The Twelve Minor Prophets are “minor” only in regard to the quantity of their writings that have come down to us. In fact, in Hebrew they are simply called “the Dozen,” with no mention of minor. The longest among these books, Hosea and Zechariah, are barely a sixth the length of Isaiah, Jeremiah, or Ezekiel, and some of these Prophets show only three, two, or even one chapter. (The brevity might reflect the temporal brevity of their missions, in contrast to the three major prophets, each of whom was active for decades.) One of the twelve, moreover, Jonah, doesn’t really belong. The Book of Jonah was put in this group because it is a very short text about a prophet; however, in fact it is not, like the others, a book of prophecies but rather a fable about prophecy featuring a fictitious prophet, and as such it really should have been placed in Ketuvim, the miscellaneous writings. (Consequently, it will be accorded its own introduction here.) “Minor,” then, has nothing to do with the resonance or power of these Prophets, and at the very best, Hosea and Amos are among the greatest biblical Prophets, though their books weigh in, respectively, at fourteen and nine chapters according to the conventional chapter divisions.
Hosea and Amos are the first of the so-called literary prophets, and it is a mystery why in the eighth century B.C.E. Hebrew prophets should have begun to cast their messages in writing—chiefly, in poetry. There are frequent appearances of prophets in the early biblical narratives—Samuel, Nathan, Elijah, and Elisha are the most familiar names, and quite a few others enter the sundry stories. These prophets are said to exert a certain divinatory power; some are reported to work miracles; and most assume a role of moral castigation, which, however, is usually directed to rulers, not to the general populace. There is no indication that any of these early figures used writing as a medium for their prophecies. Then, probably in the 760s B.C.E., a cattle herder and arborist from a small village near Jerusalem makes his way from the kingdom of Judah to the northern kingdom of Israel and begins to inveigh, in powerful poetry, against the moral and economic crimes of its inhabitants. While some of the other prophets come from a priestly background, it is noteworthy that the first among them is of peasant stock, and yet literate, which might offer a clue about the dissemination of literacy in this culture. He evinces a mastery of the parallelistic form of Hebrew verse, which lends itself to strong emphasis through interechoing utterances; and he uses this form, among other purposes, to convey to his audience the urgent imperative of the prophetic calling:
Do two walk together
if they have not first agreed?
Does the lion roar in the forest
unless it has taken prey?
Does the maned beast put forth its voice from its lair
if it has not made a catch? …
A lion roars,
who does not fear?
The Master, the LORD, speaks.
Who cannot prophesy? (Amos 3:3–4 and 8)
Amos provides a bit of autobiographical information in responding to a challenge from a northern priest. About others of the Twelve Minor Prophets we know less, or nothing at all. Hosea, who probably prophesied in the generation after Amos, is definitely from the northern kingdom, and some of his writing appears to reflect traditions about the patriarchs that diverge from those that appear in Genesis, the larger part of which was written and certainly edited in the south. He is enjoined to marry a whore, but whether this is an actual biographical fact or merely a symbolic gesture is not entirely certain. About Joel nothing is known, and the dating of his four chapters is elusive. Of Obadiah, represented by a single chapter, all that is inferable is that because of his angry doomsaying against Edom, he probably wrote during the last years of the kingdom of Judah, when the Edomites were active collaborators with the Babylonians in their onslaught against Jerusalem. The ordering of the twelve is not strictly chronological, and thus Micah, the next in sequence after Obadiah and Jonah, would have been active after the destruction of the northern kingdom in 721 B.C.E. and also after the incursion of Sennacherib into Judah in 701 B.C.E., both reflected in his writing. One famous passage, 4:1–5, the exalted vision of teaching going out from Zion and the nations grinding their swords into plowshares, is nearly identical with Isaiah 2:2–4, and may well be the insertion of a later editor, although it is at least possible that Micah was Isaiah’s source. Scholars have detected other late materials in his text, which is common for any Prophetic book longer than a couple of chapters. In any case, Micah’s noble vision of the LORD requiring justice and humility more than spates of animal sacrifice puts him early in the line of prophets that set ethical behavior above the Temple cult as Israel’s primary responsibility.
Nahum (three chapters) is another prophet about whom precious little is known. His book is followed in the canonical order by Habakkuk. Here, again, there are three brief chapters with little indication of historical context. The invocation of a threat from the Chaldean army suggests a date not long before the destruction of the kingdom of Judah by the Babylonians in 586 B.C.E., but even that has been disputed by some scholars. Zephaniah, the next book in the canonical order, has a superscription reporting that he was active during the reign of King Josiah (640–609 B.C.E.). Some have inferred that he wrote before Josiah’s sweeping reforms in 622 B.C.E. He fulminates about the imminent Day of the LORD, which is also a motif in other Prophets, and which is imagined to be realized when Jerusalem will be destroyed. Haggai and Zechariah are the latest of the Twelve who can be confidently dated. They prophesied in the later decades of the fifth century B.C.E. and were part of the early community of those who had returned to Jerusalem from Babylonian exile after the enabling edict of the Persian emperor Cyrus issued in 538 B.C.E. Both Haggai and Zechariah are concerned with the project of rebuilding the Temple and establishing safeguards for its ritual purity. Both ally themselves with Zerubbabel, the Persian-appointed governor of the province of Yehud (formerly the kingdom of Judah) and Joshua the high priest. This concentration on the practical task of restoring the Temple reflects a reduction of the grand moral sweep of many of the earlier prophets.
Malachi, the concluding book of the Twelve Minor Prophets, again three relatively short chapters, takes its title not from the proper name of a prophet but rather from a general designation: the Hebrew means “my messenger,” and quite a few times the prophets are elsewhere referred to as God’s messengers. This text also appears to be post-exilic, but, even in its brevity, it is uncertain whether it is the work of a single writer. In any case, it does provide an apt conclusion to the collection of all the prophets by invoking Elijah, the iconic prophet of the preliterary era, in a promise of a restorative, not destructive, Day of the LORD.
Look, I am about to send to you
Elijah the prophet
before the coming of the day of the LORD,
great and fearsome.
And he shall bring fathers’ hearts back to sons
and the sons’ hearts to their fathers. (Malachi 3:23–24)
This is not altogether as upbeat as it initially sounds because this last poetic line of the book is triadic, and its third verset reads as follows: “lest I come and strike the land with utter destruction.” That is, if people know what is good for them, they will embrace Elijah’s project of bringing fathers’ hearts back to sons. Otherwise, the usual prophetic warning of disaster remains in place. In any case, this conclusion of the Book of Malachi, of which much has been made by both Jewish and Christian tradition, vividly illustrates the enduring power of the Minor Prophets. Each works on a small scale; many of these texts tend to be fragmentary; most of them are stripped of the enhancing sense of historical context that Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel give us. But despite all this, these little books incorporate moments of soaring poetry and visionary illumination that still speak to the heart and to the religious imagination.
1The word of the LORD that came to Hosea son of Beeri in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, Hezekiah, kings of Judah and in the days of Jeroboam son of Joash king of Israel. 2When the LORD began to speak to Hosea, the LORD said to Hosea:
Go, take you a wife of whoring
and children of whoring,
for the land has surely whored
away from the LORD.
3And he went and took Gomer daughter of Diblaim, and she conceived and bore him a son. 4And the LORD said to him: “Call his name Jezreel, for soon I will make a reckoning for the blood of Jezreel against the house of Jehu and put an end to the kingdom of the house of Israel. 5And it shall be on that day I will break the bow of Israel in the Valley of Jezreel.” 6And she conceived again and bore a daughter. And He said to him: “Call her name Lo-Ruhamah, for I will no more show mercy to the house of Israel nor will I forgive them in any way. 7But to the house of Judah I will show mercy and rescue them through the LORD their God, but I will not rescue them through bow and sword and in battle with horses and with horsemen.” 8And she weaned Lo-Ruhamah and conceived and bore a son. 9And He said: “Call his name, Lo-Ami, Not My People, and I will not be yours.”
CHAPTER 1 NOTES
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1. in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, Hezekiah, kings of Judah. These monarchs reigned from the middle of the eighth century B.C.E. to the later decades of that century. Given that Hosea was a prophet of the northern kingdom, this notation probably reflects the presence of a later Judahite editor who wanted to place the prophecies in a time frame more familiar to his Judahite audience.
and in the days of Jeroboam son of Joash king of Israel. It has puzzled scholars why only Jeroboam is mentioned because there were several kings of Israel during this period, most of them reigning rather briefly.
2. When the LORD began to speak. The literal sense is “in the beginning of the LORD’s speaking”—the grammatical structure is the same as “When God began to create” at the beginning of Genesis, although a different word for “beginning” is used there.
take you a wife of whoring. Some commentators think she may have been a cult-prostitute rather than a whore for profit, but this notion may well be merely an effort to mitigate the shocking character of what Hosea is commanded to do.
for the land has surely whored. While the Hebrew verb looks like a future, verb tenses are fluid in biblical poetry, and God is surely objecting to trespasses already committed.
4. Call his name Jezreel. Many set out this whole passage as poetry, but it does not really scan.
I will make a reckoning for the blood of Jezreel against the house of Jehu. Jehu, usurping the throne, killed Jezebel and carried out a mass execution of those loyal to her (2 Kings 9–10). The Book of Kings represents these bloody acts as authorized by God, but Hosea appears to have had a very different view of them.
5. I will break the bow of Israel in the Valley of Jezreel. This could be a specific reference to the Assyrian army that repeatedly threatened Israel in this period.
6. Lo-Ruhamah. This inauspicious name means “Not Shown Mercy.” One hopes that this whole story of marrying a whore and blighting two of the three offspring with dire names was a Prophetic fiction, not something Hosea actually did, but there is no way of knowing.
nor will I forgive them in any way. The Hebrew does not show a negative, but this translation assumes that “no” is carried over from the first clause as a double-duty term.
7. But to the house of Judah I will show mercy. It is possible that Hosea, as a prophet of the northern kingdom, draws this contrast to make a didactic point to his audience, even though some scholars infer that this is an insertion by a Judahite editor.
9. and I will not be yours. This brief concluding clause is perfectly coherent as it stands in the Masoretic Text, but some interpreters are inclined to infer that a word was dropped: “I will be your God.”
1And the number of the Israelites shall be like the sand of the sea that cannot be measured and cannot be counted, and it shall happen, instead of its being said of them, “You Are Not My People,” it shall be said of them, “Children of the Living God.” 2And the people of Judah and the people of Israel shall gather together and set over them a single chief, and they shall go up from the lands, for great is the day of Jezreel.
3Say to your brothers, “My People,”
and to your sisters, “She Is Shown Mercy.”
4Bring a case against your mother, bring a case,
for she is not My wife,
and I am not her husband.
Let her take off her whoring from her face
and her adultery from between her breasts,
5lest I strip her naked
and set her out as the day she was born.
And I will turn her into a desert
and make her like parched land
and let her die of thirst.
6And to her children I will show no mercy,
for they are the children of whoring.
7For their mother played the whore,
she who conceived them acted shamefully.
For she said, “Let me go
after my lovers
who give me my bread and water,
my wool and my flax,
my oil and my unguents.”
8Therefore I am about to hedge in your way with thorns
and raise a wall for her,
and she shall not find her paths.
9And she shall run after her lovers
and shall not catch them,
and she shall seek them and not find them.
And she shall say, “Let me
go back to my first husband,
for it was then better for me than now.”
10And she did not know
the new grain and the wine and the oil,
and silver I showered upon her
and gold that they fashioned for Baal.
11Therefore will I turn back and take away
My new grain in its time
and My wine in its season
and reclaim My wool and My flax
that would cover her nakedness.
12And now, I will lay bare her shame
before the eyes of her lovers,
and no man shall save her.
13And I will put an end to her rejoicing,
to her festivals, her new moons, and her sabbaths
and all her appointed times.
14And I will wither her vines and her fig trees
of which she said, “They are a whore’s pay for me
that my lovers gave to me.”
And I will turn them into scrubland,
and the beasts of the field shall devour them.
15And I will make a reckoning against her for the days of the Baalim
to whom she burned incense,
and she put on her nose-ring and her jewelry
and went after her lovers,
but Me she forgot, said the LORD.
16Therefore, I am about to beguile her
and will lead her to the wilderness
and speak to her very heart.
17And I will give her from there her vineyards
and the Valley of Achor an opening to hope,
and she shall sing out there as in the days of her youth,
as on the day she came up from the land of Egypt.
18And it shall be, on that day, said the LORD,
she shall call Me “my Husband”
and no longer call Me “my Baal.”
19And I will take away the names of the Baalim from your mouth,
and they shall no more be recalled by their name.
20And I will seal a pact with them on that day,
with the beasts of the field and with the fowl of the heavens
and the creeping things of the earth.
And bow and sword and battle
will I break from the earth,
and I will make them lie down secure.
21And I will betroth you to Me forever,
I will betroth you in right and in justice
and in kindness and in mercy.
22And I will betroth you in faithfulness,
and you shall know that I am the LORD.
23And it shall be on that day,
I will answer, said the LORD,
I will answer for the heavens,
and they shall answer for the earth.
24And the earth shall answer for the new grain
and for the wine and for the oil,
and they shall answer for Jezreel.
25And I will sow her for Me in the land
and show mercy to Lo-Ruhamah,
and I will say to Lo-Ami, “You are My people,”
and he shall say, “You are my God.”
CHAPTER 2 NOTES
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1. And the number of the Israelites shall be like the sand of the sea that cannot be measured. These words manifestly introduce a new prophecy, one of national restoration, after the doomsaying of the first chapter. They pointedly invoke the language of God’s grand promise to Abraham in Genesis.
2. And the people of Judah and the people of Israel shall gather together. Some scholars detect here the hand of the Judahite editor who envisages the reunification of the southern and the northern kingdoms (presumably, after the northern kingdom was destroyed), though it is certainly possible that Hosea could have imagined a reunited nation as part of his utopian vision of the future.
they shall go up from the lands. The received text shows “land,” but “to go up from the land” is a phrase that would imply leaving the country, as in Exodus 1:10. The New Jewish Publication Society’s rendering, “rise up from the ground” is philologically possible but strained. This translation assumes the original text had a plural, “lands,” implying return from the lands of exile.
4. Bring a case against your mother. The language of a court case is used because she has committed adultery and so deserves to be hauled before a judge.
Let her take off her whoring from her face. This expression is a metonymy: she has put kohl around her eyes, reddened her lips, and set a ring in her nose, to ply her whore’s trade.
and her adultery from between her breasts. This is a parallel metonymy: she has put a sachet of fragrance between her breasts (compare the Song of Songs 1:13) to make herself more alluring to her lovers.
5. And I will turn her into a desert. As often happens in biblical poetry, the prophet switches from one set of images—Israel as a promiscuous female body—to another—the barren desert as a representation of national ruin.
7. their mother … / she who conceived them. While these two terms are conventional in poetic parallelism, the second one, intimating the physical act in which conception takes place, underscores the wife’s sexual betrayal of her husband.
my bread and water, / my wool and my flax, / my oil and my unguents. Zeev Wisman aptly notes that there is a progression here from the basic elements of food and drink to the materials needed to clothe the body to the more luxurious substances used to gratify the body and make it attractive. The last word here, rendered by some as “drink,” means “balm” in Proverbs 3:8 and “unguents” seems right for this context.
8. your way … / for her. The switch in grammatical person is common in biblical usage.
9. And she shall run after her lovers / and shall not catch them. This line should be taken together with the preceding one: her way is blocked and bristles with thorns, and she cannot see where she should go; desperately running after her lovers, she finds herself lost and trapped. All this leads her to the realization expressed in the next line that she was better off with her husband.
10. it was I who gave her. The word for “I,” ʾanokhi, is placed before the verb for emphasis: she had thought that her lovers provided all her needs (verse 7), but it was actually God.
silver I showered upon her. The literal sense of the verb is “multiplied” or “made abundant.”
that they fashioned for Baal. God had bestowed national prosperity on Israel, including precious silver and gold, but these were then used by the Israelites to fashion idols for Baal.
12. her shame. This is an equivalent of “her nakedness” at the end of the preceding line.
13. festivals … new moons … sabbaths. All these nouns are singular in the Hebrew but with a collective sense.
15. the days of the Baalim. The probable reference is to festival days when the Baalim were worshipped.
16. Therefore. It should be noted that this word (lakhen) is used by Hosea as a transitional term rather than one of causation to mark the beginning of a new prophecy.
beguile. Although this Hebrew verb elsewhere means “to entice” or “to seduce,” here it clearly has a positive sense, suggesting tenderness.
17. the Valley of Achor an opening to hope. The Hebrew ʿakhor suggests “trouble,” but in the bright future this very place with its dark associations will become the entranceway to hope.
sing out. The Hebrew verb ʿanah also often means “to answer,” but a clearly attested sense is “to speak out” or “to sing out.” That is the compelling sense here. The third verset, which invokes the moment of exodus from Egypt, probably means to make us recall the Song of the Sea that Moses and Miriam sing to celebrate God’s triumph over Egypt.
18. she shall call Me “my Husband” / and no longer call Me “my Baal.” This line turns on an untranslatable pun: baʿal is one of two Hebrew words for “husband,” but it is also the name of the principal Canaanite deity; the Hebrew synonym, ʾish, is the word translated here as “husband.”
19. the names of the Baalim. What is referred to is invoking the name of the deity in worship or in vows. Plurals are used because Baalim (im is the masculine plural suffix) can refer not to Baal alone but to a plurality of Canaanite deities.
20. a pact … / with the beasts of the field. A kind of edenic harmony will be imposed on nature, so that even ravening beasts and birds of prey will be pacific. Peace in nature will be coordinated with peace among men, as the next line spells out.
21. I will betroth you to Me forever. The prophet now reverts to the marriage metaphor, forseeing that the wretchedness of adultery will be replaced by a faithful union. The triple repetition of “I will betroth you” sounds very much like a performative speech-act, God pronouncing the wedding vows.
23. I will answer for. “Answer for” is probably the best English equivalent here for the Hebrew verb that means “to answer” (in each instance followed by a direct object in the Hebrew). The idea is that all the constituents of nature will be harmoniously joined in mutual responsibility, giving each to each.
25. I will sow her. This declaration—a single Hebrew word—immediately follows “Jezreel” at the end of the previous line: yizrʿeʾel / uzerʿatiha and so is clearly a play on the etymology of the name, which means “God will sow.” The very valley that in the first chapter was associated with crimes because of all the blood that was shed there is now to live up to its name by becoming a place of fecund growth.
You are my God. The Hebrew has only “my God,” but the verb “to be,” according to standard usage, is implied, and “my God” by itself would sound like an exclamation rather than an affirmation.
1And the LORD said to me, “Again, go love a woman beloved by a companion yet an adulteress, like the love of God for the Israelites when they turn to other gods and to lovers of cups of the grape.” And I loved a lusting woman. 2And I hired her for myself with fifteen weights of silver and a homer of barley and a letekh of barley. 3And I said to her, “Many days you shall dwell with me. You shall not play the whore and you shall be no man’s, and I, too, shall not come to bed with you. 4For many days shall the Israelites dwell without king and without commander and without sacrifice and without sacred pillar and without ephod and without teraphim. 5Afterward, the Israelites shall turn back and seek the LORD their God and David their king, and they shall revere the LORD and His bounty in the latter days.”
CHAPTER 3 NOTES
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1. said to me, “Again. It should be noted that the Masoretic cantillation markings attach “again” to the words introducing God’s speech, “And the LORD said to me again,” and that reading is possible.
a companion. This probably means her husband, but it could conceivably indicate a devoted lover.
And I loved a lusting woman. The Hebrew of the received text looks quite suspect. The literal sense of the last two words is “raisin cakes” (though others think that the meaning is “grape cups”). The Revised English Bible tries to rescue some sense from this by translating “the cakes of the raisin offered to idols.” The present translation adopts the emendation proposed by Tur-Sinai: instead of the Masoretic ohavey ʾashishey ʿanavim, he reads waʾohav ʾeshet ʿagavim.
2. a homer of barley and a letekh of barley. A letekh is half a ḥomer, so the repetition appears to be a way of saying, “a homer and a half of barley.”
3. shall not come to bed. A verb of sexual intimacy is implied in the elliptical Hebrew.
4. the Israelites dwell without king and without commander. This is a prophecy of the loss of national sovereignty and of exile.
without ephod and without teraphim. Both are divinatory devices.
5. David their king. Many scholars conclude that the reference to David was inserted by the Judahite editor, although it is perhaps possible that Hosea as a prophet of the northern kingdom envisaged a utopian future in which the two kingdoms would reunite under the divinely elected Davidic dynasty.
1Hear the word of the LORD, O Israelites,
for the LORD has a brief
against the dwellers of the land.
For there is no truth and there is no trust
and there is no knowledge of the LORD in the land.
2Falsely swear and murder
and steal and commit adultery.
They burst bonds—and blood spills upon blood.
3Therefore the land does languish,
and all those dwelling within it are bleak.
With the beasts of the field and the fowl of the heavens
and with the fish of the sea, too—they shall perish.
4But let no man inveigh
and let no man rebuke
when your people inveighs against priest.
5And you stumbled by day,
and the prophet, too, stumbled by night,
and I will destroy your people.
6My people is destroyed without knowledge,
for you—you rejected knowledge,
and I rejected you from being priest to Me.
And you forgot your God’s teaching—
I will forget your sons on My part.
7As they increased, they offended against Me,
I will exchange their honor for disgrace.
8My people’s offense offerings they eat,
and they long for its crimes.
9And it shall be, people and priest alike,
I will make a reckoning with them for their ways,
and for their acts I will pay them back.
10And they shall eat yet not be sated,
play the whore yet not burst bonds.
For they have forsaken the LORD
11to keep on whoring and drinking
and new wine that takes away the mind.
12My people asks oracles of a tree,
and his rod tells him what to do.
For a spirit of whoring made them stray,
and they played the whore against their God.
13On the mountaintops they sacrificed,
on the hills they offered incense,
beneath the oak and the poplar,
and the terebinth of goodly shade.
Therefore their daughters go whoring,
and their daughters-in-law are adulterous.
14I will make no reckoning with your daughters for whoring
and with your daughters-in-law who are adulterous.
For they themselves go off with the whores
and with the cult-harlots they sacrifice,
and a people undiscerning comes to grief.
15If you go whoring, Israel,
and do not swear, “As the LORD lives.”
16For like a wayward cow
Israel was wayward.
like a sheep in an open field?
17Ephraim is stuck fast to idols.
18When their swilling is over,
they go on to whore.
They love the disgrace of their defenders.
19The wind bundles them in its wings,
and their altars are shamed.
CHAPTER 4 NOTES
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1. trust. The Hebrew term ḥesed is usually represented in this translation as “kindness,” but it also often implies loyalty in a covenant or relationship, and that is clearly the salient meaning here.
2. They burst bonds. The Hebrew says merely “burst” (which could also mean “break through” or “spread out”), but what the verb appears to imply here is reprobate behavior, and thus “bonds” has been added for clarification.
blood spills upon blood. Literally, “blood touches blood.”
4. when your people inveighs against priest. The Hebrew of this clause is obscure and looks as though it has been scrambled in scribal transmission. It reads literally: “and your people is like the quarrels [or inveighings] of a priest.” The general idea of the whole line would seem to be: offer no criticism when your people inveighs against the priests, for they deserve it.
5. you. The probable reference is to the priest, matched by the mention of the prophet in the next verset. Both have betrayed their calling of providing moral instruction to the people.
7. As they increased. Others take this to mean “most of them.”
8. My people’s offense offerings they eat, / and they long for its crimes. The priests had a substantial portion of the sacrificial animal set aside for their own consumption. Here they are represented as wanting the people to transgress more and more because that would bring them more offense offerings to eat.
10. play the whore yet not burst bonds. The second verb is the same verb that is used in verse 2. In the understanding behind this translation, the meaning would be: they were promiscuous without ever attaining the immoral freedom of total libertinage, just as they ate (perhaps even stuffed themselves) without being sated. Others, looking toward the sense of “spread out” that the verb sometimes has, think the reference is to lack of progeny from their promiscuous couplings.
12. his rod tells him what to do. This would be a divining rod. The words “what to do” are added in the translation to make clear that this is an activity of seeking guidance parallel to the asking of an oracle in the first verset.
against their God. The literal sense of the Hebrew preposition is “from under,” the word “under” suggesting “authority.”
13. On the mountaintops they sacrificed, / on the hills. These terms, and the small catalogue of trees that follows, suggest worship of nature gods, often accompanied by fertility rites—hence the invocation of the whoring daughters in the next line.
14. I will make no reckoning with your daughters. They are not accountable because they have been led astray by their fathers; the “they themselves” who go off whoring are the fathers.
15. let Judah not be held guilty. Again, this is often seen as an intervention of the Judahite editor, though the inference is not inevitable.
do not come to Gilgal. Gilgal was a well-known cultic site in the north, near the Jordan.
nor go up to Beth-Aven. Beth-Aven, which means “house of sin,” is probably not the actual place-name but a polemic substitution for Bethel, one of the two principal cultic sites of the northern kingdom.
16. Now shall the LORD herd him / like a sheep in an open field? If Israel behaves like a cow that swerves from the way that she should go (occasionally they were used as draft animals), how could one expect God to allow it the freedom of a sheep pacifically grazing in an open field?
