Yeremia 51:8

51:8 But suddenly Babylonia will fall and be destroyed. ¹ 

Cry out in mourning over it!

Get medicine for her wounds!

Perhaps she can be healed!

Yehezkiel 26:17-18

26:17 They will sing this lament over you: ² 

“‘How you have perished – you have vanished ³  from the seas,

O renowned city, once mighty in the sea,

she and her inhabitants, who spread their terror! ⁴ 

26:18 Now the coastlands will tremble on the day of your fall;

the coastlands by the sea will be terrified by your passing.’ ⁵ 

[51:8]  ¹ tn The verbs in this verse and the following are all in the Hebrew perfect tense, a tense that often refers to a past action or a past action with present results. However, as the translator’s notes have indicated, the prophets use this tense to view the actions as if they were as good as done (the Hebrew prophetic perfect). The stance here is ideal, viewed as already accomplished.

[26:17]  ² tn Heb “and they will lift up over you a lament and they will say to you.”

[26:17]  ³ tn Heb “O inhabitant.” The translation follows the LXX and understands a different Hebrew verb, meaning “cease,” behind the consonantal text. See L. C. Allen, Ezekiel [WBC], 2:72, and D. I. Block, Ezekiel (NICOT), 2:43.

[26:17]  ⁴ tn Heb “she and her inhabitants who placed their terror to all her inhabitants.” The relationship of the final prepositional phrase to what precedes is unclear. The preposition probably has a specifying function here, drawing attention to Tyre’s inhabitants as the source of the terror mentioned prior to this. In this case, one might paraphrase verse 17b: “she and her inhabitants, who spread their terror; yes, her inhabitants (were the source of this terror).”

[26:18]  ⁵ tn Heb “from your going out.”