiah [Hermeneia], 1:324-25, 334-35) have given detailed arguments that the passage is not only original but the climax and center of the contrast between the Lord and idols in vv. 2-16. Holladay shows that the passage is a very carefully constructed chiasm (see accompanying study note) which argues that “these” at the end is the subject of the verb “will disappear” not the attributive adjective modifying heaven. He also makes a very good case that the verse is poetry and not prose as it is rendered in the majority of modern English versions.

[10:11]  sn This passage is carefully structured and placed to contrast the Lord who is living and eternal (v. 10) and made the heavens and earth (v. 12) with the idols who did not and will disappear. It also has a very careful concentric structure in the original text where “the gods” is balanced by “these,” “heavens” is balance by “from under the heavens,” “the earth” is balanced by “from the earth,” and “did not make” is balanced and contrasted in the very center by “will disappear.” The structure is further reinforced by the sound play/wordplay between “did not make” (Aram לָא עֲבַדוּ [la’ ’avadu]) and “will disappear” (Aram יֵאבַדוּ [ye’vadu]). This is the rhetorical climax of Jeremiah’s sarcastic attack on the folly of idolatry.

[5:12]  ⁷ tn Heb “magic charms” (so NCV, TEV); NIV, NLT “witchcraft”; NAB “the means of divination.” The precise meaning of this Hebrew word is uncertain, but note its use in Isa 47:9, 12.

[5:12]  ⁸ tn Heb “from your hands.”

[5:12]  ⁹ tn Heb “and you will not have omen-readers.”