17. Let him be. This is a little obscure but it probably means that since Ephraim has become so addicted to idolatry, there is no point in trying to rebuke or dissuade him—let him wallow in his vile cult.
18. When their swilling is over. The Hebrew implies that they have recovered from their drunken stupor—now they are ready for sex with a whore.
They love the disgrace of their defenders. This clause is obscure and may have suffered textual damage. First, the two words represented as “they love,” ʾahavu heivu, look strange (they might mean “they love, give”), and the second word may be a dittography triggered by the last two syllables of the preceding word. It is also not clear who the defenders are, and the Hebrew says “her defenders.” The conclusion of many traditional Hebrew commentators that the reference is to the leaders of the people is as good a guess as any.
19. The wind bundles them in its wings. The wind will carry off the profligate drunkards and fornicators. This is an image similar to the one in Psalm 1 where the wicked are borne off like chaff, but the notion here of being bundled in the wings of the wind evokes the helpless passivity of the practitioners of vice carried away to their destruction.
1Hear this, you priests,
and listen, house of Israel,
and the house of the king, bend your ear,
for against you is the judgment.
For a trap you have been to Mizpah,
and an outspread net against Tabor,
2and have dug a deep pit at Shittim,
but I am chastisement for them all.
3I know Ephraim,
and Israel is not hidden from Me.
For now you have whored, Ephraim,
Israel is defiled.
4Their acts do not let them
turn back to their God.
For the spirit of whoring is within them,
and the LORD they do not know.
5And Israel’s pride bore witness against him,
and Israel and Ephraim stumble in their crime.
Judah, too, has stumbled with them.
6With their sheep and their cattle they go
to seek out the LORD.
But they do not find Him.
He slipped away from them.
7The LORD they betrayed,
Now the new moon shall consume them,
together with their fields.
8Sound the ram’s horn at Gibeah,
the trumpet at Ramah.
Shout out at Beth-Aven:
9Ephraim shall be a desolation
on the day of stern rebuke.
Among the tribes of Israel
I have faithfully made it known.
10The nobles of Judah have become
like those who move boundaries.
Upon them I will pour
My wrath like water.
11Exploited is Ephraim,
and crushed in justice,
For he undertook to go
12And I am like the moth to Ephraim
and like rot to the house of Judah.
13When Ephraim saw his sickness
and Judah his running sores,
Ephraim went off to Assyria
But he cannot cure you
and will not give you healing.
14For I am like a lion to Ephraim
and like the king of beasts to the house of Judah.
I, I will maul the prey and go off,
bear it away and no one will save it.
15I will go, return to My place,
until they sense their guilt and seek Me,
when in straits they shall search for Me.
CHAPTER 5 NOTES
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1. for against you is the judgment. Although others understand the polyvalent Hebrew term mishpat differently, the most likely meaning is: You are about to be sentenced, or brought to justice, for your crimes.
2. Shittim. The Masoretic Text shows an obscure word, seitim, but most scholars conclude this is a mistake for the well-attested place-name Shittim, which would make it, plausibly, the third in a series of place-names here.
5. Israel’s pride bore witness against him. Literally, “bore witness in his face.” While the verb here can also mean “to answer” or “to call out,” what is clearly involved is testimony of a crime, continuing the judicial image of verse 1.
6. With their sheep and their cattle. These are the sacrificial animals they bring with them when they go to seek the LORD.
7. for alien sons they bore. This could mean either sons estranged from God because they have been raised in alien ways or sons begotten with foreign women.
Now the new moon shall consume them. This clause is mysterious. Many emendations have been proposed for “new moon,” ḥodesh, but none is very convincing. Perhaps the reference is to the new moon celebrations, tainted with pagan practices that will turn into catastrophes when God carries out judgment against these people.
8. After you, Benjamin. Since the sounding of the ram’s horn and trumpet is a marshaling of troops for battle, this may indicate a rallying of the tribes, north and south, to face the invader.
10. like those who move boundaries. Moving stone boundary markers in order to lay claim to land that belongs to someone else is strictly forbidden (see Deuteronomy 27:17). The nobles of Judah are accused of expropriating land, though not necessarily by shifting boundary markers. Why Judah is introduced here is not entirely clear.
11. after an empty thing. As elsewhere, the referent is idolatry.
13. King Jareb. This term is obscure. It might be a proper name, as tentatively assumed in this translation, or it might be a peculiar formation from the verbal stem that means “to quarrel” or “to contest.” The context, however, suggests turning to a person in power for help.
15. I will go, return to My place. This is an interesting biblical intimation of the idea of deus absconditus. God, in His anger against Israel, withdraws from them to His celestial abode, where He will await the moment they recognize their guilt and seek Him out before He will return to Israel.
1Come let us return to the LORD,
for He mauled but He will heal us,
He struck but He will bind up.
2He will revive us after two days,
on the third day raise us up,
that we may live in His presence,
3and that we may know, pursue knowing the LORD.
Like daybreak His emergence is sure,
and He will come to us like the rain,
like the latter rain He will shower the earth.
4What shall I do for you Ephraim,
What shall I do for you, Judah,
When your trust is like a morning cloud,
like early dew that melts away?
5Therefore have I hacked among your prophets,
slain them with the utterances of My mouth,
and your sentence will come out like light.
6For trust did I want and not sacrifice
and knowledge of God more than burnt offerings.
7But they like humankind breached the covenant,
there they betrayed Me.
8Gilead is a town of criminals,
covered with tracks of blood.
9And like gangs who lie in wait for a man
is the band of the priests.
They murder on the road to Shechem.
Why, debauchery they perform!
10In the house of Israel I have seen a horror.
There the whoring is Ephraim’s,
Israel is defiled.
11Judah, too, He sets a harvest for you.
CHAPTER 6 NOTES
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1. Come let us return to the LORD. These words, until the end of verse 3, are the speech of the Israelites, imagining that their present suffering will be of brief duration and that God will heal their wounds and revive them. God’s angry rejoinder begins in verse 4.
3. like the latter rain He will shower the earth. As often happens in the Bible, there is a pun hiding close to the surface. God’s instruction to humankind (the word translated as “shower” also means “instruct”) is life-giving, like the rain. But the verb for “teach” or “instruct,” yoreh, is also a homonym of the noun that means “former rain,” often paired with malqosh, “latter rain.” One should also note that in these two lines God is compared first to the sun, then to the rain—both giving life to earth.
4. like a morning cloud, / like early dew. These two similes pick up the invocation of vivifying rain in the speech of the Israelites (verse 3), but with the meaning turned entirely around: the moisture-bearing clouds and dew quickly dissipate, like the purported trust of the Israelites.
5. your prophets. Given the two verbs of destruction, these would have to be false prophets.
like light. The Masoretic Text lacks the particle that means “like,” but this single letter, kaf, has probably been dropped through haplography because the immediately preceding Hebrew word ends in a kaf.
7. like humankind. This sounds a bit odd, but it may express the idea that humankind has a proclivity for treachery, as David Kimchi proposed. Others emend keʾadam to beʾadam, “in Adam” (or Admah), construing the word as a place-name. This would make better sense of “there” in the second verset.
9. They murder on the road to Shechem. This is a bitter irony because Shechem was supposed to be one of the towns of refuge where an unintentional manslaughterer could flee.
11. Judah, too, He sets a harvest for you. This whole clause is puzzling. One reading proposed by a number of interpreters is that God has prepared a harvest of retribution for offending Judah. In any case, this looks like an orphaned verset because there is no matching second verset. The three Hebrew words that follow in the canonical chapter division in all likelihood belong to the beginning of the next chapter, and that is how they are treated in this translation.
6:11bWhen I would restore the fortunes of My people,
1and I would heal Israel,
Ephraim’s crime is laid bare
and the evils of Samaria,
for they have acted in lies;
the thief comes within
and the gang raids outside.
2And let them not say in their heart
that I have recalled all their evil.
Now their deeds have turned them around—
before My face they are.
3In their evil they gladden the king,
and with their deceits, the nobles.
4All of them are adulterers,
The baker ceases from stirring,
from kneading the dough till it rises.
5On the day of our king
the nobles made him sick with poisoned wine.
He had set his hand with the scoffers.
6For they drew near in their ambush,
All night their leader sleeps,
in the morning he burns like a tongue of flame.
7They all grow hot like an oven
and devour their judges
All of their kings have fallen,
none among them calls to Me.
8Ephraim among the nations—
it is he who mingles.
not turned over.
9Strangers consumed his strength,
but he did not know.
His hair turned suddenly gray,
but he did not know.
10And Israel’s pride bore witness against it,
yet for all that they did not seek him.
11And Ephraim became like a
foolish senseless dove.
To Egypt they called,
to Assyria went.
12Where they go
I will spread My net upon them.
Like the fowl of the heavens I will bring them down.
I will bind them as their kinfolk listen.
13Woe to them for they have wandered from Me.
Disaster for them, as they rebelled against Me!
Shall I redeem them
when they have spoken against Me lies?
14And they did not cry out to Me from their heart,
but they wailed upon their couch,
over grain and new wine they gashed themselves,
they swerved away from Me.
15I braced, I strengthened their arm,
but against Me they plotted evil.
16They go back to what is worthless,
they are like a faulty bow.
Their nobles shall fall by the sword
because of their angry tongue,
which is their mockery in the land of Egypt.
CHAPTER 7 NOTES
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6:11b. When I would restore the fortunes of My people. God would like to show favor to His people, but Israel continues in its waywardness.
2. I have recalled all their evil. The evident sense is: let them not think I have done registering all their evil, for there is still more.
Now their deeds have turned them around. The image is of miscreants who have turned their backs on God or have hidden from Him. Now, their evil deeds turn them around and they are exposed to God’s head-on gaze.
3. In their evil they gladden the king. This is best understood as pillorying the king for his complicity with them, delighting in their evil acts.
4. like a burning oven. The simile of the burning oven, which will be elaborated, is chosen because of the association of heat with sexual desire—in Hebrew, as in other languages, to be in heat is one of the idioms for sexual readiness.
The baker ceases from stirring. Because the oven of desire is stoked, the baker is presumed to have finished his task of preparing the dough and now puts it in the heated oven. But the stirring, the kneading, and the fermenting of the dough do not appear to have a further figurative referent.
5. the day of our king. This term has no equivalent elsewhere but probably designates the king’s birthday or a similar celebration for the monarch.
the nobles made him sick with poisoned wine. The court atmosphere roils with vicious conspiracies, the king no better than his murderous nobles. All this may well reflect the recent history of the northern kingdom, which was marked with assassinations and coups.
He had set his hand with the scoffers. Although the meaning is not altogether clear, this probably indicates that the king had been involved with dubious characters, thus providing a motive for his assassination.
6. their hearts like an oven. Now the referent of the oven simile shifts from adulterers to conspirators, hot to carry out their plot against the king.
7. All of their kings have fallen. The plural here does seem to evoke the bloody court history of the northern kingdom.
8. Ephraim among the nations— / it is he who mingles. This is in all likelihood a critique of the repeated quest for foreign alliances on the part of the northern kingdom.
like a loaf / not turned over. The simile now dispenses with the oven and imagines a round flat loaf of bread baked on coals (as present-day Bedouins still bake their pittah), which, not having been turned over, is burned on the bottom and unbaked on the top.
11. like a / foolish senseless dove. It is a dove that lacks the homing instinct a dove (or pigeon—the Hebrew term covers both) should have. Thus Ephraim seeks out Egypt and Assyria.
12. My net. Nets were often used to trap fowl. The metaphor of fowling picks up the foolish dove in verse 11.
I will bind them. The translation reads, with many scholars, ʾeʾsurem for the Masoretic ayesirem, “I will afflict them,” which doesn’t make much sense in context and shows grammatically anomalous vowel-points in the received text.
as their kinfolk listen. The Hebrew is obscure and the translation conjectural.
14. they gashed themselves. The Masoretic Text has yitgoraru, meaning uncertain. This translation reads, with the Septuagint, yitgodadu, the shape of the Hebrew letters for r and d being quite similar. Gashing oneself was a form of imprecating the gods, as in the story of the prophets of Baal at Mount Carmel in 1 Kings 18.
15. I braced. The received text says “I afflicted,” yisarti, but this translation, like that of the New Jewish Publication Society, reads instead yisadti, which can mean “to make firm.”
16. to what is worthless. The Hebrew has two unintelligible monosyllabic words, lo’ ʿal (not above?). The translation reads with the Septuagint and the Syriac labliyaʿal.
which is their mockery in the land of Egypt. There is debate over the meaning of this last cryptic clause, but the sense could be that the Egyptians regard the rash angry speech of the Israelite nobles as a butt of mockery. Some think the reference is to an attempt to seek an alliance with Egypt that becomes a target of ridicule.
1A ram’s horn to your lips!
—he is like an eagle against the LORD’s house.
For they have breached My covenant
and rebelled against My teaching.
2To Me they cry out—
“We know you, O God of Israel!”
3Israel rejects what is good—
an enemy shall pursue him.
4They set up kings but not through Me,
installed nobles but without My knowledge.
From their silver and their gold
they made themselves idols,
5Your calf rejects you, Samaria,
My wrath against them flares.
How long will they fail to be clean?
6And it—a craftsman made it,
and it is not a god.
For shards it shall become,
the calf of Samaria.
7For they sow the wind
and harvest a storm.
Standing grain that has no sprouts,
it will not make flour.
If perhaps it should make some,
strangers shall swallow it up.
8Israel has been swallowed,
now they become among the nations
like a vessel no one wants.
9For they have gone up to Assyria,
a wild ass on its own is Ephraim,
they have made courtship’s plea.
10Though they give gifts among the nations,
and they will soon tremble
from the burden of kings and nobles.
11For Ephraim made many altars
an offense they were for him,
altars to offend.
12I wrote for him My many teachings—
like something strange they were viewed.
13The sacrifices I gave they slaughtered,
The LORD did not accept them favorably.
Now will their crime be recalled,
and a reckoning made for their offense.
14And Israel forgot his Maker
and he built palaces.
And Judah made many fortified towns,
but I set fire to his towns,
and it consumed his citadels.
CHAPTER 8 NOTES
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1. to your lips. Literally, “to your palate.”
he is like an eagle against the LORD’s house. The clause is obscure. The probable referent is an invader of the kingdom of Israel—hence the sounding of the ram’s horn as an alarm. In that case, “the LORD’s house” would have to be the northern kingdom and not, as it usually means, the Temple.
2. We know you, O God of Israel. The Hebrew word order is scrambled. This declaration, made by the people, is clearly a deluded one.
4. that they might be cut off. Their idolatrous ways will lead to their destruction.
5. Your calf. This is the icon used for worship in the northern kingdom. It corresponds to the cherubim in the southern kingdom. It was viewed by the Judahite writers as an idol.
9. a wild ass. The wild ass figures in biblical poetry as a creature that cannot be tamed, living solitary in the wilderness. Israel’s seeking an accommodation with Assyria (represented here as a courtship) manifests its proclivity to go it alone, ignoring both prudent counsel and God’s instruction.
10. give gifts. The Hebrew says only “give,” and “gifts” is supplied as a guess. These could be courtship gifts.
now will I gather them up. Though this phrase is often used for gathering exiles to return to Zion, here it would appear to mean “gather up for destruction.”
13. it was flesh, and they ate. They viewed the sacrifices not as a means of expressing devotion to God but merely as a source of meat meals.
accept them favorably. The object of this verb is the sacrifices.
They shall go back to Egypt. This should probably be understood figuratively: they shall return to a condition of slavery. The likely candidate for enslavers would be the Assyrians.
1Do not rejoice, O Israel,
For you went whoring from your God,
you loved a whore’s pay
on every new grain threshing floor.
2Threshing floor and winepress know them not,
and new wine shall deny them.
3They shall not dwell in the land of the LORD,
and Ephraim shall go back to Egypt
and in Assyria eat unclean things.
4They shall pour no wine libation to the LORD,
and their sacrifices shall not please Him.
Like mourners’ bread it shall be to them,
all who eat it become unclean.
For their food is for their gullet,
it shall not enter the house of the LORD.
5What will you do for the appointed day,
for the day of the LORD’s festival?
6For, look, they go off from destruction.
Egypt gathers them in,
Memphis buries them.
The treasure house for their silver
the thistle shall inherit,
the thorn is in their tents.
7The days of reckoning have arrived,
the days of retribution have arrived.
Israel shall know it.
The prophet is witless,
the man of spirit crazed
by all your crimes,
8The lookout of Ephraim,
the prophet with my God—
a snare is laid in all his ways,
hate in the house of his God.
9They have acted most ruinously
He shall recall their crime,
make a reckoning for their offense.
10Like grapes in the wilderness
I found Israel.
Like the first fruit on the fig tree when it appears
I saw your fathers
and devoted themselves to a shameful god
and became vile things like what they loved.
11Ephraim—their glory shall fly off like a bird,
from birth and from the womb and from conception.
12For should they raise their sons,
I would bereave them of humankind,
for woe to them indeed
when I swerve away from them.
13Ephraim as I saw him—
a palm frond planted in a meadow.
But Ephraim brings out his sons to the slayer.
14Give them, LORD,
what should you give?
and shriveled breasts.
15All their evil at Gilgal,
for there did I hate them.
For the evil of their deeds
I will banish them from My house.
I will no longer love them.
16Ephraim is stricken,
their root is dry,
they cannot make fruit.
Even when they give birth,
I will put to death the precious ones of their womb.
17My God shall reject them,
for they did not heed Him,
and they shall be wanderers among the nations.
CHAPTER 9 NOTES
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1. no exulting. The received text reads ’el-gil, “to exulting,” emended here to ʾal-gil, “no exulting.”
on every new grain threshing floor. These would be sites where pagan rites took place.
2. Threshing floor and winepress know them not. The Masoretic Text shows lo’ yirʿem, “did not shepherd them,” but this translation reads, with the Septuagint, lo’ yedʿaem, “knew them not.” The idea is measure-for-measure justice: the Israelites worshipped alien gods in these places; now threshing floor and winepress will give them no yield.
3. Ephraim shall go back to Egypt. See the third comment on 8:13.
4. all who eat it become unclean. Mourners’ food would be ritually unclean because it has been in contact with the dead.
For their food is for their gullet. In bringing animals to sacrifice, their chief interest is in consuming the meat of the part of the animal that is not devoted to the offering.
5. the appointed day. The Hebrew term is a synonym for “festival.”
6. they go off from destruction. This is one of many obscure phrases in this chapter. Given the reference to Egypt and to the Egyptian city of Memphis in the next two versets, it probably means that they flee the devastation of their own land (by the Assyrians) to take refuge in Egypt, where they die.
7. all your hate. The hatred is directed against the prophet, driving him to distraction.
8. The lookout. Elsewhere in the Prophets, this noun is a synonym for “prophet,” and that would seem to be the case here.
9. as in the days of Gibeah. At Gibeah (Judges 19), the local Benjaminites gang-raped a woman to death, fulfilling what Sodom only sought to do, as the elaborate allusions to the Sodom story there remind us. Gibeah thus becomes the paradigm of a wholly depraved society.
10. Like grapes in the wilderness / I found Israel. The discovery of grapes in the largely barren wilderness is gratifying. Israel at the beginning of its wilderness wanderings could delight God in this way.
when it appears. More literally, “at its first.”
Yet they came to Baal Peor. The cherished Israelites quickly abandoned their God to join in a pagan orgy at Baal Peor (see Numbers 25:1–5.)
a shameful god. The Hebrew boshet means “shame” and is regularly used as a polemic substitution for “Baal,” especially in theophoric suffixes.
like what they loved. The Hebrew is cryptic but may refer to the idols.
11. from birth and from the womb and from conception. This series goes back in time from birth to the womb from which the infant is born to conception nine months earlier. The curse of infertility and child mortality is spelled out in the next verse.
13. a palm frond. The Hebrew tsor seems to refer to “Tyre,” the Phoenician city, but both a talmudic source and many modern scholars link it to a term that means “palm frond,” which makes far better sense as something planted in a meadow. Ephraim was seen by God as a luxuriant plant, but his own actions led to the killing of his sons (or “children”) by invaders.
14. Give them a miscarrying womb / and shriveled breasts. This picks up the curse of dying infants from verses 11–12. Even if the mother doesn’t miscarry, her shriveled breasts will spell doom for the infant.
15. All their evil at Gilgal. The phrase lacks both preposition and verb. Gilgal was where the people demanded of Samuel that he put a king over them (1 Samuel 12). Unless Hosea has some different association with Gilgal in mind, he seems to be saying that the establishment of the monarchy was in itself a rejection of God’s kingship.
All their nobles are knaves. This imitates the Hebrew wordplay, sareyhem sorerim.
16. I will put to death the precious ones of their womb. Once again, the reiterated grim theme of infant mortality is struck.
17. My God shall reject them. Until this point, God has been speaking in the first-person singular. It is possible that this switch to the third person, the prophet now speaking about God, is meant to mark the end of the prophecy. Some critics, basing themselves on the Septuagint, prefer to read “their God.”
1A blighted vine is Israel,
When his fruit was abundant,
he made abundant altars.
they made goodly cult-pillars.
2Their heart is divided—
now they bear guilt.
He shall break the back of their altars,
ravage their cultic pillars.
3For now they say,
for we have not feared the LORD,
and a king—what can he do to us?”
4They have spoken words,
empty oaths,
sealed a pact,
and justice blooms like poison weeds
in the furrows of the field.
5The calf of Beth-Aven they fear,
the dwellers of Samaria.
for it has departed from them.
6It, too, shall be brought to Assyria,
Ephraim shall be disgraced
and Israel shamed by its counsel.
7Samaria shall be destroyed and her king,
like foam upon the water.
8And the high places of Aven are ravaged,
the offense of Israel.
Thorn and thistle shall spring up
upon their altars.
And they shall say to the mountains, “Cover us,”
and to the hills, “Fall upon us.”
9From the days of Gibeah Israel offended,
“War will not overtake them in Gibeah
against the wrongdoers.”
10As I wish will I harness them
and peoples shall gather against them
as they are harnessed to their two shafts.
11And Ephraim is a trained calf
that loves to thresh,
and I passed over its goodly neck,
yoked Ephraim that he would plow,
[Judah] that Jacob would harrow.
12Sow for yourselves in righteousness,
reap in faithfulness.
Till for yourselves tilled ground,
and it is time to seek the LORD
until He comes and teaches you righteousness.
13You have plowed wickedness,
wrongdoing do you reap.
for you trusted in your own way,
in all your warriors.
14And the clamor shall rise in your people
and all your fortresses shall be ravaged
at Beth-Arbel on the day of battle—
mothers with children were ripped apart.
15Thus is it done to you, Bethel,
because of your utter evil.
At daybreak the king of Israel
will indeed be destroyed.
CHAPTER 10 NOTES
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1. is just the same. More literally, “is equal to it,” revocalizing the verb yeshaveh as yishveh.
When it was good in his land. When the land flourished and yielded its abundance, the Israelites used the bounty they had garnered from the land to build lavish pagan altars.
2. He shall break the back of their altars. The subject of the verb is God. The verb itself is an unusual and vivid choice: its general meaning is “to behead” or “break the neck.”
3. We have no king. This speech attributed to the people may reflect the political predicament of the northern kingdom, which was plagued by a series of coups and assassinations.
for we have not feared the LORD, / and a king—what can he do to us? There is an a fortiori logic here: we have not feared the LORD, so why should we fear a king? The Israelites have embraced a rule of anarchy, rejected the authority of monarchs and of the divine King.
5. Beth-Aven. As before, this is a pejorative distortion of Bethel.
For his people mourns for it. The antecedent is the calf icon at Bethel.
his priests. The term used, kemarim, usually refers to officiants in a pagan cult, in contrast to kohanim, priests of God.
They wail. The received text has yagilu, “they exult.” This translation adopts a widely proposed emendation, yeililu. The mistake, if it is a mistake, might have been triggered by the word for “departed” (or “exiled”) in the second verset, galah, “for it has departed from them.” There is an echo here of the report of the loss of the Ark to the Philistines in 1 Samuel 4:22.
6. King Jareb. See the comment on 5:13.
7. and her king. The translation adds “and” for the sake of coherence.
8. And they shall say to the mountains, “Cover us.” The inhabitants of Samaria, in their terror of the destruction overtaking them, extravagantly beg of the mountains and hills to cover them.
9. the days of Gibeah. See the comment on 9:9.
there they took their stand. The meaning of the Hebrew is uncertain, although the ordinary verb for “stand” is used.
War will not overtake them in Gibeah. This should perhaps be construed as the speech of the inhabitants of Gibeah, imagining that they will be safe from evil enemies. In the story that follows the gang-rape in Judges 19, an alliance of the tribes in fact attacks Gibeah and the whole tribe of Benjamin and comes close to exterminating them. This will be the fate of the northern kingdom.
10. harness them. The vocalization of the Hebrew word is anomalous, and some see a different verb here. “Harness,” however, makes good sense in conjunction with the image of the plowing calf in what follows.
11. passed over its goodly neck. The implied object of the verb is “yoke.”
[Judah]. This word is bracketed because it does not make sense in context and may well be the interpolation of the Judahite editor.
12. and it is time to seek the LORD. Once the (metaphoric) field has been planted in righteousness and reaped in faithfulness, the time will be ripe to seek the LORD.
teaches you righteousness. A pun is hidden in the verb “teaches,” yoreh, because it has a homonymous noun, “former rain,” which would fructify the planted field.
13. denial’s fruit. The phrase also suggests disappointing or false fruit that cannot really be eaten.
in your own way. The Masoretic Text makes perfectly good sense, but it is worth noting that the Septuagint seems to have used a Hebrew text that read berikhbekha, “in your chariots,” instead of bedarkhekha, “in your own way.” This yields a better parallelism with “warriors” in the second verset.
14. the clamor. This is the loud noise of the attacking army.
like Shalmaneser’s ravaging. The Hebrew shows merely “Shalman,” not an attested name. It seems likely that this is an abbreviated version of “Shalmaneser,” the Assyrian emperor.
Beth-Arbel. Nothing is known about this place and the evidently savage fighting that took place there.
15. Thus is it done to you. This translation construes the third-person singular verb as an equivalent of the passive. It could also be understood as “He [God] does to you.” A third, rather less likely, possibility adopted by others is to construe the whole clause as “Thus does Bethel do to you.”
1For Israel was a lad and I loved him,
and from Egypt I called to My son.
2They called to them,
yet they went off from them.
To the Baalim they sacrificed,
and to the idols they burned incense.
3Yet I taught Ephraim to walk,
took him by his arms,
but they did not know that I had healed them.
4With human cords I tugged them,
with bonds of love,
and I became to them
like those who lift an infant to their cheeks,
and I bent over them and fed them.
5No! He turned back to the land of Egypt,
and Assyria was his king,
for they refused to come back to Me.
6And the sword shall swoop down on his towns
and destroy his limbs
and devour because of their counsels.
7And My people cling to rebellion against Me.
he does not rise up.
8How can I give you over, Ephraim,
surrender you, Israel?
How can I make you like Admah,
set you like Zeboiim?
My heart churns within me,
My compassion altogether is stirred.
9I will not act in My blazing wrath,
I will no more destroy Ephraim.
For I am God and not a man,
the Holy One in your midst,
and I do not desire to root out.
10After the LORD they shall go,
like a lion He shall roar.
When He roars,
the sons shall hasten from the west.
11They shall hasten like a bird from Egypt,
like a dove from Assyria’s land
and I will settle them in their homes, said the LORD.
CHAPTER 11 NOTES
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2. They called to them. This is the first of the many obscurities with which this chapter swarms. Those calling may be God’s agents, but that is not quite clear. The veering from singular to plural compounds the difficulty.
3. I taught Ephraim to walk. The unusual conjugation of the verb based on the root meaning “foot” has been variously interpreted, but taking Ephraim by the arms suggests holding a small child who is just learning to walk.
4. like those who lift an infant to their cheeks. The entire phrase is obscure. This translation takes the noun ʿol not to mean “yoke,” as it does elsewhere, but to be a shortened form of ʿolal, “infant,” continuing the imagery of the preceding verse.
6. And the sword shall swoop down. Again, the translation is conjectural, not just for this verset but for the entire line.
7. When they call him on high, / he does not rise up. The Hebrew here is quite opaque.
8. How can I give you over, Ephraim. This marks a turning point: although Israel has provoked God, He is unwilling to consign it to destruction.
Admah, / … Zeboiim. These are two of the cities of the plain mentioned in Genesis 10:19 that are destroyed together with Sodom and Gomorrah.
9. and I do not desire to root out. The received text reads weloʾ ʾavoʾ beʿir, “I will not come into a town,” which does not make much sense. The translation supposes the emendation weloʾ ʾ oveh baʿer.
10. hasten. Even though the Hebrew verb usually means “to tremble” (as in 1 Samuel 21:2), it is also used in the sense of “hasten.”
from the west. It is not clear why the sons should be in the west.
1Ephraim encircled Me in denial,
and the house of Israel in deceit.
But Judah still stays with God
and with the holy ones is faithful.
2Ephraim herds the wind
and chases the east wind all day.
Lies and plunder he multiplies
and seals a pact with Assyria,
3And the LORD has a case against Judah
to make a reckoning with Jacob for his acts,
by his deeds He shall pay him back.
4In the womb he cheated his brother,
and with his power he strove with God.
5He strove with the Messenger and prevailed—
6And the LORD God of Armies,
the LORD is what He is called.
7As for you, to your God you shall turn back,
faithfulness and justice keep,
and hope for your God always.
8A huckster in whose hand are cheating scales
loving to exploit!
9And Ephraim said,
“Why I have grown rich,
All my gains do not expose for me
a crime that is an offense.”
10But I am the LORD your God
from the time of the land of Egypt
Once more will I settle you in tents
as on the festival days.
11And I spoke to the prophets,
and I framed many visions
and through the prophets showed forth images.
12If Gilead does wrong,
they become an empty thing.
At Gilgal they offered bulls.
Their altars, too, are like heaps of ruins
in the furrows of the field.
13And Jacob fled to the field of Aram,
and Israel labored for a woman,
and for a woman he guarded the flocks.
14But by a prophet the LORD brought up Israel from Egypt,
and by a prophet it was guarded.
15Ephraim was bitterly vexing,
and his bloodguilt shall be set upon him,
and his Master shall pay him back for his shame.
CHAPTER 12 NOTES
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1. But Judah still stays with God. The meaning of the verb rad (and its verbal root as well) is uncertain, and the translation is a surmise from the context.
the holy ones. Who these are is obscure. Some claim that this is a plural of majesty, referring to God, but that seems questionable.
2. herds the wind. This is the earliest occurrence of this vivid metaphor for futility that will be abundantly used in Qohelet.
chases the east wind. Bad things come from the east wind, blowing from the desert.
oil to Egypt is brought. Olive oil, an important product of the Land of Israel, would be exported to Egypt, implying both a commercial and a political relationship and thus a parallel to the pact with Assyria.
4. he cheated his brother. The verb ʿaqav is a negative etymology of the name Yaʿaqov, Jacob, and the one invoked by Esau when he discovers that Jacob has stolen his blessing. The birth narrative of the twins in Genesis 25 actually provides a more neutral etymology, relating it to ʿaqev, “heel,” which would make it mean “grab the heel.” Thus Hosea represents Jacob (which is to say, Israel) as a cheat from the womb, in keeping with the people’s behavior in the prophet’s time.
he strove with God. This is what the Hebrew says. The next line “corrects” this to a divine messenger or angel.
5. he wept and pleaded with him. This clause presents a rather different picture of the struggle with the divine adversary from the one in Genesis 32. Unlike the story in Genesis, the adversary here is reduced to tears and pleading.
At Bethel he did find him. In context, this has to mean that the mysterious stranger found Jacob at Bethel. Again, this differs from the tradition in Genesis, where the nocturnal encounter is at the Jabbok ford, whereas at Bethel, in Jacob’s flight to Aram, he had the epiphany of the angels ascending and descending on a ramp (or ladder).
And there he spoke with us. The import of this clause is unclear. Perhaps the people of Israel are represented as confidently declaring that God spoke to them at Bethel through Jacob. Bethel was a principal cult-site of the northern kingdom.
8. A huckster. This is a denunciation of Israel, using the noun kenaʿan—elsewhere, Canaan—to mean “trader” or “huckster,” evidently as a pejorative.
9. found power for myself. The same term, ʾon, that was used to explain Jacob’s conquest of God or angel is again invoked.
10. from the time of the land of Egypt. “The time of” is merely implied in an ellipsis.
Once more will I settle you in tents. This is best understood as a restoration of the idyllic early days, although some see it as a punishment. Or, since “the festival days” are mentioned, it could refer to pilgrims at the crowded Succoth festival staying in improvised tent accommodations.
13. for a woman he guarded the flocks. This is another ellipsis, the Hebrew saying only “he guarded.” The reference is to Jacob’s working for Laban for seven years as payment of a bride-price for the woman he loved, Rachel.
14. But by a prophet. The prophet is Moses. There is an antithesis here: Jacob labored for a woman, but it was by Moses (in Hebrew, the same preposition as “for”) that God rescued the Hebrews from slavery. Thus, the pedigree of the people as a whole is finer than the pedigree of Jacob-Israel.
it was guarded. The guarding of the people by a prophet is a nobler thing than the guarding of the flocks by Jacob.
1When Ephraim spoke in trembling,
he was a prince in Israel,
but he was guilty with Baal and died.
2And now they continue to offend
and make themselves molten images
from their silver in their form as idols,
all of it craftsmen’s work.
sacrifices of man, calves to be kissed.
3Therefore shall they be like a morning cloud
and like early dew that melts away,
like chaff whirled out from the threshing floor
and like smoke from a chimney.
4Yet I am the LORD your God
ever since the land of Egypt,
and no God save Me shall you know
and no rescuer except for Me.
5I knew you in the wilderness
in a parched land.
6When they grazed and they were sated,
they were sated and grew proud.
Therefore they forgot Me.
7And I will become to them like a lion,
like a leopard I spy on the way.
8I will meet them like a bear robbed of her cubs
and rip the sinews round their heart.
And I will devour them there like a lion,
the beasts of the field shall tear them apart.
9You are ruined, O Israel,
for who will come to your aid?
10Where is your king, then?
Let him rescue you in all your towns.
And your leaders to whom you said,
11But I will give you a king in My wrath
and take him away in My anger.
12Ephraim’s crime is bundled up,
hidden, his offense.
13Birth pangs come upon him,
on the birth-stool for children.
14From Sheol shall I ransom them,
from death shall I redeem them?
Where are your words, O Death,
where your scourge, O Sheol?
Regret is hidden from My eyes.
15Though he put forth fruit in meadows,
the east wind shall come, the LORD’s wind.
from the desert rising up.
And his fountain shall dry up
and his spring shall arid be.
every precious vessel.
CHAPTER 13 NOTES
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1. spoke in trembling. The context suggests that it is trembling before God, when Ephraim was still God-fearing.
but he was guilty with Baal and died. Although this sounds like a flat statement, it must mean that Ephraim’s pagan ways caused many of the people to perish.
2. in their form. The Masoretic Text reads ketevunam, “according to their discernment” (?), but the Septuagint ketavnitam makes much better sense. Tavnit is a term often used for the form or image of an idol.
To them they say. Perhaps these are denouncers of the idolatrous people of Ephraim, though this is not entirely clear.
sacrifices of man. This is another opaque phrase. It could possibly mean “human sacrifices,” but there are no indications elsewhere that Ephraim practiced human sacrifice.
calves to be kissed. These are the icons that figured in the cult of YHWH in the northern kingdom.
6. grew proud. Literally, “their heart was high.”
8. like a lion. Here the poem uses another of the five biblical terms for “lion,” not the same word as in verse 7.
9. for who. The Masoretic Text has “me,” bi, but two ancient versions show “who,” mi.
10. Where is. The received text has ʾehi, “I will be,” but this is generally corrected to ʾayeh (a simple reversal of consonants).
Give me a king and nobles. As before, Hosea follows the line of the prophet Samuel in viewing the popular demand for a king as a presumptuous mistake.
12. bundled up, / hidden. These words may anticipate the birth imagery of the following lines.
13. and the child is not wise. This formulation may suggest that the child born is defective.
now. The Hebrew ʿet usually means “time,” but here it appears to be the equivalent of a related word ʿatah.
he shall not last. Literally, “he shall not stand”—that is, “he shall not survive.”
14. From Sheol shall I ransom them, / from death shall I redeem them? Some interpreters construe this as a positive declaration by God, that He will ransom Ephraim from death. But this makes no sense in light of the language of utter devastation deployed in the next verse, so it is best to understand it as a rhetorical question with the implied answer “no.”
Where are your words, O Death. Some critics revocalize devareyka, “your words,” as devrekha, “your pestilence,” yielding a neater parallelism with the second verset. As in verse 10, ʾehi at the beginning of each of the two versets here is emended to ʾayeh. If, as this translation assumes, the preceding line of poetry comprises two rhetorical questions, then the meaning of the two questions here is: where is your scourge, Death?—bring it to bear on these miscreants.
15. It shall ravage treasure. The antecedent of “it” is probably the devastating east wind rising from the desert. The alternative would be that the image of the wind is now dropped and that the pronoun, which could also mean “he,” refers to the invader.
1Samaria is guilty,
for it rebelled against its God.
They shall fall by the sword,
their infants shall be smashed,
and their pregnant women split apart.
2Turn back, O Israel, to the LORD your God,
for you have stumbled in your crime.
3Take words with you
and turn back to the LORD.
Say to Him, “All crime You shall forgive.
And take what is good,
and we shall offer our speech instead of bulls.
4Assyria will not rescue us,
on horses we shall not ride.
And we shall say no more ‘our God’
to our handiwork,
as in You alone the orphan is shown pity.”
5“I will heal their rebellion,
I will love them freely,
for My wrath has turned back from them.
6I will be like dew to Israel.
He shall blossom like the lily
7His branches shall go forth
and his glory be like the olive tree,
and his fragrance like Lebanon.
8Those who dwell in his shade shall come back,
they shall give life to new grain,
and like the vine they shall blossom.
His fame is like Lebanon wine.
9Ephraim—‘Why more should I deal with idols?
I have answered and I espy Him
I am like the lush cypress.
from me your fruit is found.’”
10Who is wise and can grasp these things,
discerning, and can know them?
For straight are the ways of the LORD,
and the righteous shall walk on them,
but rebels shall stumble on them.
CHAPTER 14 NOTES
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1. their infants shall be smashed, / and their pregnant women split apart. It is a sad historical fact that such barbaric practices are repeatedly attested to in biblical literature.
3. Take words with you. This slightly odd formulation probably conveys the idea that words are to be the vehicles of repentance—not animal sacrifices or grain offerings but words spoken from the heart.
All crime You shall forgive. The Hebrew word order is “All you shall forgive crime,” which is either a scribal error or nonstandard syntactical usage.
we shall offer our speech instead of bulls. This picks up and explicates “Take words with you.”
5. I will heal their rebellion. God now responds to the words of penitent Israel. Although “heal” may seem an unusual verb to attach to “rebellion,” the condition of “rebellion” is conceived as a sickness. Compare the imagery of illness in Isaiah 1:5–6.
My wrath has turned back from them. This is God’s matching response to Israel’s turning back (verse 3) to Him.
6. I will be like dew to Israel. Twice earlier, the simile of dew was used to evoke Israel’s melting away. Now, with Israel likened to a flowering plant and a tree, the dew is fructifying.
strike root like Lebanon. In the pattern of second-verset intensification common in biblical poetry, the line moves from a flowering bush to a deep-rooted tree. “Lebanon” is a poetic ellipsis for “trees of Lebanon,” a heavily forested region, as the ancient audience would immediately have understood.
8. like the vine they shall blossom. They raise crops—“they shall give life to new grain”—and themselves flourish like the growing vine.
9. I have answered and I espy Him. Some interpreters contend that these words and everything that follows in this verse are spoken by God. But the verb shur, “to espy” or “to make out from a distance,” is more appropriate for Israel to God than the other way around. The comparison, moreover, to a verdant tree is often used for a resurgent Israel or for a righteous person but not for God.
from me your fruit is found. The “you” here would be anyone seeking fruit, which the flourishing Israel can provide.
10. Who is wise and can grasp these things. The language of this concluding verse is entirely constituted of formulas from Wisdom literature. The inevitable conclusion is that this is a coda added by an editor that asks us to contemplate the moral wisdom of this collection of Hosea’s prophecies.
rebels shall stumble on them. While the clause is formulaic (and the noun here could also be represented, as many translations do, as “sinners”), the editorial choice of a formula with “stumbles” makes a nice envelope structure with “stumbled” in verse 2 at the beginning of the prophecy.
1The word of the LORD that came to Joel son of Pethuel.
2Hear this, you elders,
and give ear, all dwellers of the land.
Has its like happened in your days
and in the days of your fathers?
3Recount it to your children
and to your children’s children
and to their children in a generation to come.
4What remained from the locust the grasshopper ate,
and what remained from the grasshopper the swarmer ate
and what remained from the swarmer the grub did eat.
5Wake up, you drunkards and weep,
and wail, all drinkers of wine,
for the fermented juice that is cut off from your mouth.
6For a nation has come up against my land,
vast and countless.
Its teeth are the teeth of a lion,
the maned beast’s jaws it has.
7It has turned my vine to a desolation
and my fig tree into shards.
It has stripped it bare,
its branches are gone white.
8Howl like a virgin girt in sackcloth
over the husband of her youth.
9Grain offering and libation are cut off
from the house of the LORD.
The priests mourn,
the ministers of the LORD.
10The field is ravaged,
the soil mourns,
for the new grain has been ravaged,
the new wine dried up,
11The farmers are shamed,
the vintners wail
over wheat and over barley,
for the field’s harvest is gone.
12The vine has dried up
and the fig tree is bleak.
Pomegranate, also palm tree and quince,
all the trees of the field are sear,
from the sons of man.
13Gird and lament, you priests,
wail, ministrants of the altar.
Come, spend nights in sackcloth,
ministrants of my God.
14Pronounce a fast,
proclaim convocation.
Gather the elders,
all the land’s dwellers,
to the house of the LORD your God
and cry out to the LORD.
15Alack for the day,
for the day of the LORD is near,
and like a shattering from Shaddai it comes.
16Why, before our eyes
food is cut off
from the house of our God,
17The seeds have rotted
beneath their clods.
The storehouses are desolate,
the granaries ruined,
for the new grain has dried up.
18How the livestock groans,
the herds of cattle are confounded,
for there is no pasture for them,
the flocks of sheep are desolate.
19To you, O LORD, I call,
for fire consumed the wilderness meadows.
and a flame burned all the trees of the field.
20The beast of the field, too,
yearns for You.
For the channels of water are dry.
Fire consumed the wilderness meadows.
CHAPTER 1 NOTES
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3. a generation to come. Literally, “another generation.”
4. the locust. Plagues of locusts, an instance of which figures in the Ten Plagues, were known catastrophic events in the Near East. Vast swarms of the voracious insects would eat everything in their path, leaving the fields bare of produce. Joel uses four different Hebrew synonyms for “locust,” and all the English versions, including the present translation, flounder to find or invent four equivalents. Some scholars think these four terms indicate four stages in the metamorphosis of the insect, but that is uncertain. Three of the four Hebrew words show a transparent etymology: gazam (the word rendered here as “locust”), “to cut back”; ʾarbeh, “multitude”; and ḥasil, “to finish off or destroy.” The last, yeleq, might conceivably be linked with laqaq, “lick.”
5. drunkards … / drinkers of wine. This is not a denunciation of drunkenness, as one finds, for example, in Isaiah. Rather, the prophet is invoking all the hedonists who delighted in the pleasures of drinking and now, with the vineyards stripped bare by the locusts, will have nothing to drink.
6. For a nation has come up against my land. In this instance, the invading nation is a metaphorical representation of the locusts.
Its teeth are the teeth of a lion. The prophet revels in a poetic paradox. In biblical poetry, warriors are often compared to ravening lions. Here, the gnawing insects are tiny, with nothing like lion’s teeth, but the effect of their vast voracious numbers is as devastating as the rending fangs of a lion.
9. Grain offering and libation are cut off. With the standing grain and the vines utterly consumed by the locusts, there is nothing left to bring to the Temple.
10. the oil is bleak. While in context this probably means something like “gone bad,” there is a persistent personification in this prophecy that is worth preserving.
11. The farmers are shamed. The Hebrew verb in this conjugated form is a homonym of “dried up” in verse 10, and the pun seems quite deliberate. “Dried up” at the beginning of the next verse is the same word, thus carrying a subsurface secondary meaning of “shamed.”
12. quince. The Hebrew tapuaḥ, appearing only here and in the Song of Songs (2:3), does not mean “apple,” as it is often translated, because there were no apple trees in the ancient Near East. “Quince” is an educated guess, although others opt for “apricot.”
joy has dried up. This is the fourth occurrence of this verb, again with a likely double meaning.
13. Gird. This verb is an ellipsis for “gird sackcloth.”
15. like a shattering from Shaddai it comes. The Hebrew wordplay, approximated in this English version, is shod (literally, “devastation,” “ravaging”) mishaday. “Shaddai” is an archaic name for God, of uncertain etymology, largely restricted to poetry.
16. rejoicing and exultation. The verb “cut off” does double duty for “food” and for these two nouns. The festivals in the Temple were times of joyous celebration as pilgrims came from throughout the land to offer sacrifices and to partake in the festive feasts. Now, there is nothing to bring as offering (“food”) and no occasion for joy.
17. The seeds have rotted. The point of view now swivels away from the desolate Temple, deprived of the wherewithal for the celebration of the festivals, to the fields across the country lying in ruins.
18. the flocks of sheep are desolate. The verb here is another reflection of Joel’s fondness for introducing double meanings through similarities of sound. The verb neʾashmu would ordinarily mean “to be guilty,” but it seems to be a deliberate distortion of nashamu, “to be desolate,” thus intimating a shadow of personifying guilt in the depiction of the desolate animals.
19. for fire consumed the wilderness meadows. At this point, it becomes clear that another disaster, distinct from the locusts, has swept over the land. The drying out of the new grain (verse 17) and of the watercourses (verse 20) are the result of drought, and as residents of California know, in a drought the tinder-dry fields and forests are wont to catch fire.
20. The beast of the field, too, / yearns for You. Joel is probably recalling Psalm 42:2: “As a deer yearns for streams of water, / so I yearn for You, O God.” The elided term “water,” associated with God, is activated through the allusion.
1Blow the ram’s horn in Zion,
sound the alarm on my holy mountain.
Let all the land’s dwellers shake,
for the day of the LORD comes, yes, nears.
2A day of darkness and of gloom,
a day of clouds and dense fog.
Like dawn spread out on the mountains—
a vast and numerous people.
Its like has never been
and after it will be none like it
through years of generations without end.
3Before it fire consumes
and behind it a flame burns hot.
Like the Garden of Eden was the land before it,
and behind it desolate desert,
nor does anything escape it.
4Like the look of horses is its look,
like horsemen so they race.
5Like the sound of chariots
on the mountaintops they bound.
consuming straw,
like a vast troop
arrayed for battle.
6Before it peoples tremble,
7Like warriors they race,
like men of war they scale the walls.
Each goes ahead on his way
and they do not bend their paths,
8and each does not press against his fellow,
every man goes on his road,
and through the outer wall they pounce,
9In the town they raise a clamor,
they race upon the walls,
through the windows they come like a thief.
10Before it the earth shudders,
the heavens shake,
sun and moon go dark
and stars their radiance withdraw.
11And the LORD sends forth His voice
for very great is His camp,
for vast are those who do His command.
For great is the day of the LORD,
and who can endure it?
12And now, too, said the LORD,
turn back to Me with all your heart,
in fasting and weeping and mourning,
13and rend your heart, not your garments,
and turn back to the LORD your God,
for He is gracious and compassionate,
slow to anger and abounding in kindness
14Who knows? He may once more relent
grain offering and libation to the LORD your God.
15Blast the ram’s horn in Zion,
pronounce a fast,
proclaim convocation.
16Gather the people,
dedicate an assembly,
summon the elders,
the sucklings at the breast.
Let the bridegroom come out from his chamber
and the bride from her wedding canopy.
17Between the great hall and the altar
let the priests weep,
let the LORD’s ministrants say,
“Have pity, LORD, on Your people,
and do not let Your estate be disgraced
for nations to rule over them.
Why should they say among the peoples,
‘Where is their God?’
18And let the LORD be zealous for His land
and show mercy for His people.”
19And the LORD answered and said to His people,
I am about to send to you
new grain and new wine and oil
and you will be sated with them.
And I will no more make you
disgraced among the nations.
20And the northerner I will put far from you
and scatter him to a parched and desolate land,
and his end to the western sea.
And his stench shall go up
and his foul odor go up,
21Do not fear, O land,
exult and rejoice,
for the LORD has done enormous things.
22Do not fear, O beasts of the field,
for the wilderness meadows sprout grass,
for the tree yields its fruit,
the fig tree and vine put forth their wealth.
23And children of Zion,
exult and rejoice
in the LORD your God.
For he has given you the early rain as bounty
and brought down the rain for you,
early rain and latter rain as before.
24And the threshing floors shall fill with grain
and the vats overflow with new wine and oil.
25And I will pay you back for the years
the swarmer, the grub, and the locust,
My great force that I sent against you.
26And you shall eat, be continuously sated,
and you shall praise the name of the LORD your God
Who has done wondrously for you,
and My people shall not be shamed evermore.
27And you shall know that I am in the midst of Israel,
and I am the LORD your God, there is none else,
and My people shall not be shamed evermore.
CHAPTER 2 NOTES
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2. Like dawn spread out on the mountains. This is another striking poetic paradox. Dawn is a positive idea, but here the appearance of the millions of locusts on the eastern horizon—a dark mass and not bright like the dawn—is altogether sinister, sharing with dawn only the attribute of being spread out over the mountains.
3. Before it fire consumes / and behind it a flame burns hot. This metaphor effects a kind of synthesis of the plague of locusts in 1:1–14 and the drought with wildfire depicted in 1:15–20. The total devastation brought about by the army of locusts is like the destruction wrought by an uncontrolled fire that reduces everything in its path to scorched earth.
4. Like the look of horses is its look. At this point, the poem begins a different metaphorical representation of the locusts, as an army with its cavalry racing in the vanguard.
5. Like the sound of fiery flame. This line of poetry splices the metaphor of wildfire into the dominant metaphor of an invading army.
6. all faces lose their luster. The second noun here, paʾrur, has been much disputed. The most likely construction, proposed in the Middle Ages by Abraham ibn Ezra, is that it is related to peʾer, “splendor,” with a doubling of the final consonant.
7. bend. The Hebrew verb in question occurs only here, but the idea of making the path swerve, first proposed in Late Antiquity, seems likely.
8. the outer wall. The Hebrew shelaḥ elsewhere can mean “weapon,” and some interpreters understand it in that sense here, but a proposed Akkadian cognate indicating an outer wall may be more plausible in context.
suffer wounds. This translation assumes that yivtsaʿu is the equivalent of yiftsaʿu, the verb for being wounded.
9. they go up in the houses, / through the windows they come like a thief. Here the metaphor of an invading army segues into the actual penetrative movement of the locusts.
11. before His force. One must keep in mind that the locusts are not imagined as a natural phenomenon but as an army summoned by God to punish the wayward people.
13. for He is gracious and compassionate. The prophet here invokes the doxology of divine attributes that first appears in Exodus 34:6–7. The Book of Jonah quotes a version of this same formula.
relenting. The Hebrew verb means to change one’s mind after having determined to follow a particular course of action.
14. blessing … / grain offering and libation. After neither has been possible because of the devastation of the land (1:13), the fields will return to being fruitful.
15. Blast the ram’s horn in Zion. This picks up, word for word, the beginning of the prophecy, but now the ram’s horn sounds not as an alarm but as a summons to a national convocation of penitence through which the evil will be reversed.
16. the babes, / the sucklings at the breast. These two versets illustrate the general poetic pattern in which the synonym in the second verset concretizes the matching term in the first verset.
Let the bridegroom come out from his chamber. As other biblical uses of “chamber” in connection with man and woman indicate, this is the chamber in which the bridegroom consummates his marriage. But the urgency is so great that he must leave it.
the bride from her wedding canopy. More decorously, she is linked with the wedding ceremony rather than with the marriage bed. Or perhaps we are invited to imagine that he has been waiting in the bedchamber for her to leave the canopy and join him.
17. Have pity, LORD. The words here, continuing through the end of verse 18, are the language of the collective supplication addressed to God in this penitential rite.
20. the northerner. This is a slightly odd designation for the locusts, which would have come from the east and the south. It is in all likelihood influenced by the disposition throughout Prophetic poetry to see invaders as descending from the north.
the eastern sea. This is the Dead Sea.
the western sea. This is the Mediterranean.
for he has done enormities. Very literally, this would be “for he has greatly done.” Some think it refers to God, but, coming as it does at the end of the description of the rotting hordes of locusts, it more likely refers to the terrible destruction they have caused which now brings about their own deserved extinction.
21. for the LORD has done enormous things. The same phrase is used again, but now in an antithetical sense: God has “greatly done” in reversing the destruction wrought by the locusts.
22. the wilderness meadows sprout grass. Now the ravaged fields and plantations are restored to fruitfulness.
23. as bounty. Although the Hebrew tsedaqah usually means “righteousness,” it also has this sense (compare, for example, Judges 5:11, “His bounties [tsidqot] for unwalled cities in Israel”), and that meaning is the apt one here.
as before. The received text has bariʾshon, “in the first,” but one Hebrew manuscript and three ancient versions show kariʾshon, “as before.”
25. the grasshopper … / the swarmer, the grub, and the locust. The prophet now recapitulates the initial list of different kinds of locust, although in a different order.
26. and My people shall not be shamed evermore. This grand pronouncement, repeated in the next verse at the very end of this prophecy is an incipiently eschatological flourish: after the ghastly devastation of the land, the people return with all their hearts to God, upon which He undertakes to grant them a splendidly restored prosperity and security that will never again be interrupted.
1And it shall happen afterward:
I will pour My spirit upon all flesh,
and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy.
Your elders shall dream dreams,
your young men see visions.
2And even upon male slaves and slavegirls
in those days will I pour My spirit.
3And I will set portents in the heavens and on earth,
blood and fire and columns of smoke.
4The sun shall turn into darkness
before the coming of the day of the LORD,
great and fearful.
5And all who call in the name of the LORD shall escape. For on Mount Zion there shall be a remnant, as the LORD has said, in the survivors whom the LORD calls.
CHAPTER 3 NOTES
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1. And it shall happen afterward. Rashi, Kimchi, and most modern interpreters take this to be an indication of the end-time, but it is a rather quotidian expression, as if one were to say “the day after tomorrow” or “in a month or so.” Could it be an indication that Joel thought the end-time was very close?
2. And even upon male slaves and slavegirls. There is, then, to be no social limitation to the gift of prophecy—it will envelop all.
3. blood and fire and columns of smoke. What begins as an ostensibly benign vouchsafing of prophecy to all here turns violent and, indeed, ominous.
4. The sun shall turn into darkness. Even though this seems to be the prediction of a solar eclipse, it is clearly represented as a frightening supernatural event.
and the moon into blood. Under certain atmospheric conditions, the moon does have a reddish appearance, but, again this is imagined as a supernatural occurrence—blood in the sky answering to the blood and fire on earth, harbinger of the terrifying “day of the LORD” that is invoked in the next line of poetry.
5. And all who call in the name of the LORD shall escape. The vision becomes properly apocalyptic, a reflection of Joel’s Late Biblical location. As in the conclusion of the Book of Daniel, there will be a great cataclysm in which many will perish and only the elect who cling to God will be saved.
the survivors whom the LORD calls. Some interpreters, with an eye to the beginning of the verse, understand this as “the survivors who call to the LORD.” The verb, however, is in the singular, and the prophet is probably registering a familiar biblical idea that when people call sincerely to God, He will call to them in return.
1For, look, days are coming and that time when I will restore the fortunes of Judah and Jerusalem.
2And I will gather all the nations
and bring them down to the Valley of Jehoshaphat
and come to judgment with them there
over My people and Israel, My estate,
whom they scattered among the nations,
and they divided up their land.
3And over My people they cast lots
and bartered a boy for the price of a whore
and sold a girl for wine which they drank.
4And also what are you to Me, Tyre and Sidon
and all the provinces of Philistia?
Are you paying back against Me?
If you are paying back against Me,
swiftly, quick will I pay it back on your head.
5As My silver and My gold you took,
and My goodly treasures you brought to your palaces,
6and the people of Judah and the people of Jerusalem
to put them far from their frontiers.
7I am about to raise them from the place
where you sold them
and pay you back upon your head.
8And I will sell your sons and your daughters
into the hands of the Judahites,
and they shall sell their captives to a distant nation.
For the LORD has spoken.
9Proclaim this among the nations,
Raise the warriors,
let all the men of war
come forth, go up.
10Grind your plowshares into swords
and your pruning hooks into spears.
The weak shall say: I am a warrior.
11Hasten and come,
all nations round about, and gather.
There bring down, O LORD, your warriors.
12The nations shall be roused and come up
For there will I sit to judge
all the nations round about.
13Wield the sickle,
for the harvest is ripe.
Come, go down,
for the winepress is full.
The vats overflow,
14Crowds upon crowds
for near is the day of the LORD
in the Valley of Doom.
15Sun and moon go dark
and the stars withdraw their light.
16And the LORD from Zion roars
and from Jerusalem sounds His voice,
and the heavens and the earth shudder.
But the LORD is a refuge to His people.
and a stronghold to the Israelites.
17And you shall know that I am the LORD your God
Who dwells in Zion, My holy nation,
and Jerusalem shall be holy,
no more shall strangers pass through it.
18And it shall happen on that day:
the mountains shall drip fermented juice
and the hills run with milk
and all the channels of Judah
run with water.
And a spring shall issue from the house of the LORD
and water the Wadi of Acacias.
19Egypt shall become a desolation
and Edom a desolate wilderness
for the outrage done to the Judahites
in whose land they shed the blood of the innocent.
20And Judah shall be settled forever
and Jerusalem for all generations.
21Shall I acquit for their blood? I will not acquit.
And the LORD dwells in Zion.
CHAPTER 4 NOTES
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2. the Valley of Jehoshaphat. The name means “The LORD judges,” and the prophet immediately plays on shafat, “judges,” as he says “come to judgment,” nishpateti.
3. bartered a boy for the price of a whore / and sold a girl for wine. The captive Judahite children are treated as cheap merchandise, sold for the price of a quick bout of sex or a flask of wine.
4. Tyre and Sidon / … Philistia. In this concluding prophecy, Joel casts his net of condemnation over most of the surrounding nations—the Phoenicians to the north, the Philistines (in fact, no longer a political entity) on the southern strip of the Mediterranean coast, and, farther on, Egypt to the south and Edom to the east. No mention is made of Persia or any great eastern empire.
5. My silver and My gold. The reference is to the treasures of the Temple. The despoliation of the Temple was perpetrated by the Babylonians in 586 B.C.E., which would have been considerably before Joel’s probable time. It seems that he has bundled together exile, exploitation, and the remembered plunder of the Temple as an amalgam of the victimization of Judah by the sundry nations.
6. sold to the Greeks. Some interpreters take this as an indication that Joel wrote after the conquest of the Near East by Alexander the Great in the late fourth century B.C.E. This is not a necessary inference because there were trading connections with the Greeks earlier, and Greece, yawan (“Ion”), is mentioned as a known entity in the Table of Nations in Genesis 10.
7. I am about to raise them from the place / where you sold them. Joel is presumably prophesying in Judah to a Judahite audience at some point after the return to Zion in the middle of the fifth century B.C.E. There was, however, a substantial diaspora population in this Second Temple period, and it is this that he appears to have in mind.
9. assemble for battle. This has the look of an apocalyptic war, when a final reckoning will be made with all the nations.
10. Grind your plowshares into swords / and your pruning hooks into spears. This is an obvious—and grim—reversal of the famous verse in Isaiah 2:4 that envisions a wondrous era of peace.
The weak shall say: I am a warrior. This has a double meaning of “I am mighty.”
11. There bring down, O LORD, your warriors. The meaning of this line—especially the verb—is somewhat uncertain.
12. the Valley of Jehoshaphat, / … sit to judge. The same play on the “judge” component of the name as in verse 2 is evident here.
13. for their evil is great. Only at the end of these three lines of poetry does it become clear that the ripe harvest, the full winepress, and the overflowing vats are allegorical figures for the harvest of death that is about to be reaped in retribution for the evil the nations have done.
14. the Valley of Doom. The verbal stem ḥ-r-ts, appearing here in the name ḥaruts, means to pronounce judgment or issue a verdict. It seems to be a poetic synonym for the Valley of Jehoshaphat.
17. no more shall strangers pass through it. In Joel’s historical moment, this may indicate the status of the province of Yehud as a vassal entity within the Persian empire, lacking the autonomy to exclude foreigners. Joel might also be harking back to memories of the conquest of Jerusalem by the Babylonians.
18. the mountains shall drip fermented juice / and the hills run with milk. Joel is recalling Amos 9:13, although he changes the second verset. In Amos it is: “and all the hills shall melt.” The entire verse here runs the gamut of sustaining liquids, from wine to milk to water.
And a spring shall issue from the house of the LORD. This appears to be a direct reference to the miraculous spring gushing forth from the Temple in Ezekiel 47.
20. Judah shall be settled forever. This marks a strong antithesis to the desolation of Egypt and Edom in the preceding verse.
21. Shall I acquit for their blood? I will not acquit. The formulation is cryptic and has engendered different understandings. The assumption reflected in this translation is that “their blood” refers back to “the blood of the innocent” in verse 19. The first clause here is then construed as a rhetorical question. God will certainly not acquit those who have shed the blood of His innocent people—Judah will dwell peacefully for all time, but those who once victimized it will remain an eternal desolation.
1The words of Amos, who was among the sheep-breeders of Tekoa, who saw visions concerning Israel in the days of Uzziah king of Judah and in the days of Jeroboam son of Joash king of Israel, two years before the earthquake. 2And he said:
The LORD from Zion roars
and from Jerusalem puts forth His voice,
and the shepherds’ meadows wither,
and the peak of Carmel dries up.
3Thus said the LORD:
For three trespasses of Damascus
and for four I will not turn it back—
with iron threshing boards.
4And I will set fire to the house of Hazael,
and it shall consume the citadels of Ben-Hadad,
5and I will break the bolt of Damascus
and cut off dwellers from Aven Vale
and him who holds the scepter from Beth-Eden.
And the peoples of Aram shall be exiled to Kir, said the LORD.
6Thus said the LORD:
and for four I will not turn it back—
for their inflicting a total exile
7And I will set fire to Gaza’s wall,
and it shall consume her citadels.
8And I will cut off dwellers from Ashdod
and him who holds the scepter from Ashkelon,
and I will bring My hand against Ekron,
and the Philistines’ remnant shall perish.
9Thus said the LORD:
and for four I will not turn it back—
for their inflicting a total exile,
handing over to Edom,
and they did not recall the pact of brothers.
10And I will set fire to Tyre’s wall
and it shall consume her citadels.
11Thus said the LORD:
For three trespasses of Edom,
and for four I will not turn it back—
for his pursuing his brothers with the sword
and he bore a grudge ceaselessly
and kept up his wrath unending.
12And I will set a fire in Teman,
and it shall consume the citadels of Bosra.
13Thus said the LORD:
For three trespasses of the Ammonites
and for four I will not turn it back—
for their splitting open the pregnant women of Gilead
so as to expand their borders.
14And I will light a fire on the wall of Rabbah,
and it shall consume her citadels
with trumpet blast on the day of battle
and with a storm on the tempest day.
15And their king shall go into exile,
he and his nobles together
—said the LORD.
CHAPTER 1 NOTES
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1. Tekoa. This is a village in the vicinity of Jerusalem. There is no evidence for a Tekoa in the north, although some scholars have sought to place Amos there because he later identifies himself as a trimmer of sycamore trees, not known to be cultivated in the southern region. The case remains convincing that Amos was a Judahite who undertook a prophetic mission to the northern kingdom.
two years before the earthquake. This was obviously a well-remembered event. There is some archaeological evidence for such a seismic event around 770 B.C.E. or slightly later. It is not clear whether Amos’s prophesying begins or ends then, though beginning may be more likely.
3. For three trespasses of Damascus / and for four. In context, pesha ʿaim means something like “atrocities” or “crimes against humanity,” but this translation respects the stylistic decorum of the Hebrew, which hews to general terms that may take on a distinctive coloration according to context. There are neither three nor four trespasses listed here that a reader can count. Rather, this is a common biblical idiom, occurring several times in Proverbs, with the sense, “a certain few, and even one more.” Because the three and four together add up to a formulaic seven, some have proposed that they indicate a totality. There is no way of knowing whether these dire prophecies about the surrounding nations were actually the beginning of Amos’s message, but they certainly would have provided a means of drawing in the Israelite audience with something they wanted to hear before the prophet launched on a denunciation of that very audience. The formulaic repetition of these lines for one nation after another generates a kind of hypnotic drumbeat.
I will not turn it back. The object of the verb is left unspecified, perhaps deliberately and ominously, but it would have to be something like “retribution” or “wrath.”
Gilead. This is an area in the northeastern sector of the kingdom of Israel.
4. the house of Hazael. Hazael and Ben-Hadad designate the royal house of Aram, the capital of which is Damascus.
5. break the bolt. The bolt is the heavy iron bar that secures the gates of the city.
Kir. This is a city in the far north, perhaps near Armenia.
6. Gaza. In Amos’s time, Gaza was the principal Philistine city, though three others are mentioned in the following lines. The view has now swung from north to south.
for their inflicting a total exile. The identity of those exiled is unspecified. In any case, uprooting an entire population means putting an end to its national existence and hence is viewed as a war crime.
9. Tyre. This is the principal Phoenician city, so the perspective moves north again, along the Mediterranean coast.
11. Edom. Now we are in the southeast, across the Jordan.
his brothers. Since Esau, Jacob’s brother, is the purported ancestor of the Edomites, the Israelites would be their “brothers.”
stifling his compassion. Because of the unusual verb, which usually means “lay ruins to” or “destroy,” some scholars have suggested that the phrase has the sense of “destroying his [Israel’s] wombs,” an alternative term for splitting open pregnant women.
bore a grudge. The Masoretic Text reads wayitrof … ʾapo, “and his anger ravaged,” but three ancient versions reflect wayitor (dropping the last consonant of the verb), and Jeremiah 3:5 shows precisely this poetic parallelism of n-t-r / sh-m-r.
13. so as to expand their borders. This is an explanation for the savagery perpetrated on the pregnant women. Not only are they murdered, but their offspring are as well, so there will be no one left in the future to lay claim to the territory. This looks very much like genocide.
1Thus said the LORD:
For three trespasses of Moab,
and for four, I will not turn it back—
for his burning the bones of Edom’s king into lime.
2And I will set fire to Moab,
and it shall consume the citadels of Kerioth,
and Moab shall die in an uproar,
in shouts and the sound of the ram’s horn.
3And I will cut off the leader from her midst
and all her nobles I will slay with him
—said the LORD.
4For three trespasses of Judah,
and for four, I will not turn it back—
for their spurning the LORD’s teaching,
and His statutes they did not keep,
and their false things led them astray,
after which their fathers had gone.
5And I will set a fire in Judah,
and it shall consume Jerusalem’s citadels.
6Thus said the LORD:
For three trespasses of Israel,
and for four, I will not turn it back—
for their selling the just man for silver
and the needy for sandals.
7Who trample the head of the needy
in the dust of the ground
and pervert the way of the poor.
And a man and his father go to the same girl
to profane My holy name.
8And on pawned garments they stretch out,
alongside every altar,
and wine bought with funds from fines
they drink in the house of their God.
9Yet I had destroyed the Amorite before them,
who is tall as the height of cedars
and sturdy as the oaks.
And I destroyed his fruit above
and his roots below.
10And I brought you up from the land of Egypt
and led you in the wilderness forty years.
to take hold of the Amorite’s land.
11And I raised up from your sons to be prophets
and from your men to be nazirites.
Is it not so, O Israelites? said the LORD.
12But you gave the nazirites wine to drink
and to the prophets you charged, “Prophesy not!”
13I am about to halt you where you are
as the wagon overflowing with grain halts.
14And flight shall elude the swift,
and the strong shall not summon his power,
and the warrior shall not escape with his life.
15And the bowman shall not stand,
and the fleet-footed shall not escape,
and the horseman shall not escape with his life.
16And whose heart is staunch among the warriors
naked shall flee on that day—said the LORD.
CHAPTER 2 NOTES
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1. burning the bones. Desecrating a corpse was seen as a violation of human dignity and thus is included in the list of war crimes.
4. For three trespasses of Judah. While some scholars claim that the introduction of Judah is a later editorial interpolation, it makes perfect sense that this Judahite prophet, moving from pronouncements of doom on the surrounding nations to Israel, would include a denunciation of the trespasses of his own kingdom before arriving at his main target, the northern kingdom of Israel.
their false things. This is an epithet for idols, which makes this a very different kind of transgression from the crimes against humanity. Some see here Deuteronomistic language, thus attributing this text to a much later date than that of Amos, but this identification is not convincing, even if the anti-idolatry theme resembles Deuteronomy.
6. for their selling the just man for silver / and the needy for sandals. When Amos turns to the transgressions of Israel, his concern is injustice and exploitation of the vulnerable. Coming after the catalogue of crimes against humanity perpetrated by the surrounding nations, perversions of justice are in effect also represented as crimes against humanity. “The just man,” tsadiq, may here carry its legal sense—the person who deserved to be declared right, given justice, in a court of law. In that case, selling him for silver would mean taking a bribe so that he is given an unfavorable ruling. Selling the needy for sandals means selling such a person—perhaps into slavery—for something of relatively minor value.
7. a man and his father go to the same girl. One understanding that has had considerable currency is that they both go to the same cult-prostitute, but this is not certain. The word for “girl,” naʿarah, means “a nubile young woman,” with no special indication of her profession or sexual activity. The choice of the term here is pointed: a naʿarah could conceivably be an appropriate sexual partner for a young man, but a son and father sharing her is an abomination—in fact, a kind of incest.
9. Yet I had destroyed the Amorite before them. Israel has done all these unspeakable acts even though historically it was the beneficiary of God’s manifest generosity that enabled it, against all odds, to conquer the land.
who is tall as the height of cedars. The gigantic stature of the Canaanites is registered in Numbers 13 and elsewhere.
12. But you gave the nazirites wine to drink. The nazirites take a vow of abstention from alcohol, thus constituting a kind of elite of holiness within the people. The likely motive for giving them wine is not sheer perversity but reflects an indiscriminate abuse of alcohol in the Israelite population, of the sort Isaiah would denounce a few decades after Amos.
13. halt you. Although this Hebrew verb would later mean something like “to weigh down,” its likely biblical sense is “to bring to a stop, to impede.”
14. And flight shall elude the swift. The failure of flight follows directly from the “halting” of the previous line. The three lines of poetry beginning here—the first two are triadic—are all the more effective as a representation of a catastrophe overtaking the nation because there is no direct mention of an invading army: all we see is the swift and the strong and the martially skilled in the army of Israel flailing and unable to escape.
15. the horseman shall not escape with his life. The whole line exhibits a striking pattern of intensification from one verset to the next. First, the stationary bowman is unable to withstand the onslaught of the enemy; then, the swift-footed soldier is not fast enough to escape; finally, even the horseman on his mount cannot get away.
16. naked shall flee on that day. While the literal sense of “naked” is possible, the likely meaning is that the brave warrior, now terrified by the overwhelming force of the enemy, will strip himself of his armor and throw away his weapons in order to flee.
1Hear this word that the LORD has spoken concerning you, O Israelites, concerning the entire clan that I brought up from Egypt, saying:
2Only with you was I intimate
of all the clans of the earth.
Therefore will I make a reckoning with you
for all your crimes.
3Do two walk together
if they have not first agreed?
4Does the lion roar in the forest
unless it has taken prey?
Does the maned beast put forth its voice from its lair
if it has not made a catch?
5Does a bird fall into a trap on the ground
when there is no snare for it?
Does a trap spring up from the soil
and fail to make a catch?
6Is the ram’s horn sounded in the town
and the people do not tremble?
and the LORD has not done it?
7For the Master, the LORD, does nothing without revealing His secret to His servants, the prophets.
8A lion roars.
Who does not fear?
Who cannot prophesy?
9Let it be heard in the citadels of Ashdod and in the citadels of the land of Egypt, and say: Gather on the mountains of Samaria and see the many upheavals within it and the oppressed in its midst.
10And they do not know how to do what is right, said the LORD, who store up outrage and plunder in their citadels.
11Therefore, thus said the Master, the LORD:
He shall take down from you your strength,
and your citadels shall be despoiled.
12Thus said the LORD:
from the lion’s mouth
two shank bones or an earlobe,
You who sit in Samaria
by the head of a bed or at the end of a couch,
13listen and bear witness against the house of Jacob,
said the Master, the LORD God of Israel.
14For on the day I make a reckoning
for Israel’s trespasses
I will make a reckoning with the altars of Bethel
and the horns of the altar shall be hacked off,
and they shall fall to the ground.
15And I will strike down the winter house
together with the summer house,
and the houses of ivory shall be destroyed
and the great houses swept away
—said the LORD.
CHAPTER 3 NOTES
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1. clan. The Hebrew mishpaḥah slides from a clan proper to larger groups. It may be used here to underscore the mutual belonging of the Israelites.
2. was I intimate. The literal sense of the verb is “know,” which famously has in some contexts a sexual connotation but here is employed to suggest a special close relationship.
3. Do two walk together. These words initiate an extended anaphoric series arriving at a compelling conclusion that will not be revealed until verse 8. Everything in nature and in human affairs exhibits a pattern of cause and effect, including the call to prophecy.
4. Does the lion roar in the forest. It should be observed that all of the instances cited involve either the inspiring of fear or the creating of an entrapment: the call to prophecy is scary, and it locks the person called in a trap.
6. Is the ram’s horn sounded in the town. The shrill piercing notes of the ram’s horn were used to sound the alarm in moments of military crisis.
Is there harm within the town / and the LORD has not done it? God is introduced at the end of the series, preparing the ground for the introduction of prophecy.
7. For the Master, the LORD. This prose verse breaks the poetic series and, in the way it makes explicit the point of all the images, it looks like an editorial interpolation.
8. A lion roars. / Who does not fear? The poem in this way loops back to its beginning, making an envelope structure. Then God and prophecy will be added in the next line.
The Master, the LORD, speaks. / Who cannot prophesy? This is an idea invoked by other prophets—most strikingly, by Jeremiah. Prophecy is not experienced as a choice. The prophet feels it as an overwhelming imperative coming from God.
9. Let it be heard in the citadels of Ashdod and in the citadels of the land of Egypt. Philistia and Egypt are summoned to serve as witnesses of the shame of Samaria.
10. who store up outrage and plunder. An expressive ellipsis is put into play: what the Israelites store up in their citadels is the ill-gotten wealth amassed from acts of outrage and plunder. After the prose introduction of verses 9 and 10, the prophecy swings back into poetry, beginning with “A foe goes round the land.”
11. A foe goes round the land. The received text reads tsar wesaviv, “a foe and around.” This translation presupposes an emendation to tsar yesoveiv.
12. save / from the lion’s mouth. The verb here incorporates the sense of “to pull out from.”
so shall Israel be saved. Only a few bloody scraps will be left.
the head of a bed or at the end of a couch. There are philological grounds for thinking that the first term, peʾah, means “head of the bed” here (elsewhere, it means “corner”). The second term is obscure, and so the translation leans on the poetic parallelism. Sitting on the bed may allude to the indolence of the aristocrats of the northern kingdom.
14. the horns of the altar. The four corners of altars had hornlike protuberances, symbolic of power.
15. the winter house / together with the summer house. Many think these are the winter and summer palaces of the king, but members of the wealthy class could well have enjoyed such luxuries.
the houses of ivory. The houses were not built of ivory but decorated inside with ornamental ivory panels, some of which have been unearthed by archaeologists.
the great houses. The adjective here usually means “many” but can also mean “great,” and the target of the destruction is clearly not the habitations of the general populace but the grand homes of the aristocracy.
1Listen to this word,
you cows of Bashan who are on Mount Samaria,
who exploit the poor,
who crush the needy,
who say to their husbands,
2The Master, the LORD, has sworn by His holiness
that days are coming upon you
when you shall be borne off in baskets
and the last of you with fishhooks,
3and through the breaches each woman shall go out straight ahead,
and you shall be flung on the refuse heap—said the LORD.
4Come to Bethel and trespass,
to Gilgal and continue to trespass,
and bring the next morning your sacrifices
and on the third day your tithes.
5And burn a thanksgiving offering of leavened bread
and proclaim freewill offerings, make them heard.
For so have you loved,
O Israelites—said the Master, the LORD.
6And I on My part have given you
cleanness of teeth in all your towns
and want of bread in all your places,
but you did not come back to Me,
said the LORD.
7And I on My part withheld from you the rain
with still three months till the harvest,
but on another town did not rain.
One field would have rain,
but the field without rain would dry up.
8And two or three towns would wander
to a single town to drink water,
and would not slake their thirst.
But you did not turn back to Me, said the LORD.
9I struck you with blight and with mildew.
Ruins were your gardens and your vineyards,
and your fig trees and your olive trees the locusts devoured.
But you did not turn back to Me, said the LORD.
10I let loose the pestilence against you as in Egypt.
I slew your young men by the sword with your captured horses
and made your camps’ stench rise in your very nostrils.
But you did not turn back to Me, said the LORD.
11I overthrew you
as God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah,
and you became like a brand saved from burning.
But you did not turn back to Me, said the LORD.
12Therefore, this will I do to you, Israel,
because this will I do to you,
prepare to meet your God, O Israel.
13For, look, He fashions the mountains and creates the wind
and tells man what is his thought,
turns dawn into darkness
and treads on the earth’s high places.
The LORD God of Armies is His name.
CHAPTER 4 NOTES
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1. you cows of Bashan who are on Mount Samaria. The region of Bashan was famous for its cattle, but these well-fed cows are in Samaria. The prophet addresses the women with this vitriolic epithet not because they are fat but because all they do is indolently satisfy their appetite, like cows grazing in a pasture. It should be noted that because Hebrew verbs are conjugated according to gender, all the verbs that follow remind us of the female identity of those excoriated.
Bring, that we may drink. The pampered wives of Samaria are worse than cows because they have an appetite not only for nutrients, like their bovine counterparts, but for wine.
2. baskets / … fishhooks. Both Hebrew words occur only here. Some scholars think both are terms for baskets used by fishermen; others think both are kinds of hooks.
3. through the breaches. The use of this noun implies that the walls of the city have been broken through by invaders.
the refuse heap. The meaning of the Hebrew harmon is uncertain, and it could even be a place-name. This translation adopts one scholarly conjecture.
4. Come to Bethel and trespass. This verse and the next are strongly sarcastic. None of the ritual acts mentioned, to be performed at the two principal cult centers of the northern kingdom, is in itself illegitimate, but the offense is in going through the steps of ritual when the worshippers have been exploiting the poor, perverting justice, and wallowing in ill-gotten gains. Amos is not expressing a principle of opposition to the cult but, like Isaiah after him, is objecting to the conjunction of what Isaiah calls “crime and convocation,” of approaching the altar with hands stained with blood.
6. cleanness of teeth. This is an original coinage of Amos’s. It of course does not have anything to do with dental hygiene but evokes a mouth in which there is no food, as “want of bread” in the next verset makes clear. The line reverses the usual pattern, in which the standard term appears in the first verset and a metaphorical or poetic equivalent in the second, because the prophet means to confront his audience with a small enigma at the beginning of the line that is spelled out at the end.
7. with still three months till the harvest. Lack of rain three months before the harvest would be devastating for the crops.
I rained on one town / but on another town did not rain. It is unclear whether such selective distribution of rainfall could have actually occurred, but the prophet’s statement of it is meant to convey the idea that God exercises absolute power to bless or blight human populations according to His will.
9. Ruins were your gardens. The Masoretic Text reads harbot, “to multiply,” which does not make much sense. This translation is based on an emendation of that word to ḥorvot, “ruins.”
10. with your captured horses. This phrase suggests that the “young men” are fighters who have been defeated in battle, their mounts taken by the victors and they themselves put to the sword.
11. overthrew. This is a set verb beginning with the account in Genesis 19 of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah for the total devastation of a town or a nation.
13. For, look, He fashions the mountains and creates the wind. The doxology of this concluding verse is continuous with what precedes: the powerful God that Israel must prepare to meet is the cosmic Creator Who controls all the forces of the earth. This verset makes strategic use of the verbs for creation that appear, respectively, in Genesis 2 and 1: for the solid mountains the potter’s concrete word “fashion,” yotser, is used; for the wind, the more spiritual boreiʾ, “create.”
1Listen to this word that I bear about you as a dirge, O house of Israel.
2She has fallen, no more shall rise,
the Virgin of Israel.
none lifts her up.
3For thus said the Master the LORD:
The town that goes out a thousand
shall be left a hundred
and that goes out a hundred
shall be left ten—for the house of Israel.
4For thus said the LORD to the house of Israel:
Seek Me and live
5and seek not Bethel
and to Gilgal do not come
and to Beersheba do not pass on.
and Bethel shall turn into evil.
6Seek the LORD and live,
lest the house of Joseph flare like fire
and consume Bethel with none to quench it.
7You who turn justice into wormwood
and righteousness bring to the ground—
8He makes the Pleiades and Orion
and turns death’s darkness into morning
and day He darkens to night,
calls to the waters of the sea
and pours them over the land.
The LORD is His name.
9He flashes destruction on the strong,
and destruction comes down on the fortress.
10They hated the reprover in the gate,
and the truth speaker they despised.
11Therefore, as you trampled upon the poor man,
and a payment of grain you exacted from him,
hewn-stone houses you have built,
but you shall not dwell in them.
Lovely vineyards you have planted,
but you shall not drink their wine.
12For I know that your trespasses are many
and numerous your offenses—
foes of the righteous, takers of bribes,
you pervert the needy’s case in the gate.
13Therefore the prudent on that day shall fall silent,
for it is an evil time.
14Seek good and not evil,
that you may live.
And so may the LORD God of Armies be with you,
as you have said.
15Hate evil and love good
and set out justice in the gate.
Perhaps the LORD God of Israel
may grant grace to Joseph’s remnant.
16Therefore thus said the LORD,
the God of Israel, the Master:
In all the squares—lament,
and in all the streets they say “alas.”
And they shall call the farmer to mourning,
and to lament, those expert in weeping.
17And in all the vineyards there is wailing
as I pass in your midst, said the LORD.
18Woe, who long for the day of the LORD!
Why should you need the day of the LORD?
It is darkness and not light.
19As a man flees from a lion
and he enters the house
and leans his hand on the wall,
and a snake bites him.
20Why, the day of the LORD is darkness and not light,
pitch black, and no radiance in it.
21I hate, I spurn your festivals
and smell no fragrance in your convocations.
22Should you offer up to Me burnt offerings
or grain offerings, I will not accept them;
nor will I look on the well-being sacrifice of your fatted calves.
23Take away from me the noise of your singers,
nor will I listen to the melody of your lutes.
24But let justice well up like water
and righteousness like a steady stream.
25Did you bring Me sacrifices and grain offering
in the wilderness forty years, house of Israel?
26And you shall bear away Sikkuth your king and Kiyyun,
your icons, your star gods that you made for yourselves,
27and I will exile you beyond Damascus,
said the LORD, God of Israel in His name.
CHAPTER 5 NOTES
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2. She is abandoned on her soil. This wording suggests that the kingdom has been conquered and Israel is now left on her own soil at the mercy of the invaders.
3. The town that goes out a thousand. This might suggest a military sortie because the verb “go out” is sometimes used in that sense, but this is not entirely certain here.
5. Bethel / … Gilgal … / Beersheba. The first two, as noted above, are the principal cultic sites of the northern kingdom. Beersheba is far to the south, hence the need to “pass on” (through the kingdom of Judah). It would seem that some sort of cult was conducted at Beersheba, but we have scant information about it.
Gilgal shall go into exile…Bethel … evil. The Hebrew sound-play is hagilgal galoh yigaleh and beit-ʾel … ʾawen.
6. flare. This Hebrew verb generally is used for the “descent” of the spirit, but perhaps it also indicates any kind of sudden movement.
7. You who turn justice into wormwood. This prophecy appears to break off after these two versets, which lack a predicate.
8. He makes the Pleiades and Orion. These words begin another doxology celebrating God’s greatness, but it manifestly interrupts the castigation of Israel of the preceding lines, which is resumed again in verse 10. This makes it look suspiciously like an editorial glitch.
10. the reprover in the gate. The square in front of the city gate was where courts of justice were held (compare verse 15) and it would also be an appropriate setting for the prophet to reprove or harangue the people.
11. hewn-stone houses. These are grand houses, which have already been the subject of Amos’s ire (3:15).
16. And they shall call the farmer to mourning, / and to lament, those expert in weeping. The idea of summoning the farmers to join in the mourning may be meant to indicate that the entire people, not just the inhabitants of the towns, will be involved. The line exhibits a neat chiastic structure—farmer (a), mourning (b), lament (b´), those expert in weeping (a´). The second group would be professional keeners, who are usually women—although the verb here is masculine.
18. Woe, who long for the day of the LORD. The background to this idea must be inferred. It appears to be a popular eschatological belief that a grand era is coming when God will elevate Israel and make it triumphant among the nations. Some of the later prophecies of national restoration—as, for example, in Second Isaiah—may have drawn on such traditions of folk belief. In any case, Amos makes emphatically clear that such expectations are a delusion and that the day of the LORD will be a day of dire retribution for Israel’s sins.
19. a bear blocks his way. The verb can mean “meet” or “encounter” but also “strike” or “attack.” Since, however, the man escapes the bear and makes it to his house, it does not seem that the bear actually assaults him.
21. I hate, I spurn your festivals. As before, God’s revulsion from the Israelite cult is because it is conducted by people whose moral behavior is vicious.
smell no fragrance. The Hebrew says merely “I will not smell.” The incense burned on the altar and the burnt offerings themselves were thought—perhaps literally—to be a pleasing fragrance to the LORD.
23. the noise of your singers, / … the melody of your lutes. The prophet now moves from smell to sound: both vocal music (the chorus of the Levites) and instrumental music were part of the Temple service.
24. like water / … like a steady stream. The simile of water of course expresses the idea of an uninterrupted and abundant flow of justice, but it is also associated with a process of cleaning after the morally contaminated odors and music of the suspect cult.
25. in the wilderness forty years. As with later prophets—most notably, Jeremiah—the Wilderness era is imagined as a kind of idyll, when God and Israel were secluded together.
26. Sikkuth … Kiyyun. These are actual deities, initially Assyrian and later taken over by the Babylonians. The vocalization of both names has been deliberately distorted by the Masoretes to make them sound like shiqutz, “abomination.” The original names were Sakkut and Keivan.
your king. This is surely sarcastic.
27. I will exile you beyond Damascus. This is somewhere unspecified, far to the northeast. In fact, when the inhabitants of the northern kingdom were exiled by the Assyrians in 721 B.C.E., this was the general direction in which they were taken.
1Woe, you complacent in Zion
and you trusting ones on Mount Samaria,
eminent among the first of nations,
and the house of Israel came to them.
2Pass on to Calneh and see,
and go from there to great Hammath,
and go down to the Philistines’ Gath.
Are you better than these kingdoms,
is your territory larger than theirs?
3You who dismiss the evil day
but bring on disaster and outrage;
4who lie on ivory-inlaid beds
and lounge on their couches
and eat the lambs from the flock
and calves from the stall,
5who pluck on the lute,
like David they devise song’s instruments.
6Who drink from bowls of wine
and with the finest oils anoint themselves
and are not distressed by Joseph’s disaster.
7Therefore now shall they be exiled at the head of exiles,
and the lounging feasts shall be no more.
8The Master, the LORD, has sworn by His life,
said the LORD, God of Armies:
I loathe the pride of Jacob,
and his citadels I hate,
and I will hand over the town and its fullness.
9And it shall happen that if ten men are left in a house, they shall die. 10And a handful of men shall remain to carry out the bones from the house. And one shall say to him who is in the far corners of the house, “Is anyone still with you?” And he shall say, “None.” And he shall say, “Hush!” so as not to mention the name of the LORD.
11For, look, the LORD commands,
and He shall strike the great house into splinters
and the small house into shards.
12Can horses race on rock,
can one plow with an ox in the sea?
For you have turned justice into poison
and the fruit of righteousness into wormwood.
13You who rejoice over Lo-Dabar,
who say, Why, with our strength
14But I am about to raise against you, house of Israel,
said the LORD, God of Armies, a nation.
And they shall harry you
to the Wadi of Arabah.
CHAPTER 6 NOTES
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1. you complacent in Zion. The reference to Zion—which is to say, Jerusalem, the capital of the southern kingdom—is something of a puzzle because Amos’s mission has been to the northern kingdom. Some scholars want to see this as the interpolation of the Judahite editor, but if one removes this verset, there is no longer a line of parallelistic poetry. We should not exclude the possibility that Amos had in view a similar group of smugly self-satisfied people in his home kingdom, even if he was addressing a northern audience.
the first of nations. This appears to be a designation—perhaps sardonic—for Israel.
the house of Israel came to them. The meaning is not transparent, but the sense may be that the people would come for guidance to the elite of the nation, the “eminent.”
2. Calneh. A distant city in Syria.
great Hammath. A city in central Syria.
is your territory larger than theirs? The received Hebrew text reads, “is their territory larger than yours?,” but the context surely requires that these terms be reversed.
3. but bring on disaster and outrage. The first of these two nouns in the Masoretic Text is shevet, “dwelling” or “sitting,” which makes little sense. This translation assumes, as do many scholars, that this is a scribal error for either shever or shod, either of which suggests disaster.
4. who lie on ivory-inlaid beds. Amos, a farmer and pastoralist, is no doubt repelled by the indolent life of luxury he observes among the northern aristocratic class, but he also has in mind the exploitation of the vulnerable that is the source of the wealth.
5. like David they devise song’s instruments. The tone is sarcastic. David’s legendary skill as a lyre player and “sweet singer” was by this time ensconced as an item of popular culture.
6. Who drink from bowls of wine. Pointedly, they are said to drink not from flasks but from large bowls.
and with the finest oils anoint themselves. Rubbing the body with oil was one of the pleasures of the good life, as in Homer’s Greece. But the verb mashaḥ, “anoint,” is generally reserved for sacral or royal use of oil, so its employment here adds to the invective.
Joseph. The house of Joseph, one should recall, is an equivalent for the house of Israel.
7. at the head of exiles. That is, they shall lead the rest of the people into exile, a bitterly ironic turn of their leadership.
10. And a handful of men shall remain. The first three words of the Masoretic Text, unasʾu dodo umesarfo, are not intelligible, and there is no grammatical agreement between the initial verb and the two words that follow. A literal rending would be: and they shall-carry his-uncle and-his-mesaref, the meaning of this last noun remaining unknown. The present translation adopts the reading of the Septuagint, which evidently had a Hebrew text with three different (and intelligible) Hebrew words: wenishʾaru metey mispar.
to him who is in the far corners of the house. Apparently, there is a single survivor, huddled, perhaps hiding, in a remote corner of the house.
so as not to mention the name of the LORD. People often greeted each other in the name of the LORD, as Boaz does with his laborers in Ruth 2:4. The speaker wants to make sure this will not happen in this place of death and devastation, for that would be a violation of the sanctity of the divine name.
12. can one plow with an ox in the sea? The received text reads ʾim-yaḥarosh babeqarim, “can one plow in the mornings?” A small, widely accepted emendation breaks out the last word into two, babaqar yam, yielding the meaning shown in this translation.
13. Lo-Dabar. This is a town in the northern part of Gilead, but the name could also be understood to mean “nothing,” and a pun is clearly intended.
Karnaim. A town in the Bashan region. Both Gilead and Bashan were part of the northern kingdom but at times were contested.
14. a nation. Though the verb “raise against” occurs at the beginning of this verse, its object, as a kind of ominous revelation, is withheld to the very end of the sentence.
from Lebo-Hammath / to the Wadi of Arabah. Lebo-Hammath is in the Lebanon valley; the Wadi of Arabah is far to the south, in the rift descending from the Sea of Galilee to the Dead Sea.
1Thus did the Master, the LORD show me: And, look, He was creating locusts at the beginning of the sprouting of the late grain, and, look, it was the late grain after the king’s reaping. 2And so, after they had finished devouring the green growth of the land, I said, “O Master, LORD, pray forgive! How will Jacob stand, for he is small?” 3The LORD repented concerning this. “It shall not be,” said the LORD. 4Thus did the LORD show me: And look, the Master, the LORD was calling forth to contend with fire, and it consumed the great deep and consumed the fields. 5And I said, “O Master, LORD, pray cease. How will Jacob stand, for he is small?” 6The LORD relented concerning this. “This, too, shall not be,” said the Master, the LORD. 7Thus did the LORD show me: And, look, the Master was stationed by a wall built with a plumb line, and in His hand was a plumb line. 8And the LORD said to me; “What do you see, Amos?” And I said, “A plumb line.” And the Master said to me, “I am about to place a plumb line in the midst of My people Israel. I will no longer forgive them.”
9And Isaac’s high places shall be desolate,
and Israel’s sanctuaries shall become ruins,
and I will rise against the house of Jeroboam with a sword.
10And Amaziah the priest of Bethel sent to Jeroboam king of Israel, saying, “Amos has plotted against you in the midst of the house of Israel. The land cannot bear all his words.” 11For thus has Amos said:
By the sword Jeroboam shall die,
and Israel shall surely be exiled from its soil.”
12And Amaziah said to Amos, “Seer, go, flee to the land of Judah and there eat bread and prophesy there. 13But in Bethel you shall no longer prophesy, for it is the king’s sanctuary and a royal house.” 14And Amos answered and said to Amaziah, “No prophet am I, nor the son of a prophet am I, but a cattle herder am I and a tender of sycamore fruit. 15And the LORD took me from going after the flock, and the LORD said to me ‘Go, prophesy to My people Israel.’ 16And, now, hear the word of the LORD, you who say, ‘You shall not prophesy to Israel and shall not preach to the house of Isaac.’ 17Therefore thus said the LORD:
Your wife shall play the whore in the town,
and your sons and your daughters shall fall by the sword,
and you shall be shared out with a measuring line,
and you shall die on unclean soil,
and Israel shall surely be exiled from its soil.”
CHAPTER 7 NOTES
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1. Thus did the Master, the LORD show me. These words, which will be repeated as a formula, initiate a series of four prose prophecies that come in the form of visions (the Hebrew verb for “show” is literally “cause to see”).
And, look. This word, wehineh, is regularly used to introduce what is seen in a dream and thus underscores the generic connection between vision and dream.
after the king’s reaping. Part of the earlier harvest was set aside for fodder for the king’s herds and horses.
4. it consumed the great deep and consumed the fields. This would be a truly catastrophic fire, not only burning the fields (a natural event when a wildfire spreads) but drying out the groundwater beneath the surface of the earth (in effect, an apocalyptic event).
7. plumb line. This is the traditional understanding of ʾanakh, which appears only here. Some have disputed its meaning, claiming it might be a term for “axe” because it becomes here an instrument of destruction. “Plumb line,” however, makes perfectly good sense. The wall is a plumb-line wall (“built” is merely implied) because it is properly constructed as a perfect vertical. God will use a plumb line to measure out inexorable judgment against Israel. Compare 2 Kings 21:13: “I will stretch over Jerusalem the line of Samaria and the weight [the “plumb” of the plumb line] of the house of Ahab, and I will wipe out Jerusalem.”
10. And Amaziah the priest of Bethel sent to Jeroboam. This narrative episode interrupts the sequence of four visionary prophecies.
Amos has plotted against you. Given the recent history of court conspiracies and coups in the northern kingdom, Amaziah readily represents the prophet as a political subversive.
11. By the sword Jeroboam shall die, / and Israel shall surely be exiled from its soil. Amaziah steps up the actual words of Amos’s prophecy (verse 9), putting in his mouth an explicit prediction of the death of Jeroboam and of Israel’s exile.
12. there eat bread. Modern translations have often eliminated the concreteness of this idiom by rendering it as “There earn your living” or some equivalent, but English has its own idiomatic use of “bread” as “sustenance” (for example, “breadwinner”). In fact, Rashi may be correct in saying “in language of contempt he spoke to him—there they will give you crusts of bread as payment for prophesying to them.”
14. No prophet am I, nor the son of a prophet. Amos responds directly to the remark about eating bread. He says that he is no professional prophet of the sort that expects payment for prophesying. The expression “son of a prophet” refers to the disciples who constituted the following of such a prophet. What he is invoking is the phenomenon registered in Samuel and Kings of career prophets surrounded by their disciples (who are called “sons of the prophet”) and who cultivate ecstatic states, often with the aid of musical instruments. Amos, by contrast, is a simple herdsman and farmer driven to prophesy by a call from God.
a tender of sycamore fruit. The sycamore yields a figlike fruit, and the unusual verb used here, boles, may refer to a well-attested practice of scratching the surface of the fruit in order to facilitate its ripening.
17. Your wife shall play the whore in the town. Some interpreters want to understand the verb tizneh as “be raped” (or substitute another verb that has this meaning), but that seems questionable. The priest’s shame will be compounded when his wife decides to give herself to the invading troops, either because she simply has her eye on the main chance or because she wants to avert any harm that might come to her.
you shall die on unclean soil. The “unclean soil” is of course the soil of the foreign land to which the exiles will be deported. This carries a special barb for Amaziah because he is a priest, enjoined to preserve ritual purity, and no sacrifices can be offered on unclean soil.
1Thus did the Master, the LORD, show me: And, look, a basket of summer’s-end fruit. 2And He said to me, “What do you see, Amos?” And I said, “A basket of summer’s-end fruit.” And the LORD said to me:
The end has come upon My people Israel.
I will no longer forgive them.
3And the palace’s songstresses shall howl
on that day, said the LORD:
“Many the corpses flung everywhere. Hush!”
4Hear this, who trample the needy,
destroying the poor of the land,
5saying, “When will the new moon be over, that we may sell grain,
and the sabbath, that we may trade in wheat?
to use a short ephah measure and an oversize shekel-weight
and to tilt cheating scales,
6to buy the indigent with silver
and the needy for the price of sandals,
and we may sell chaff as grain.”
7The LORD has sworn by the Pride of Jacob:
I will never forget their acts.
8For this should not the earth shudder
and all its dwellers mourn?
It shall rise, altogether, like the Nile,
heave and sink like the Nile of Egypt.
9And it shall happen on that day, said the LORD,
I will make the sun set at noon
and darken the earth on a day of light.
And I will turn your festivals into mourning
and all your songs into lament,
And lay sackcloth on all loins
And I will make her as the mourning for an only child
and her end as a bitter day.
10Look, days are coming, said the LORD,
when I will let loose famine in the land,
not famine for bread
and not thirst for water
but for hearing the words of the LORD.
11And they shall wander from sea to sea,
and from the north to the east they shall roam
to seek the LORD’s word,
but they shall not find it.
12On that day the lovely virgins shall faint
and the young men, too, with thirst.
13Who swear by the Guilt of Samaria
and say, “As your God lives, Dan,”
and “As the way to Beersheba lives.”
They shall fall and rise no more.
CHAPTER 8 NOTES
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2. summer’s-end fruit. The Hebrew puns on qayits, “summer” and qeits, “end.” Since many fruits do not ripen until late in the summer, qayits might even actually mean “summer’s end.”
3. songstresses. The Masoretic Text has shirot, “(long) songs,” but most scholars prefer to read, as does this translation, sharot, “songstresses.”
Many the corpses flung everywhere. Hush! These are probably the women’s words. This does not scan as a line of poetry and the Hebrew syntax is ambiguously terse. The received text has hishlikh, “he flung,” but the context requires a passive form, hoshlakh. The Masoretes linked this verb with “hush,” but flinging is an action more appropriate to abandoned corpses.
5. trade. The verb here usually means “open” and probably refers to opening sacks of grain.
a short ephah measure and an oversize shekel-weight. Giving the buyer a short ephah (a dry measure) would be shortchanging him. The oversize weight for the shekel would mean paying more in silver than the actual stipulated silver weight.
6. sell chaff as grain. This loops back to the grain transactions at the beginning of their speech. Obviously, they would not actually have spoken this catalogue of their cheating practices—it is rather the prophet who exposes their intentions, putting the words in their mouths.
7. the Pride of Jacob. Though elsewhere this expression refers to the people of the northern kingdom, here it would have to be God.
8. rise … like the Nile. There are tides in the Nile and periods of flooding. The earth in this image will have the instability of water.
9. every head a shaved pate. This is a practice of mourning forbidden in Deuteronomy 14:1, evidently because of its association with paganism. It appears, however, with some frequency in poetry, either as a linguistic fossil or because it was actually common in popular religion.
I will make her. The nearest antecedent for this pronoun is “the earth” at the beginning of this verse, although it is possible that the reference is to Israel, often represented as a woman.
11. from sea to sea. This probably means from the Mediterranean to the Dead Sea, though from the Mediterranean to the Red Sea is also possible.
12. the lovely virgins / … the young men. These are young people in their prime, and the pride and joy of the nation. If even they faint away, one may infer that elders and children will scarcely be able to withstand the distress of this famine for the word of the LORD. Thus the idea of such a famine is made vividly concrete because people grow faint and perish, as if they were deprived of actual food and water.
13. Who swear by the Guilt of Samaria. The received text makes sense as it stands: the worship of the icons of the calves in Dan and Bethel is guilty worship. Some scholars, however, propose emending the Hebrew word for “guilt” so that it reads as the name of a pagan deity.
As the way to Beersheba lives. Here the oath is taken in the name of the way because a long pilgrimage to the south is involved in order to reach the cultic center in Beersheba. This is the second mention of this center—compare 5:5.
1I saw the Master stationed by the altar, and He said:
Strike the capitals that the thresholds shake.
I will split them on the heads of them all,
and who is left of them I will slay with the sword.
None from them shall be able to flee,
and no survivor from them shall escape.
2Were they to dig down to Sheol,
from there My hand would take them,
and were they to ascend to the heavens,
from there I would bring them down.
3And were they to hide on the peak of Carmel,
I would search them out there and take them.
And were they to take cover from My eyes on the floor of the sea,
from there I would summon the Serpent and it would bite them.
4And should they go in captivity before their enemies,
from there I will summon the sword and it would slay them.
And I will put My eye on them
for evil and not for good.
5And the Master, LORD of Armies,
Who but touches the earth and it melts
and all dwellers upon it mourn,
and it all goes up like the Nile,
and sinks like the Nile of Egypt.
6Who builds in the heavens His lofts
and His vault upon earth He founds.
Who calls forth the waters of the sea
and pours them over the earth—the LORD is His name.
7Are you not like the Cushites to Me,
O Israelites? said the LORD.
Did I not bring up Israel from the land of Egypt
and the Philistines from Crete
and Aram from Kir?
8Look, the eyes of the Master, the LORD,
are upon the offending kingdom,
and I will destroy it
from the face of the earth.
But I will surely not destroy the house of Jacob, said the LORD.
9For I am about to command,
and I will shake up the house of Israel in all the nations
as one shakes in a sieve
and no pebble shall fall to the ground.
10By the sword shall die
all the offenders among My people
who say “The evil shall not
approach and come close to us.”
11On that day I will raise up
and I will stop up its breaches
and its ruins will I raise
and rebuild it as in days of yore,
12so that they take hold of the remnant of Edom
and all the nations on which My name has been called,
said the LORD, Who does this.
13Look, days are coming, said the LORD,
when the plowman shall overtake the reaper
and the treader of grapes the sower of seed.
And the mountains shall drip fermented juice,
14And I will restore the fortunes of My people Israel,
and they shall rebuild desolate towns and dwell there
and plant vineyards and drink their wine.
And they shall make gardens
and eat their fruit.
15And I will plant them on their soil,
and they shall no more be uprooted from their soil
that I have given them, said the LORD your God.
CHAPTER 9 NOTES
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1. Strike the capitals. The imperative here is puzzling because it makes the prophet the agent of destruction, a role that prophets do not play. Some medieval Hebrew commentators propose that this command is delivered to an angel (not mentioned in the text) and not to Amos. An alternative would be to emend the verb to “I will strike,” changing hakh to ʾakh.
I will split them. The received text has “he will split them.” See the previous comment.
2. Were they to dig down to Sheol. This sequence of lines to the end of verse 3 is strongly reminiscent of Psalms 139:7–12. Both the passage in Psalms and this one articulate a vision of God as an all-seeing cosmic deity from Whom there can never be escape. The theater of retribution against Israel is thus dramatically widened.
3. the Serpent. This is a mythological entity, not the serpent of the Garden story but the monstrous Leviathan of Canaanite tradition. Here the once menacing sea god answers the LORD’s bidding.
5. Who but touches the earth and it melts. This verse and the next are still another doxology celebrating God’s overwhelming power, with language reminiscent of several psalms. The editorial motivation for the placement of the doxology here is the vivid evocation in verses 2–4 of God’s cosmic omniscience in pursuit of all who seek to flee.
6. vault. The translation is a guess for ʾagudah, a term that may be architectural because it derives from a verbal stem that means “to bind together.”
7. Are you not like the Cushites to Me. The Cushites are the Nubians, perhaps invoked here because as black Africans, they would seem to be an ultimate other to the Israelites (a presence of individual Nubians among the Israelites is attested to in several biblical narratives, with no suggestion of racial prejudice). The idea, then, is that God oversees all nations and peoples, however different they might seem from Israel. But from what follows in the next line of poetry, one would expect a mention of God’s having brought the Cushites to Nubia from another land, and that is absent.
Israel from the land of Egypt. Nubia borders on Egypt to the south, so its mention in the preceding line provides an associative preparation for the introduction at this point of Egypt.
the Philistines from Crete / and Aram from Kir. The Philistines in fact migrated to the eastern shore of the Mediterranean from somewhere in the Greek realm, perhaps actually from Crete. Nothing is known about a migration of Arameans from Kir, far to the northeast in Mesopotamia, but the reference here may reflect factual knowledge about such origins in Amos’s time. In any case, the point of these references is to say that God oversees the migration of all peoples and that the movement of Israel from Egypt to Canaan is not unique.
8. the eyes of the Master … / are upon the offending kingdom. The offending kingdom must be Israel. Thus, the God Who moves peoples from one territory to another does not grant special privileges or guarantee permanent residence to Israel if it turns itself into an offending kingdom.
But I will surely not destroy the house of Jacob. The prophet has just represented God as saying He will destroy the offending kingdom from the face of the earth. Although it is possible that he wants to qualify that sweeping declaration, one suspects that the mitigation of the prophecy of destruction is an editorial addition—especially since this entire sentence does not scan as poetry.
9. no pebble shall fall to the ground. This is a little confusing. Does it mean that the whole people, good and bad, will be shaken in the sieve of exile and destroyed? A possible solution is that the “pebble”—“the offenders” of the next line—will remain in the sieve while the grain, which has smaller particles, will fall through the holes and be saved.
11. the fallen shelter. The Hebrew noun sukah is strategically chosen. It is the shelter or hut erected in a field for someone watching over the crops. Thus, unlike a fortress or a palace, it is easily knocked down.
David. This invocation of the Davidic dynasty appears to suggest a hope on the part of the prophet that in future times the united kingdom will be restored.
12. all the nations on which My name has been called. Edom and other regions east of the Jordan were conquered by David and made part of a mini-empire. David’s taking possession of these lands is what is meant by God’s name being called on these nations. Now the empire will be restored.
13. the plowman shall overtake the reaper. The whole line is a hyperbole for an era of extravagant agricultural fertility.
and all the hills shall melt. Those who see in this an image of fields of waving grain betray a lack of understanding of how biblical poetry works. First, the mountains “drip” new wine because the yield of the vineyards is so abundant. Then, in an intensification in the second verset, the hills produce such a flow of wine that they veritably melt.
15. And I will plant them on their soil, / and they shall no more be uprooted from their soil. The prophecy pointedly concludes by underscoring through the terms chosen a continuity between the flourishing vineyards and gardens and the people flourishing on the soil. The Hebrew ʾadamah means “soil” but has an extended sense of “land,” and both meanings are brought into play here.
1The vision of Obadiah. Thus said the LORD concerning Edom:
A report we have heard from the LORD,
and an envoy among the nations was sent.
Rise and let us rise against her for battle.
2Look, I have made you last among the nations,
you are utterly spurned.
3Your heart’s arrogance deceived you
who dwell in the clefts of the rock,
in your abode on high,
who say in your heart,
“Who can bring me down to the ground?”
4Should you go high as the eagle
and should you nest among the stars,
from there I would bring you down, said the LORD.
5Should thieves come to you,
plunderers in the night,
They would take but what they needed.
Should grape harvesters come to you,
would they not leave gleanings?
6How Esau has been stripped,
his hidden places laid bare!
7To the border they have sent you off,
They deceived you, prevailed against you,
all the men in league with you.
have laid a trap beneath you.
There is no discerning in him.
8Why, on that day, said the LORD:
I shall destroy the sages from Edom
and discerning from Esau’s mountain.
9And your survivors shall be terror-stricken, Teman,
that every man be cut off from Esau’s mountain.
10For the slaughter, for the outrage against your brother Jacob,
shame shall cover you, and you shall be cut off forever.
11On the day you stood aloof,
on the day strangers seized his wealth
and aliens entered his gates,
and for Jerusalem they cast lots,
and you were as one of them.
12And do not gloat on your brother’s day,
on the day of his downfall.
And do not rejoice over the Judahites
on the day of their destruction.
And do not boast
on the day of distress.
13Do not enter My people’s gate
on the day of their disaster.
Do not gloat on your part
over the evil that befalls him on the day of his disaster.
14And do not stand at the crossroads
to cut off his fugitives
and do not hand over his survivors
on the day of distress.
15For near is the day of the LORD
against all the nations.
As you have done, it shall be done to you.
Your requital shall come back on your head.
16For as you drank on My holy mountain,
all the nations shall drink ever more.
and be as though they never had been.
17But on Mount Zion there shall be a remnant,
and it shall be sacrosanct,
and the house of Jacob shall dispossess their dispossessors.
18And the house of Jacob shall be a fire
and the house of Joseph a flame,
and the house of Esau shall be straw,
and they shall ignite them and consume them.
And the house of Esau shall have no survivor,
for the LORD has spoken.
19And they shall take hold of Esau’s mountain and the lowland of the Philistines and the field of Ephraim and the field of Samaria, and Benjamin—Gilead. 20And this force of exiles of the Israelites that is among the Canaanites as far as Zarephath and the exiles of Jerusalem who are at Sepharad—they shall take hold of the Negeb towns. 21And rescuers shall go up Mount Zion to exact judgment against Esau’s mountain, and the kingdom shall be the LORD’s.
CHAPTER 1 NOTES
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1. concerning Edom. Obadiah’s exclusive subject is the outrages Edom has committed against Judah and the retribution it will receive for its hateful acts. The inference is compelling that he witnessed Edom’s collaboration with the Babylonians in the dire events of 586 B.C.E. Jeremiah, Second Isaiah, and, most vividly, Psalm 137, register responses to these same acts of Edom.
A report we have heard. Much of this passage through verse 6 replicates Jeremiah 49:14–16, although the order of verses is different and there are some discrepancies between the two texts. Either Obadiah drew from Jeremiah (perhaps the most likely explanation) or the other way around, or both writers used a common source.
3. who dwell in the clefts of the rock. Edom is in part a mountainous region, referred to as “Mount Seir” and also (here only) as “Edom’s mountain.”
5. how you would be destroyed. This is somewhat puzzling because the point is that the thieves would take only what they needed. One solution would be to read this clause as a question, although that would clash with the exclamatory “how” at the beginning of the next verse.
7. all the men allied with you. This is measure-for-measure justice: Edom betrayed its brother Israel; now it will be betrayed by its allies.
Who ate bread at your table. The Hebrew shows merely “your bread,” but the text looks defective because this one word is not sufficient prosodically to constitute a verset. The translation assumes that the line originally read ’okhley laḥmekha, literally, “the eaters of your bread,” a biblical idiom for dependents or vassals.
There is no discerning in him. The masculine pronoun refers to Edom. Such switches from third person to second person are common biblical usage.
8. discerning from Esau’s mountain. This is part of a new prophecy, inserted at this point because the “discerning” at the end of the previous prophecy is picked up in the opening line here.
9. Teman. A principal city of Edom.
10. For the slaughter. The received text puts this single Hebrew word at the end of the previous verse, but it makes better sense here.
11. On the day you stood aloof. As the next three versets make clear, this is the day of the conquest of Jerusalem.
for Jerusalem they cast lots. They cast lots in order to divide up the city in shares for the conquerors.
12. And do not gloat. The literal sense of the word is “see in,” a set idiom for witnessing the downfall of one’s enemy with schadenfreude. This series of sentences is cast as negative imperatives, but the implication is that this is what Edom in fact did and should never have done.
14. And do not stand at the crossroads / to cut off his fugitives. The indictment of Edom moves from his simply gloating over the downfall of Judah to his taking an active part in the onslaught by killing those who attempt to flee.
16. For as you drank on My holy mountain. The “you” of the preceding verse is in the singular and clearly refers to Edom. This “you” is plural and probably refers to the Judahites: they have drunk the poison chalice (kos hatarʿeilah—that term is elliptically implied but not mentioned) on the day Jerusalem (“My holy mountain”) was destroyed, and now the turn of the nations is coming to drink that cup to its bitter dregs.
babble / … never had been. The Hebrew deploys an untranslatable pun: laʿu … loʾ hayu.
18. no survivor. This is condign justice for the people who cut down the survivors of Judah.
20. Zarephath. This is a Phoenician town about nine miles south of Sidon. In the Middle Ages, it would be adopted as the designation for France, a usage carried over into modern Hebrew.
Sepharad. This is Sardis in Asia Minor. In the Middle Ages, it would be used as the name for Spain, another usage preserved in modern Hebrew. Obadiah appears to have mapped out a plan in which groups of Judahites exiled to different regions would be assigned different territories in the return to Zion.
21. And rescuers shall go up Mount Zion to exact judgment against Esau’s mountain. The military strategy is somewhat opaque, the point being to set mountain over against mountain. Perhaps what is implied is that the forces of Judah will assemble on their own lofty mountain and then proceed to attack Mount Seir.
We know nothing about the author of the Book of Jonah or his geographic location, and only a rough approximation can be made of the time of the book’s composition. The main evidence for dating is linguistic: there are quite a few turns of phrase that indicate this is Late Biblical prose, a kind of Hebrew not written until after the return from the Babylonian exile in the fifth century B.C.E. The book’s universalist theology probably also argues for a relatively late date because one does not find this sort of rigorously world-embracing monotheism until Second Isaiah, the anonymous sixth-century prophet of the Babylonian exile. It is possible that the book’s author drew on an earlier folktale, as some scholars have conjectured, although there is no way of proving that, and the fabulous elements of the story in their very extravagance have the look more of literary invention than of a naïve folk imagination.
The name Jonah son of Amittai is drawn from a passing reference in 2 Kings 14:25 to a prophet so designated who delivered God’s word during the reign of Jeroboam II and about whom nothing more than that is said. Since our story, which has no clear historical moorings, apart from the vague invocation of Assyria, was almost surely composed centuries later (despite some unconvincing dissent on the issue of dating from a few biblical scholars), the protagonist is surely not identical with the prophet mentioned in 2 Kings. The writer may have adopted the name because the patronym amittai suggests ʾemet, “truth,” in Hebrew. The first name, yonah, means “dove,” which could have an ironic application here because this Jonah is an unwilling agent who ends up averting a punitive cataclysm, in approximate analogy to Noah’s dove, which signals the restoration of life after a punitive cataclysm. Alternately, the writer might simply have chosen this particular prophet’s name as a convenient hook on which to hang a fable about prophecy precisely because nothing more is known about the prophet in question.
While the Hebrew narratives composed in the First Temple period utilize heterogeneous materials, they exhibit a great deal of uniformity in regard to narrative conventions and the general purposes for which narratives are framed. By contrast, what characterizes the narratives of the Late Biblical period is a vigorous experimentation with genre and an impulse to move beyond the governing procedures of earlier biblical narrative. Perhaps the most distinctive hallmark of Jonah’s relatively late composition is that it tells a story altogether unlike those of earlier biblical literature. The recalcitrance of the prophet is a recurring feature of the classic call narratives of the prophets, as with Jeremiah, Isaiah, and Moses himself, but nowhere else do we have a person summoned to prophecy who actually tries to flee to the other end of the known world. Similarly, though one prophet, Amos, is sent from his home in Judah to prophesy in the northern—and not very friendly—kingdom of Israel, the two realms are still, after all, within the family, while only in Jonah is a man called to deliver a prophecy to the general populace of an altogether foreign, and hostile, nation.
The two instances just mentioned offer a clue to Jonah’s relation to its literary antecedents. It picks up certain hints or precedents from earlier biblical narrative but pushes them to an extreme where they play a role in what amounts to a different genre. The narratives originating in the First Temple period, despite exhibiting some miraculous events and some spectacular episodes of divine intervention, are by and large “history-like,” as Hans Frei has aptly called them, from the Patriarchal Tales to the stories of David and the later kings. Jonah, on the other hand is a manifestly fabulous tale. Though earlier Hebrew narrative offers one anomalous instance of a talking animal, Balaam’s she-ass, that is the exception that proves the rule, an invention introduced to sharpen the satire on the pagan soothsayer who is blind to what his visionary beast can plainly see. Jonah’s fish does not speak, but it follows God’s instructions dutifully, first swallowing Jonah and then, when it gets the word, vomiting him up on dry land. Its capacity, moreover, to keep Jonah three days in the dark wet prison of its innards is an even more fantastic contrivance than according Balaam’s ass the momentary gift of speech. This peculiar performance of the fish, serving as God’s obedient instrument, is in keeping with the cattle and sheep in Nineveh, bizarrely required to don sackcloth and fast together with the human beings, and, in the deliberately ambiguous wording of the Hebrew, seen as if consciously covering themselves with sackcloth and as if crying out to God along with the human denizens of Nineveh.
All this has led scholars to scramble for labels to describe Jonah. It has been called everything from a Menippean satire to an allegory, but none of these identifications of Jonah is entirely convincing. I would see Jonah as its own kind of ad hoc innovative narrative. It aims to recast traditional Israelite notions of prophecy in a radically universalist framework. The prophets of Israel all work in an emphatically national context. Their messages are addressed to the people of Israel, often with explicitly political concerns, and the messages are manifestly directed to the fate of the nation—its imminent destruction by foreign powers if it fails to mend its evil ways, the fulfillment of its hope for national restoration after the disaster has occurred. The medium of the prophets is generally poetry, where all the powerful expressive resources of the Hebrew language could be summoned to convey the prophetic vision to the people. This may be one reason that Jonah is accorded no verbal prophetic message, only that single brief prediction of catastrophe which, if one is supposed to think of such considerations, he would have spoken not in Hebrew but in Akkadian. Jonah engages with no Israelites in the story. First he has an exchange with the polytheistic mariners, then he addresses the Ninevites, and his closest connection is with two presumably insensate living things, a very large fish and a leafy plant. The God with whom he has such difficulties because of his Israelite nationalist mind-set is not chiefly the God of Israel but the God of the whole world, of all creatures large and small. He is not a God you can pin down to national settings. Although He initially addresses Jonah somewhere within the land of Israel—perhaps even in Jerusalem, where the Temple, evoked in chapter 2, stands—His fullest dialogue with Jonah is on a promontory overlooking Nineveh. While He does rebuke Jonah as the God of earlier Hebrew narratives and poems rebukes wayward people, the rebuke itself is oddly formulated, in keeping with the wonderful strangeness of this book. God exercises magisterial control over storm winds, fish, livestock, and plants, as well as over human beings of all tribes and nations, and He asks the recalcitrant prophet why he should “have pity” for an ephemeral plant but not for a vast city of clueless human beings and their beasts. It is beautifully appropriate that the story ends with the beasts, and with a question. It is in no way clear how Jonah will respond to this question. Will God’s challenge lead him to a transformative insight about God’s dominion over all things and all peoples, or will it prove to be a challenge that is quite beyond the myopia of his ingrained prejudices? The trembling balance of this concluding ambiguity perfectly focuses the achievement of the Book of Jonah both as an enchanting story and as the shaking up of an entire theological world.
1And the word of the LORD came to Jonah son of Amittai, saying, 2“Get up, go to Nineveh the great city, and call out against it, for their evil has risen before Me.” 3And Jonah got up to flee to Tarshish from before the LORD to Jaffa and found a ship coming from Tarshish, and he paid its fare and went down with them to go to Tarshish from before the LORD. 4And the LORD cast a great wind upon the sea, and there was a great storm on the sea, and the ship threatened to break up. 5And the sailors were afraid, and each man cried out to his god, and they cast the gear that was in the ship into the sea to lighten their load. And Jonah had come down into the far corners of the craft and had laid down and fallen deep asleep. 6And the captain approached him and said, “What are you doing deep asleep? Call out to your god. Perhaps the god will give some thought to us, that we may not perish.” 7And they said to each other, “Let us cast lots that we may know on whose account this evil is upon us.” And they cast lots, and the lot fell on Jonah. 8And they said to him, “Tell us, pray, you on whose account this evil is upon us, what is your work and from where do you come? What is your land, and from what people are you?” 9And he said to them, “I am a Hebrew and the LORD God of the heavens do I fear, Who made the sea and the dry land.” 10And the men feared greatly, and they said to him, “What is this you have done?” For the men knew that he was fleeing from before the LORD, for he had told them. 11And they said to him, “What shall we do that the sea calm for us?” For the sea was storming more and more. 12And he said to them, “Lift me up and cast me into the sea that the sea calm for you, for I know that on my account this great storm is upon you.” 13And the men rowed to get back to the dry land and were not able, for the sea was storming upon them more and more. 14And they called out to the LORD and said, “Please, O LORD, pray let us not perish on account of the life of this man, and do not exact from us the blood of the innocent, for You, O LORD, as You desire You do.” 15And they lifted up Jonah and cast him into the sea, and the sea ceased from its fury. 16And the men feared the LORD greatly and offered sacrifices to the LORD and made vows.
CHAPTER 1 NOTES
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1. came to Jonah. The literal meaning of the Hebrew verb is “was to Jonah.”
2. Nineveh the great city. The entirely fabulous proportions of its vastness will become clear in chapter 3. Although there are a couple of rare instances in the Book of Kings of an Israelite prophet’s going on a mission to a foreign country, the call to go to Nineveh is anomalous and hardly historical. Nineveh, the capital of the Assyrian empire, no longer existed by the likely time of Jonah’s composition; however, it is remembered as the power that entirely destroyed the northern kingdom of Israel and later seriously threatened the southern kingdom of Judah as well. To send a Hebrew prophet to Nineveh would be rather like sending a Jewish speaker to deliver moral exhortation to the Germans in Berlin in 1936. While Jonah’s words to God in 4:2 make it clear that he does not want to undertake the mission because he foresees that the Ninevites will repent and that God will forgive them, he might well also be afraid to go to Nineveh.
3. And Jonah got up to flee. For a brief moment, he might seem to be heeding God’s command to get up and go to Nineveh, but this momentary illusion is broken by the infinitive “to flee.”
Tarshish. This location, mentioned in a variety of biblical texts, has been identified with a variety of places from Asia Minor to Spain. In any event, it is far to the west, in the opposite direction from Nineveh.
Jaffa. This port city, more or less on the site of present-day Tel Aviv, was probably not under Israelite control. The rest of Jonah’s story will unfold entirely among foreigners.
went down. We are not informed about Jonah’s hometown, but it would likely be up in the hill country, perhaps even in Jerusalem, for Israelite habitation in the coastal plain was sparse. First Jonah goes down to Jaffa, then into the ship. His trajectory is a series of goings down as he is cast into the sea and then into the belly of the fish.
4. the ship threatened to break up. The term ḥishvah reflects a root that in earlier biblical Hebrew means “to plan,” “to devise,” or “to reckon.” Jack Sasson argues that it is a deliberate personification and thus he renders it as “expected,” but “threatened” is personification enough and more idiomatic in context.
5. the sailors were afraid. Their fear will mark this entire episode, taking on a new meaning at its end.
to lighten their load. The literal sense of the Hebrew is “to lighten from upon them.”
Jonah had come down. This is the third occurrence of this thematically fraught verb, marked here as a pluperfect (subject before the verb, verb in the qatal form).
the far corners of the craft. This is presumably the hold, but the phrase yarketey hasefinah plays on yarketey bor, “the far corners of the Pit” (that is, death), and perhaps also, as James Ackerman has proposed, on yarketey tsafon, “the far corners of Tsafon” (the dwelling place of the gods in Canaanite mythology).
6. will give some thought to us. The Hebrew yitʿashet is unique to this text. The translation follows the proposal of some medieval exegetes that is related to ʿeshtonot, “thoughts.”
7. Let us cast lots. The lot is a divinatory device, especially for determining guilt. See Joshua 18:6 and 1 Samuel 14:41–42.
8. you on whose account. The “you” is merely implied in the Hebrew.
what is your work. Most passengers would have been merchants, but Jonah has brought no merchandise on board. The noun has the specific connotation of a designated task, so they may be asking Jonah what he is up to.
What is your land. Jaffa, probably a polyglot city where traders embarked and disembarked, would give them no clue as to the national identity of this passenger.
9. I am a Hebrew. This is regularly the designation used by foreigners for Israelites and so it makes sense that Jonah would choose it to identify his nationality to the ship’s crew.
and the LORD God of the heavens do I fear, Who made the sea and the dry land. Although this declaration of faith serves the thematic purposes of this story, the effect is almost comic: Jonah, who has run away from God’s command, as if a geographic escape from God were possible, now announces his reverence for the universal God of sky, sea, and earth. His declaration would surely at first have baffled the polytheistic sailors, for whom there would have been a separate deity for each of these realms.
11. For the sea was storming more and more. As the story continues, there is an indication in the verbal form used, holekh wesoʿer, of a constant increase in the intensity of the storm, which was powerful to begin with.
12. Lift me up and cast me into the sea. Jonah means simply that if they get rid of his jinxing presence on board, the storm will cease to pound the ship. The crew, however, may well have construed this as casting an offering to appease the raging sea god.
13. And the men rowed to get back to the dry land. They are reluctant to follow Jonah’s instructions, which they of course understand as condemning him to almost certain death. But rowing toward the shore (the ship would have been equipped with both oars and sails) is a strategy of desperation because in a fierce storm, approaching the shore would have most likely led to a catastrophic shipwreck.
14. And they called out to the LORD. They may not have been transformed into monotheists, but Jonah’s testimony to them has clearly convinced them that in the present dire circumstances, the LORD, YHWH, is a powerful deity who controls the urgent situation.
let us not perish on account of the life of this man. This may mean that they do not want to be the target of God’s punishing wrath together with Jonah, who is on the ship with them. But the reference to the blood of the innocent in the next clause may rather suggest that they are praying not to be condemned for killing Jonah by throwing him overboard.
16. And the men feared the LORD greatly. This is exactly the phrase used for their fear of the storm in the verse 10. Now it appears in its other meaning of showing reverence through worship (the sacrifices and vows at the end of this verse) for a deity, even though the first sense of terror still lingers—they revere the LORD because they have witnessed His fearsome power in the terrible storm and in His causing it to suddenly stop. Again one needn’t assume that they have become perfect monotheists, like the Aramean general in 2 Kings miraculously cured of his skin disease, for they might simply be recognizing that Jonah’s deity is the one who has manifested fearsome control over the storm that almost destroyed them. In any case, the turning of the hearts of these pagans to the God of Israel anticipates the response of the Ninevites to Jonah’s message.
offered sacrifices to the LORD and made vows. There is some evidence that ships in the ancient world actually carried animals which could be sacrificed on board at urgent or propitious moments. The “vows” are pledges to offer further, votary sacrifices after their safe return to land.
1And the LORD set out a great fish to swallow Jonah, and he was three days and three nights in the innards of the fish. 2And Jonah prayed to the LORD his God from the innards of the fish. 3And he said:
to the LORD, and He answered me.
From the belly of Sheol I cried out—
4You flung me into the deep, in the heart of the sea,
and the current came round me.
streamed over me.
5And I thought:
I am banished from before Your eyes.
on Your holy temple.
6Water lapped about me to the neck,
the deep came round me,
7To the roots of the mountains I went down—
the underworld’s bolts against me forever.
But You brought up my life from the Pit,
O LORD my God.
8As my life-breath grew faint within me,
the LORD did I recall,
to Your holy Temple.
9Those who look to vaporous lies
will turn away from their mercy.
10And I with a voice of thanksgiving
What I vowed let me pay.
Rescue is the LORD’s.”
11And the LORD spoke to the fish, and it vomited Jonah onto the dry land.
CHAPTER 2 NOTES
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1. And the LORD set out. This term (m-n-h) recurs in the subsequent story, highlighting God’s supervisory control over all living constituents of creation: animal, vegetable, and human.
a great fish. Although this could conceivably be a whale, as traditional understandings of the story imagine—perhaps most vividly in Moby-Dick—the Hebrew employs the unspecific generic term for sea creature.
three days and three nights. Many events in biblical narrative are said to occur in precisely this time span. What is distinctive here is the emphatic addition of three nights to three days, inviting us to envisage Jonah’s terror imprisoned in the dark belly of the big fish three long nights and three long days, during which he of course has no way of distinguishing between day and night.
2. the LORD his God. Now, as if to confirm Jonah’s declaration of faith to the mariners, the LORD is reported to be his God.
3. I called out from my straits / to the LORD, and He answered me. As is the regular practice in biblical narrative, a poem is inserted that was originally composed for another context (compare Hannah’s thanksgiving psalm, 1 Samuel 2:1–10). This poem is a psalm of thanksgiving, exhibiting many of the formulas and metaphors of that genre. It fits the narrative situation somewhat imperfectly because, while it is introduced as Jonah’s prayer from the belly of the fish, it is not actually a plea for deliverance but the rendering of thanks to God for having already delivered the speaker, as this opening line at once makes clear. The image of almost drowning in the depths of the seas as a metaphor for near death (often because of a grave illness) is conventional in thanksgiving psalms, but here it is made to apply literally to Jonah’s desperate aqueous plight. Not surprisingly, the inserted psalm makes no mention of being swallowed by a fish because the maws of gigantic fish do not figure in thanksgiving psalms. Nevertheless, the poem does incorporate several relevant points of connection with Jonah’s story.
You heard my voice. Having first referred to God in the third person, the speaker now intimately addresses Him directly.
4. All your breakers and waves / streamed over me. This vivid image of drowning invokes, as noted, a conventional trope of the thanksgiving psalm.
5. And I thought: / I am banished from before Your eyes. Death is the ultimate separation from God in the biblical worldview. But the psalm also provides a geographical orientation for Jonah’s story: fleeing God’s presence, which has its territorial focus in the Jerusalem Temple on Mount Zion, Jonah finds himself in the watery depths, at the antipodes from God’s holy place. He has manifestly “gone down” (compare verse 7, “to the roots of the mountains I went down”) from Jerusalem.
Yet again will I look / on Your holy temple. The speaker expresses faith against odds that he will live and return to worship God in His temple. Jonah, who has fled from the divine presence, now affirms the desire to return and enjoy it.
6. weed was bound round my head. This strong image of the head entrammeled in seaweed amplifies the conventional metaphor of sinking into the depths. The clause is rhythmically compact and assonant in the Hebrew—suf ḥavush lero’shi—an effect the translation tries to emulate.
7. underworld’s … / the Pit. Because the sea as a site of drowning is the metaphorical equivalent of death, the poem naturally moves from the watery abyss to the underworld, just as it began by placing the speaker in “the belly of Sheol.”
8. my prayer came unto You, / to Your holy Temple. The Temple is where prayer is most readily heard by God. We have here a cosmic reach from the roots of the mountains, the bottom of the sea, to the Temple on Mount Zion.
9. Those who look to vaporous lies. This phrase replicates a phrase that occurs in Psalm 31:7.
will turn away from their mercy. The wording in the Hebrew is cryptic and has encouraged diverse interpretations. The least strained, which this translation seeks to register, is that the idol worshippers (clearly the referent of “those who look to vaporous lies”) at some point will be compelled to recognize that the purported deities from whom they seek mercy are mere illusions, and thus they will abandon their futile worship. The possessive pronoun “their” (in Hebrew merely a suffix) attached to “mercy” would refer to the idolators. In all this, as both medieval and modern commentators have noted, there is some relevance to Jonah and the sailors: each of the mariners calls upon his own God, but to no avail; after hearing Jonah’s words, they implore YHWH instead, Who in the end saves them.
10. And I with a voice of thanksgiving. One of the conventions of the thanksgiving psalm is to announce thanks or acclamation (todah, which is also the designation of the thanksgiving sacrifice) at the end of the poem.
let me sacrifice … / let me pray. Existing translations render this as a simple future, but that misses the nuance of the Hebrew because both verbs show the suffix that is the marker of the optative mode. What the speaker declares is that he wishes to offer sacrifice. Presumably, we will carry out his desire, but that is different from a simple statement of the future tense.
11. And the LORD spoke to the fish. Just as He assigns the fish to swallow Jonah at the beginning of the episode, now He gives word to the fish to spew out Jonah. God’s omnipresent control of all things is again manifest.
vomited. As Sasson observes, this unpleasant verb is perfectly appropriate for a kind of indignity to which Jonah is subjected in the very act of being rescued.
1And the word of the LORD came to Jonah a second time, saying, 2“Get up, go to Nineveh the great city, and call out to it the call that I speak to you.” 3And Jonah got up and went to Nineveh according to the word of the LORD. And Nineveh was a great city of God’s, a three days’ walk across. 4And Jonah began to come into the city, one day’s walk, and he called out and said, “Forty days more, and Nineveh is overthrown.” 5And the people of Nineveh trusted God, and they called a fast and donned sackcloth, from the greatest of them to the least. 6And the word reached the king of Nineveh, and he rose from his throne and took off his mantle and covered himself in sackcloth and sat upon ashes. 7And he had it proclaimed and he said in Nineveh: “By the authority of the king and his great men, saying, man and beast, cattle and sheep, shall taste nothing. They shall not graze and they shall not drink water. 8And man and beast shall cover themselves with sackcloth, and they shall call out to God with all their might, and every man of them shall turn back from his evil way and from the outrage to which they hold fast. 9Who knows? Perhaps God will turn back and relent and turn back from His blazing wrath, and we shall not perish.” 10And God saw their acts, that they had turned back from their evil way, and God relented from the evil that He said to do to them, and he did not do it.
CHAPTER 3 NOTES
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2. Get up, go to Nineveh the great city, and call out to it. God repeats verbatim His initial command to Jonah, rightly anticipating that after Jonah’s terrifying experience of God’s power on the ship and in the belly of the fish, the prophet will now be prepared to carry out the mission. The one small difference from the opening words of chapter 1 is that instead of the proposition ʿal, “against,” God uses ʾel, “to,” perhaps suggesting that Jonah’s message may not have an altogether hostile purpose. If that is so, it is a clue Jonah does not pick up, as we shall see.
3. And Jonah got up and went to Nineveh. All we know about his location is that, after having been spewed out by the big fish, he is somewhere on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean. In a move characteristic of biblical narrative, his journey to Nineveh, which would have taken weeks, is compressed into four Hebrew words, with all circumstantial detail suppressed.
a great city of God’s. The Hebrew has been variously understood as “a great city to God,” “a great city before God,” and even as “a super-great city” (with ʾelohim serving merely as an intensifier). But this preposition, le, often means “belonging to” in biblical Hebrew (including many inscriptions on pottery, seals, and the like). That meaning makes sense in terms of the theology of the book: Nineveh, like everything else in the world, is God’s possession, and thus God is appropriately concerned about the behavior of its inhabitants and their fate.
a three days’ walk across. “Across” is merely implied in the Hebrew. But the dimensions of the city vividly reflect the fabulous nature of the story: clocking roughly three miles an hour, a walker could cover as much as thirty miles in a day. A city ninety miles across would be considerably larger than contemporary Los Angeles, and, needless to say, no actual city in the ancient Near East could have been anywhere near that big. This three days’ walk also has the consequence that it will take Jonah three days—a formulaic unit in biblical narrative, as we have seen in the instance of the sojourn in the fish’s belly—to proclaim his message throughout the city.
4. Forty days more, and Nineveh is overthrown. The number is formulaic, as in the forty days of the Flood, the forty days Moses spends on the mountain, and the forty years of wandering in the wilderness. Unless we are to construe Jonah’s prophecy as a highly elliptical report, it is unconditional: in forty days, Nineveh is to be utterly devastated (and Jonah uses the participial form, not the future, to heighten the immediacy), with the verb “overthrown” the same one that is applied to Sodom. But, as the next verse makes clear, the people of Nineveh understand this dire prediction as implying a reversal of the disaster if they change their ways.
5. And the people of Nineveh trusted God. That is, they trust God’s word delivered by Jonah that they will be annihilated unless they turn back from their evil ways. This translation avoids the use of “believe” for the Hebrew term because the general meaning of this word in the Bible—as opposed to the postbiblical usage of heʾemin—suggests an act of trust, not belief. One should not imagine that the Ninevites have become monotheists, but rather that they have taken seriously the word of YHWH that He is prepared to destroy the city. The claim of some scholars that this verb when followed by the preposition be means “believe” does not stand up under analysis. The few cases where it occurs with this preposition are at best ambiguous, and in Micah 7:5, the usage is unambiguously a statement about trust, not belief: “Do not trust in evil,” and then in the poetic parallelism, “nor place confidence (tivteḥu) in a leader.”
6. And the word reached the king of Nineveh. First, a wave of penitence sweeps through the populace as Jonah continues his three days’ walk through the city, crying out his grim prophecy, then word of it comes to the king in his palace.
his mantle. Elsewhere the noun ʾaderet can be any sort of mantle or cloak, but here it is clearly a royal mantle with the designation perhaps playing on the word ʾadir, “majestic,” that might be discerned in its root.
7. had it proclaimed. Literally, “caused to be shouted.”
By the authority. The term mitaʿam is appropriate for the introduction of a royal decree and also is one of the reflections in our text of Late Biblical Hebrew.
man and beast, cattle and sheep, shall taste nothing. The bracketing, a virtual equation, of man and beast becomes a thematic thrust of the story. It is, of course, bizarre that a fast should be imposed on animals, another reflection of the fabulous character of the story, and that bizarreness will be heightened in the next verse.
graze. Although this word ordinarily apply only to the animals, here it seems, almost comically, to refer to humans as well.
8. And man and beast shall cover themselves with sackcloth. The translation closely follows the wording of the Hebrew, which intimates an image, against all logic, of the beasts voluntarily covering themselves with sackcloth. In the next clause, even though “call out” should refer to the humans only, its syntactical placement comes close to inviting us to imagine the beasts calling out as well. All this amounts to a kind of hyperbolic farcical representation of the penitence of Nineveh: after Jonah’s message, the city is so caught up in a profound impulse of penitence that a fast with sackcloth is imposed on beasts as well as on human beings.
turn back. The verb shuv, repeated three times in two verses, becomes the thematic focus of this episode: the people turn back from evil, and God then turns back from His baleful intentions.
10. God relented from the evil that He had said to do to them. “Evil” here means “harm,” as often elsewhere in biblical usage, but it is a measure-for-measure response to the evil of the Ninevites, and thus the translation follows the repetition of the word in the Hebrew. As in the previous episode, God is seen first as a wrathful God—sending the terrible storm that threatens the sailors’ lives as well as Jonah’s—and then as a merciful God—rescuing Jonah from the belly of the fish to give him a second chance as a prophet, and now canceling the decree to destroy Nineveh.
1And the thing was very evil for Jonah, and he was incensed. 2And he prayed to the LORD and said, “I beseech You, LORD, was it not my word when I was still in my land? Therefore did I hasten to flee to Tarshish, for I knew that You are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abundant in kindness and relenting from evil. 3And now, LORD, take my life, pray, from me, for better my death than my life.” 4And the LORD said, “Are you good and angry?” 5And Jonah went out of the city and sat down to the east of the city and made himself a shelter there and sat under it in the shade till he might see what would happen in the city. 6And the LORD God set out a qiqayon plant, and it rose up over Jonah to be a shade over his head to save him from his evil plight. And Jonah rejoiced greatly over the qiqayon. 7And God set out a worm as dawn came up on the morrow, and it struck the qiqayon and it withered. 8And it happened, as the sun rose, that God set out a slashing east wind, and the sun struck Jonah’s head, and he grew faint and wanted to die, and he said, “Better my death than my life.” 9And God said to Jonah, “Are you good and angry over the qiqayon?” And he said, “I am good and angry, to the point of death.” 10And the LORD said, “You—you had pity over the qiqayon, for which you did not toil and which you did not grow, which overnight came and overnight was gone. 11And I, shall I not have pity for Nineveh the great city, in which there are many more than one hundred twenty thousand human beings who do not know between their right hand and their left, and many beasts?”
CHAPTER 4 NOTES
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1. And the thing was very evil for Jonah. Various translations seek to reconcile this clause with English idiomatic usage by representing Jonah here as “dejected,” “depressed,” or “displeased.” But the repetition of the term raʿaḥ, “evil,” is important for the writer’s purpose. When the Ninevites decide to turn away from evil, their very repentance so upsets Jonah that it becomes, ironically, an evil—which is to say, a bitter vexation for him.
2. hasten. The basic meaning of the Hebrew qidem is to anticipate something by acting before it can happen. As Sasson notes, there is an interplay between this term and miqedem, “to the east of,” in verse 5 as well as with the “east wind,” ruah. qadim, in verse 8.
You are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abundant in kindness. These words are a direct quotation of Exodus 34:6. One may infer that by the late moment of the writing of Jonah, the Torah was already canonical and these words were familiar as a kind of doxology. Jonah, knowing God’s compassionate nature from such an authoritative text, did not want to undertake the prophetic mission because he did not want to be an instrument in saving Israel’s hated archenemies from destruction. At this late point in the story, he remains an unreconstructed Israelite nationalist, in contradiction to the universalist outlook of the book.
3. take my life. Facing the galling fact that he has enabled the despised Ninevites to survive, which was God’s intention all along but not his, Jonah does not want to go on living. This becomes the story of a prophetic mission that is a great success (unlike those of the historical prophets), with the success being intolerable to the prophet.
4. Are you good and angry? God’s response in this first exchange with Jonah is scarcely a response, only a provocation that leaves Jonah simmering.
5. till he might see what would happen in the city. Jonah hopes that either the Ninevites will yet abandon their repentance and suffer cataclysmic destruction, with him as a privileged spectator, or he will be confirmed in what he must see as God’s perverse compassion as he watches Nineveh prosper. Jonah must be situated on a hilltop or promontory, so he has gone up after the repeated and emphatic going-downs. The verb “to go up” will be repeated in this episode, but it is not attached to Jonah.
6. qiqayon plant. The term appears only in this passage. The King James Version renders this as “gourd,” which is as good as anybody’s guess; however, since the plant has not been confidently identified, it seems prudent to preserve the Hebrew name in the translation. Why does Jonah need the qiqayon if he has already set up a shelter to give him shade? The most reasonable explanation is that the shelter, assembled no doubt from the materials he could scrape together from what was on hand, provided rather imperfect shade whereas the qiqayon, miraculously sprung up overnight, offered luxuriant foliage.
7. God set out. God in this story repeatedly assigns elements of nature to do His bidding, alternately protecting and destroying.
8. slashing. The adjective ḥarishit occurs only here. Because it appears to recall the verb heḥerish, “to be silent,” one understanding, which becomes ensconced in later literary Hebrew, is that it means “silent” here. But that scarcely accords with the present context because the wind—the hot wind called the hamsin that blows from the eastern desert—has an obviously devastating effect. The translation guesses, picking up a cue from some of the medieval Hebrew exegetes, that the adjective is related to the verb ḥarash, “to plow” and perhaps by extension “to shear or cut through something.”
the sun struck Jonah’s head. What happened to the shade of the shelter? Sasson plausibly suggests that the shelter was swept away by the powerful east wind.
9. Are you good and angry over the qiqayon? God repeats the words he spoke in the earlier exchange, adding “over the qiqayon.”
I am good and angry, to the point of death. Jonah bounces back to God the provoking words He has just spoken, adding, in a pattern of incremental repetition, “to the point of death.”
10. You—you had pity for the qiqayon. God points an emphatic vocative finger at Jonah by using the second-person singular pronoun, normally not required in front of the conjugated verb. With similar pronominal emphasis, He contrasts “I, shall I not” at the beginning of the next verse. The choice of the verb “pity” is pointedly not quite appropriate. Jonah not does pity the plant for withering; rather, he is furious that he has been stripped of its vitally necessary shade. His “pity” for the qiqayon is by no means disinterested, whereas God’s pity for all the living creatures of Nineveh flows from His compassion.
1The word of the LORD that came to Micah the Morashtite in the days of Jotham, Ahaz, Hezekiah, kings of Judah, which he saw in visions concerning Samaria and Jerusalem.
2Listen, all you peoples,
hearken, earth and its fullness,
that the Master, the LORD, be witness against you forever,
the Master from His holy temple.
3For the LORD is about to come out from His place,
and go down and tread on earth’s high places,
4and the mountains shall melt beneath Him
and the valleys split open,
like wax before the fire,
like water pouring down a slope.
5For Jacob’s trespass all this has happened
and for the house of Israel’s offenses.
What is Jacob’s trespass
if not Samaria?
if not Jerusalem?
6And I will make Samaria a ruined heap in the field,
a place for the planting of vineyards.
And I will pour down her stones to the valley
and her foundations I will lay bare.
7And all her idols shall be shattered,
and all her whore’s pay burned in fire,
and all her icons I will make a desolation.
For from a whore’s pay she amassed it,
and to a whore’s pay it shall revert.
8For this would I lament and would wail,
I would go naked and bare.
I would raise a lament like the jackals
and mourning like the ostriches.
9For grievous is her wound,
for it has come as far as Judah,
has reached My people’s gate,
as far as Jerusalem.
10Tell it not in Gath,
wallow in the dust.
11Pass on, you who dwell in Shapier
Did not Zaanan’s dweller go out in shame?
Lament in Beth-Ezel.
He shall take his station from you.
12Though the dweller of Maroth
had hoped for good,
evil came down from the LORD
to the gate of Jerusalem.
13Harness the steed to the chariot,
It is the source of offense for Zion’s Daughter
for in you are found the trespasses of Israel.
14Therefore give parting gifts
for Moresheth-Gath.
the kings of Israel.
15Yet will I bring to you the dispossessor,
you who dwell in Mareshah.
As far as Adullam he shall come—
16Shave the pate and shear your hair
Make yourself bald as an eagle,
for they are gone from you into exile.
CHAPTER 1 NOTES
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2. Listen, all you peoples, / hearken, earth and its fullness. The beginning of Micah’s prophecies is close to the formulaic beginning of long poems (compare Isaiah 1 and Deuteronomy 32), although instead of invoking the heavens and the earth, it invokes the sundry peoples of the earth.
5. For Jacob’s trespass all this has happened. Because the imagery of the preceding lines has expressed a global upheaval, Micah appears to be making a theologically novel point—that the offenses of Israel are so grave that they will trigger a cataclysm that will roil the whole earth.
Judah’s high places. Micah’s chief emphasis will be on social injustice, but this is a reference to cultic disloyalty, the “high places” being the rural hilltop shrines. The Septuagint, however, reads here “offense” instead of “high places.”
6. And I will make Samaria a ruined heap in the field. Jotham, the first of the three kings under whom Micah prophesied, began his reign in 758 B.C.E. The last of the three, Ahaz, ended his reign in 698 B.C.E. While there is no way of knowing when in this span Micah began and completed his prophetic mission, the mention in this prophecy of the future destruction of Samaria would have to occur before its conquest by Assyria in 721 B.C.E.
a place for the planting of vineyards. Where once a city stood, there will be only a flat field suitable for such planting.
I will pour down her stones to the valley. The unusual verb for “pour” is the same one used at the end of verse 4 and is surely meant to pick up the image of water pouring down a slope.
8. ostriches. This is what the Hebrew term used here generally means, though some scholars think it may indicate a kind of screech owl.
9. it has come as far as Judah, / has reached My people’s gate. Micah uses the Prophetic past in his verbs—that is, events predicted are represented as though they had already been accomplished, perhaps just now (hence the present perfect in this translation). Reaching the gate is a clear indication of an invading army coming up to the walls of the city.
10. Tell it not in Gath. This line is an obvious citation of David’s lament over the deaths of Saul and Jonathan (2 Samuel 1:20).
surely do not weep. In keeping with the preceding verset, this would mean: don’t show your grief outwardly lest your enemies see it.
In Beth-Leaphrah / wallow in the dust. The Hebrew puns on the name of the place and ʿafar, “dust.”
11. He shall take his station from you. The “he” is the invader, but the wording of the Hebrew is obscure.
13. Lachish. Lachish was a major fortified Judahite town, destined to be destroyed by Sennacharib in 701 B.C.E. That conquest is celebrated in a famous Assyrian bas-relief. The inhabitants of Lachish are enjoined to harness their chariots in order to flee the town.
for in you are found the trespasses of Israel. The nature of these trespasses is not spelled out. Some interpreters have surmised that these would be linked to Lachish’s confidence in its own military strength, but that is not clear.
14. parting gifts. The use of the Hebrew shiluḥim is probably ironic. Ordinarily, it means “betrothal gifts,” but the verbal stem suggests “sending away,” and here that would be into exile.
Achziv’s houses betray. The Hebrew puns on “Achziv” and ʾakhzav, “betrayal,” a word used especially for wadis that flow with water during the winter rains and then “betray” by turning dry in the summer.
15. the glory of Israel. This phrase modifies Adullam, a town linked with Lachish and evidently thought of, because of its military strength, as redounding to the national glory.
16. over your pampered children. A more literal rendering would be “the children of your pleasures.”
1Woe, who plot crime
and work evil on their couches.
In the morn they do it,
for they have the power.
2They covet fields and rob them,
houses, and bear them away.
They exploit a man and his home,
a person and his estate.
3Therefore, Thus said the LORD: I am about to plot evil against this clan, that you shall not be able to pull out your necks from it, and you shall not walk with high heads, for it is an evil time. 4On that day this theme shall be sounded about you, and sobbing shall be sobbed. One shall say:
Ravaged, we are ravaged.
My people’s portion is passed to another.
to a miscreant our fields are shared out!
5Therefore there shall not be among you any who casts a lot by cord in the LORD’s assembly.
6“Do not preach—they preach.
They shall not preach these things.
Shame shall not overtake us.
7What is said of the house of Jacob—
will the LORD’s patience be short,
are these His acts?
with him who goes upright?”
8But against My people
an enemy arises.
you strip the mantle,
from those who pass by thinking themselves safe
returning from the war.
9My people’s wives you drive out
from their luxurious homes.
From their infants you take away
10Rise up and go,
for this is not a resting place.
Because she has defiled herself,
dire destruction shall descend.
11Were a man to go
after wind and cheating lies,
for wine and for strong drink.”
He would be this people’s preacher.
12I will surely assemble Jacob, all of you.
I will surely gather Israel’s remnant.
I will make him like sheep in the pen,
like a flock within the fold.
They shall bustle with people.
13He who makes the breach shall go up before them,
they shall break out and pass through the gate and go out there.
And their king shall pass through before them,
the LORD at their head.
CHAPTER 2 NOTES
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3. plot evil. The word that usually means “evil” carries its related sense of “harm” here, but it is worth repeating as “evil” because it reflects a measure-for-measure response to “plot crime” and “work evil” in verse 1.
you shall not be able to pull out your necks from it. What is elliptically implied is the image of a restraining yoke.
4. sobbing shall be sobbed. This deliberately odd phrasing echoes the Hebrew, which in fact shows a triple occurrence of a single verbal stem: wenahah nehi nihyah.
How it is taken away from me. The initial “how” is the formal sign of a lament, occurring here atypically not in the first line of the lament but in the second. It should be noted that both versets of this line as well as the second verset of the preceding line employ a third-person singular verb as the equivalent of a passive, which is fairly common biblical usage.
5. any who casts a lot by cord. This is a procedure for dividing territory, but in the destruction there will be no territory to divide.
6. Do not preach. These words, and what follows through the end of verse 7, are spoken by Micah’s recalcitrant audience. As abundantly elsewhere, there is acute tension between the prophet and those he addresses, who do not want to hear the harsh things he has to say.
7. What is said of the house of Jacob. The Hebrew wording is obscure.
Will not His words do well / with him who goes upright? The translation, in accordance with the Septuagint, reads “His words” instead of the Masoretic “my words.” What the prophet’s challengers are expressing is a confidence that they are the ones who go upright and that God will be patient with them and reward them.
8. against. The translation assumes that the anomalous ʾetmul should be broken into ʾet, the accusative particle, and mul, “opposite,” but the meaning remains questionable.
From him without cloak. The enigmatic mul recurs here, and the translation is again conjectural.
thinking themselves safe. The Hebrew uses an ellipsis, saying only “safe.”
9. My people’s wives you drive out. The “enemy” of the previous verse is clearly the enemy within, who strips of their remaining garments those who can barely cover themselves and despoils people returning from battle who imagine themselves safe. Here they expropriate the homes of once pampered wives (perhaps now widowed).
My glory. This term sounds somewhat odd in context. It would have to indicate something like security and prosperity, as the women are driven from their homes with their infants.
10. she has defiled herself. The reference is to the collective nation, Judah.
dire destruction shall descend. Although this is the clear gist of the three Hebrew words, the syntax is somewhat problematic.
11. I would preach to you. These are the words of the prophet sarcastically representing the intention of his hostile audience. The third verset, “He would be this people’s preacher,” would thus suggest that someone who exhorts his audience to get drunk would be the fitting preacher for such people.
12. They shall bustle with people. The unspecified “they,” the subject of a feminine plural verb, has to refer to the towns (feminine in Hebrew) of Judah.
13. He who makes the breach. Since this is a prophecy of national restoration after a dispersal (verse 12), the breach would be in a wall enclosing the exiles. The same verb is used for “break out” in the next verset, but it is slightly puzzling that they then go out through a gate, not a breach in the wall. Perhaps passing through the gate is to be understood as “passing, as if through a gate,” which would indicate a very wide breach.
1And I said:
Listen, pray, chieftains of Jacob
and captains of the house of Israel.
Is it not yours
to know what is right?
2Haters of good and lovers of evil,
and their flesh from their bones.
3Who devour My people’s flesh
and strip their skin from them
And they cut it like flesh in the pot
and like meat in the cauldron.
4Then shall they cry to the LORD,
and He shall not answer them.
He shall hide His face from them at that time
as they did evil through their acts.
5Thus said the LORD concerning the prophets who lead My people astray; who bite with their teeth and proclaim peace, and as to him who gives nothing for their mouths, they declare war against him.
6Therefore shall it be night for your vision
and darkness for you for divining,
and the sun shall set on the prophets,
and the day turn to gloom upon them.
7And the seers shall be shamed
and the diviners disgraced,
and all of them cover their moustaches,
for there shall be no response from God.
8And yet, I have been filled with power,
with the spirit of the LORD,
with justice and valor,
to tell to Jacob his trespass
and to Israel his offense.
9Hear this, pray, chieftains of the house of Jacob
and captains of the house of Israel,
who despise justice
and everything straight they twist,
10Who build Zion with bloodshed
and Jerusalem with wickedness.
11Her chieftains judge with bribes,
and her priests instruct for payment,
and her prophets divine for silver
and on the LORD they lean, saying,
“Is not the LORD in our midst?
No harm will come upon us.”
12Therefore, because of you,
Zion shall be plowed like a field,
and Jerusalem become heaps of ruins
and the Temple mount a high forest.
CHAPTER 3 NOTES
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2. who flay their skin from them / and their flesh from their bones. This pair of versets is a startling instance of intensification and specification of material from the first verset to the second and third. Initially, we get the general terms of hating good and loving evil, then this horrific image of flaying and cannibalism.
3. crack open. The verb patseaḥ is a devastating strategic choice: what it suggests is cracking open the bones in order to suck the marrow.
like flesh. the Masoretic Text has kaʾasher, “as,” but the Septuagint shows kesheʾeir, “like flesh” (a simple reversal of the two middle consonants), which seems far more likely.
5. who bite with their teeth. This image of voraciousness is in all likelihood motivated by the editorial placement of this prophecy here, immediately after the metaphorical use of cannibalism in the previous prophecy.
6. night for your vision. These false prophets pretended to see into the future or exercise clairvoyance; now they will be enveloped in the darkness of a prophetic eclipse.
7. cover their moustaches. This bizarre-sounding phrase refers to a mourning practice in which the face was covered down to the upper lip. Compare Ezekiel 24:17.
8. And yet, I have been filled with power. Having excoriated the false prophets, Micah now sets himself antithetically as a prophet actually imbued by the spirit of YHWH.
11. Her chieftains judge with bribes. Having previously represented the leaders of the people preying cannibalistically upon those they rule, Micah now translates the metaphor into literal acts: the judges pervert justice by taking bribes; the priests fulfill their role as teachers—perhaps, unreliable teachers—only for gain; and the prophets turn themselves into merchants of divination.
on the LORD they lean. While merely pursuing the accrual of wealth, these purported spiritual leaders claim to enjoy the full benevolent support of God in what they do.
12. a high forest. Some have questioned the meaning of bamot yaʿar, literally, “high places of a forest.” The first of these two nouns can designate a topographical height and is also used for the rural altars despised by the Deuteronomist. The New Jewish Publication Society version renders the phrase in the latter sense, imagining that the holy Temple will be turned into a simple pagan hilltop shrine, but that seems unlikely. There are some biblical instances in which the two nouns joined in a construct state show a reversal of the semantic relation between the two. In this perspective, bamot yaʿar would mean the same as yaʿar bamot, “a forest of high places,” which is to say, a high forest. Since the Temple was built on a mountain, after being razed, it would be replaced by the wild growth of a “high forest.”
1And it shall happen in future days
that the mount of the LORD’s house shall be firm-founded
at the top of the mountains and lifted over the hills.
And the people shall flow to it,
2and many nations shall go and say:
Come, let us go up to the mount of the LORD,
and to the house of Jacob’s God,
that He may teach us of His ways
and that we may walk in His paths.
For from Zion shall teaching come forth
and the LORD’s word from Jerusalem.
3And He shall judge among many peoples
and be arbiter to vast nations from far away.
And they shall grind their swords into plowshares
and their spears into pruning hooks.
Nation shall not raise sword against nation,
nor shall they learn war anymore.
4And they shall dwell each man beneath his vine
and beneath his fig tree, with none to make him tremble,
for the mouth of the LORD of Armies has spoken.
5For all the peoples shall walk
each in the name of his god.
in the name of the LORD our God
forevermore.
6On that day, said the LORD:
I will gather the lame one,
and the outcast I will take in
and to whom I did harm.
7And I will make the lame one a remnant
and the failing one a vast nation,
and the LORD shall reign over them
on Mount Zion, from hence and forever.
8And you, watchtower of the flock,
rampart of Zion’s Daughter,
to you shall come the former kingdom,
and the kingship of Jerusalem’s Daughter shall arrive.
9Now, why should you scream so loud?
Is there no king in you?
Is your councillor gone,
that pangs seize you like a woman in labor?
10Writhe and groan,
Zion’s Daughter, like a woman in labor,
for now will you go from the city
and dwell in the field.
And you shall come as far as Babylonia.
There you shall be saved.
There shall the LORD redeem you
from the clutch of your enemies.
11And now many nations
have gathered against you, saying:
“Let her be tainted, that we may gloat over Zion.”
12But they do not know
the plans of the LORD,
and they do not understand His counsel,
for He has gathered them like a sheaf on the threshing floor.
13Rise and thresh, Zion’s Daughter!
For I will make your horn like iron
and your hooves I will make like bronze,
and you shall grind down many peoples,
and I will devote to the LORD their riches
and their wealth to all the earth’s Master.
14Now gash yourself, gashing’s Daughter
they have laid a siege against us.
With a rod they strike on the cheek
the judge of Israel.
CHAPTER 4 NOTES
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1. And it shall happen in future days. The first four verses of this chapter duplicate Isaiah 2:2–4, constituting the most extensive such duplication between two prophets. There are only minor differences (e.g., when Isaiah says “nations,” Micah says “peoples”). Different explanations have been offered for the duplication: that Micah borrowed from Isaiah, that Isaiah borrowed from Micah, that both drew on a common source, that a later editor inserted the passage in both books. This last alternative seems the least likely; and an unknown common source is merely a conjectural hypothesis. These two prophets were roughly contemporaneous, but given the fact that Isaiah was the more prominent figure—see, for example, the narrative in 2 Kings 20, where the king turns to him at a moment of crisis—it may be more plausible that Micah took from Isaiah. Scrolls of the prophecies evidently had some circulation in the prophet’s lifetime. One point where there are two small additions as well as a substituted term in Micah may provide a clue: verse 3 reads “And He shall judge among many peoples / and be arbiter to vast nations from far away.” In Isaiah it is: “And He shall judge among the nations / and be arbiter for many peoples.” Micah adds “many” in the first verset, heightens “many” to “vast” in the second, and inserts “far away” at the end. By and large, this kind of amplification is a telltale sign of adopting and “improving” a preexisting text. Otherwise, since there are no substantive divergences between the two passages, the comments on Isaiah will be repeated here.
in future days. Older translations represent this Hebrew phrase as “in the end of days,” giving it an emphatically eschatological meaning it does not have. The Hebrew ʾaḥarit, derived from the word that means “after,” refers to an indefinite time after the present.
2. the mount of the LORD. Mount Zion in Jerusalem is imagined as a kind of second Sinai, from which God’s teaching will go out.
3. many peoples. The universalist note struck here is new. It will be elaborated and expanded in the visions of the anonymous prophet of the Babylonian exile whose writing is appended to the Book of Isaiah, beginning with chapter 40.
Nation shall not raise sword against nation. God’s teaching from Zion, then, is to have the effect of inaugurating a reign of universal peace. There is an imaginative boldness, or perhaps rather the courage of desperation, in this vision because it was articulated at a historical moment of continual warfare among imperial powers when the land of Israel itself was threatened with destruction by Assyria.
learn war. Fighting was a skill that required training, as noted in Psalms and elsewhere.
4. And they shall dwell each man beneath his vine. This evocation of an era of tranquillity and peace is stereotypical and does not appear in the Isaiah passage.
5. For all the peoples shall walk / each in the name of his god. This sentence, which appears to express the idea that polytheism will persist, however much the nations take instruction from Zion, is not present in Isaiah.
But we shall walk / in the name of the LORD our God / forevermore. This line, too, has no direct equivalent in Isaiah, though it may have been inspired by the use of the same verb in the concluding line of the Isaiah passage: “O house of Jacob, / come, let us walk in the LORD’s light.”
7. the failing one. The Masoretic nahalaʾah is obscure. Two ancient versions appear to read nahalah or nilʾah, and either of those terms could be rendered as “failing.”
8. come … / arrive. The two Hebrew words appear in immediate sequence in the first verset, leaving the second verset without a verb. This translation assumes that one of the verbs should be moved to the second verset.
10. groan. The meaning of the Hebrew verb is obscure.
And you shall come as far as Babylonia. This is not a prophecy of the Babylonian exile. In the eighth century B.C.E., the threat was Assyria, and there were amicable relations between Judah and Babylonia. Thus it figures here as a place of refuge.
11. gloat. As before, this translation represents a Hebrew idiom that means to look upon with schadenfreude.
13. I will make your horn like iron. Although “horn” is idiomatic for “strength,” here the dead metaphor is revived by the addition of the hooves in the next verset. Thus Zion’s Daughter is turned into an ox or bull performing the threshing.
14. Now gash yourself. This verse clearly does not belong to the preceding passage, which is a prophecy of triumphal redemption, whereas this is a prophecy of doom. The gashing is a mourning practice, forbidden by biblical law but licit as poetic expression.
gashing’s Daughter. The phrase bat-gedud is peculiar. Normally, gedud means “troop,” but immediately following the verb titgodedi here, it would have to refer to gashing. Perhaps a pun is intended: Zion’s Daughter, now mourning, has become “the troop’s daughter,” subject to the ravages of the invading forces.
1And you, Bethlehem of Ephrath,
the least of Judah’s clans,
from you shall one come forth for Me
to be ruler of Israel
whose origins are from ancient times,
from days of yore.
2Therefore shall He give them over
till the time the woman in labor bears her child,
and the rest of his brothers shall come back
with the Israelites.
3And he shall stand and shepherd them by the might of the LORD,
by the pride of the name of the LORD his God.
for then shall he be great to the ends of the earth.
4And thus shall be the peace:
Assyria shall not enter our land
nor tread in our citadels.
And we shall set up against him seven shepherds
and eight princes of the peoples,
5and they shall smash the land of Assyria with the sword
and the land of Nimrod in its gateways.
And they shall save us from Assyria
should he enter our land
and should he tread within our borders.
6And the remnant of Jacob shall be
in the midst of many peoples
like the dew from the LORD,
like gentle rain upon the grass,
as he shall not place hope in man
nor expectation in humankind.
7And the remnant of Jacob shall be
in the midst of many peoples
like a lion among forest beasts,
like a young lion among the flocks of sheep
that passes through and tramples
and tears apart with none to save.
8Your hand shall loom over your foes
and all your enemies be cut off.
9And it shall happen on that day, said the LORD:
I will cut off your horses from your midst,
and I will destroy your chariots.
10And I will cut off the towns of your land
and reduce to ruins all your fortresses.
11And I will cut off sorcery from your hands,
nor soothsayers shall you have.
12And I will cut off your idols
and your cultic pillars from your midst.
And no more shall you bow down
to the work of your hands.
13And I will uproot your cultic poles from your midst,
and I will destroy your icons.
14And I will act in anger and in vengeful wrath
toward the nations that did not heed.
CHAPTER 5 NOTES
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1. Bethlehem. This is David’s hometown, and so the idea of a ruler coming forth from this place is a signal of the future continuity of the Davidic dynasty.
2. give them over. The Hebrew says, somewhat enigmatically, merely “give them,” but this is probably an ellipsis for “give them into the hands of their enemies.” The kingdom of Judah, then, is to be subjugated until a crucial moment of transition, when the ideal Davidic ruler will be born.
3. dwell secure. “Secure” is merely implied.
for then shall he be great to the ends of the earth. It is highly unlikely that this is a prophecy of global empire commanded by the Davidic king. Rather, his reign will be so glorious that the fame of it will reach the ends of the earth.
4. seven shepherds / and eight princes of the peoples. The numeric progression from first verset to second is a familiar convention of biblical poetry. The seven shepherds and eight princes are in all likelihood foreign rulers allied with Judah. “Princes of the peoples” is literally “princes of humankind,” which would mean “non-Judahites.”
7. like a lion among forest beasts. The “beasts” are deer and other forest creatures vulnerable to the fierce predation of the lion. In any case, there is a striking contradiction between the imagery of this verse and the preceding one. First, the people of Israel is figured as a gentle blessing—dew and rain—for all the nations. Now it is depicted as a furious force destroying nations. Some have tried to reconcile the contradiction temporally: first Judah will be a militant power, then, after its victory, a beneficent presence. But if that is the prophet’s intention, it remains puzzling that the dew image should precede the lion image.
9. And it shall happen on that day. This is clearly a new prophecy, not of redemption but of doom. The editorial signal for inserting it here is probably the occurrence of the verb “cut off” in the second line of this prophecy, which picks up the use of the same verb at the end of the preceding prophecy.
11. sorcery from your hands. “From your hands” (the Hebrew uses a singular) probably means “that you possess,” although it may also refer to the actual manipulation of divinatory instruments in the hands of the soothsayer. For this reason, the translation renders the idiom literally.
12. idols / … cultic pillars. The castigation of paganism is somewhat unusual for Micah, whose main focus is on social injustice.
13. I will destroy your icons. The Masoretic Text reads “I will destroy your towns [ʿareykha].” This looks rather odd in a catalogue of destruction of pagan cultic objects and may well be an inadvertent scribal replication of the destruction of “towns” in verse 10. This translation assumes the original text reads ʿatsabeykha, “your icons.”
14. I will act in anger … / toward the nations. This last verse does not seem to belong to a prophecy about the devastation of idolatrous Israel. It may have been added editorially in order to mitigate the grimness of the prophecy of doom. Alternately, the prophet might be saying that the same dire fate which will overtake Israel awaits the nations that do not heed God’s word.
1Listen, pray, to what the LORD has said.
Rise, plead a case before the mountains,
and let the hills hear your voice.
2Hear, O mountains, the case of the LORD,
and you mighty pillars of the earth.
For the LORD has a case against His people,
and with Israel He would dispute.
3“My people, what have I done to you,
and in what did I do you in? Testify against Me!
4For I brought you up from the land of Egypt,
and from the house of slaves I redeemed you,
and sent before you
Moses, Aaron, and Miriam.
5My people, recall, pray, what Balak king of Moab devised
and what Balaam son of Beor answered him,
that the LORD’s bounties would be known.”
6With what shall I come before the LORD
bow to the most high God?
Shall I come before Him with burnt offerings,
with yearling calves?
7Is the LORD pleased with thousands of rams,
myriads of streams of oil?
Shall I give Him my firstborn for my trespass,
the fruit of my loins for my offense?
8It was told to you, man, what is good
and what the LORD demands of you—
only doing justice and loving kindness
and walking humbly with your God.
9The voice of the LORD calls out to the town,
and a man of insight shall see Your name.
Heed the rod—and who brought it about?
10Can there yet be in the house of the wicked
treasures of wickedness
11Could I declare innocent who has wicked scales
and in his pouch cheating weight-stones?
12Whose rich are filled with outrage
and those who dwell in her speak lies
and their tongue in their mouth is cheating.
13And I on My part have made you ill, have smitten you,
made you desolate for your offenses.
14As for you, you shall eat and not be sated
and your filth shall be within you.
She will conceive and not give birth
and what she bears, to the sword I will give.
15As for you, you shall sow and not reap.
You, you shall trample the olives and not use the oil,
get fermented juice and not drink the wine.
16And the practices of Omri are kept
and all the acts of the house of Ahab,
and you go by their counsels,
so that I turn you into a desolation
and those who dwell in her into hissing,
and My people’s disgrace you shall bear.
CHAPTER 6 NOTES
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1. the mountains, / … the hills. These are conventionally exhorted to listen to the discourse at the beginning of biblical poems. Here, they are called upon to act as witnesses in a legal contestation between God and the Judahites.
3. do you in. The basic meaning of this verbal stem in its intransitive form is “to be unable.” Some opt here for its secondary meaning, “to exhaust.”
5. Balak. His story is told in Numbers 22–24. Balak hired Balaam as a professional seer to put a hex on Israel but instead, following God’s bidding, Balaam blessed them.
from Shittim to Gilgal. These are, respectively, the last way station of the Israelites east of the Jordan and their first encampment after crossing the Jordan.
6. With what shall I come before the LORD. Although some interpreters prefer to link this with what precedes, it looks like a new literary unit.
7. Is the LORD pleased with thousands of rams. There is a pattern of intensification in these lines: first, simply burnt offerings and yearlings; then, in a hyperbolic flourish, thousands of rams and tens of thousands of streams of oil; and, in the crowning extravagance, child sacrifice—the most a person can give.
8. It was told to you. The Hebrew seems to say “he told you,” and almost all interpreters assume the implied subject of the verb is God. But third-person singular verbs are often used as the equivalent of the passive, and the passive makes smoother sense in this line, obviating the necessity to have “the LORD” here tell what the LORD demands in the next verset.
only doing justice and loving kindness / and walking humbly with your God. This is a succinct and especially beautiful expression of the view Micah shares with Isaiah that ethical behavior is far more important than the mechanics of sacrificial rites.
9. a man of insight shall see Your name. From this point through to verse 14, textual problems abound. “A man” is added in this translation as an interpretive guess. The expression “see Your name” might mean something like “recognize Your power,” but it remains obscure.
Heed the rod. One surmises this is “the rod of wrath” that recurs in Prophetic literature.
who brought it about. This may mean that the addressee is responsible for the disaster that has overtaken the people, but that is conjectural.
10. Can there. The Hebrew haʾish, with no medial yod, is odd, but Shmuel Vergon has made a persuasive case that it is archaic orthography for hayeish, and he cites a clear instance of this spelling in 2 Samuel 14:19 (“there is [ʾish] no turning right or left”).
short ephah. The literal sense is “an ephah of thinness,” that is, a measure used to shortchange the buyer.
11. Could I declare innocent. This translation reads, with the Vulgate, haʾazakeh, the transitive form of the verb, instead of the Masoretic haʾezkeh, “could I be innocent.”
14. your filth. The Hebrew term yeshaḥ occurs only here. This is the meaning scholars have proposed on the basis of an Arab cognate: the victim of the curse gets no satisfaction from what he eats and is unable to evacuate.
She will conceive. The grammar also allows this to be construed as “you will conceive,” but because the person addressed has been masculine, it may be preferable to understand this as an unspecified woman (your wife).
15. trample the olives. Olives, of course, are pressed, not trampled, but this is probably a simple extension of the idiom used for grapes.
get fermented juice. The verb is merely implied.
16. Omri. Along with Ahab, Omri is one of the monarchs of the northern kingdom singled out in the Book of Kings for his abominations.
and My people’s disgrace you shall bear. It is possible, though not entirely certain, that Micah is drawing a distinction between the person addressed in the prophecy, a stand-in for the whole group of malefactors who have lied and cheated and used false scales and measures, and “My people,” who have been victimized, reduced to disgrace, by this group.
1Alas for me,
as I have become like the leavings of summer fruit,
like the last gleanings of the vintage—
there is no cluster for eating,
no ripe figs that my palate has longed for.
2The faithful has vanished from the land,
and the upright among men is gone.
They all lie in wait to shed blood,
each man hunts his brother with a net.
3For evil their hands are skilled.
The noble and the judge ask payment.
The great one speaks the disaster he wants,
4Their good is like a thornbush,
The day those who look for You, of Your reckoning, has come.
Now shall their confounding take place.
5Do not trust in a friend,
nor place confidence in a leader.
From her who lies in your lap
6For the son reviles the father,
the daughter rises against her mother,
the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law—
a man’s enemies are the people of his household.
7But I look for You,
I await the God of my rescue
May the LORD hear me.
8Rejoice not, O my enemy.
Though I fall, I will arise.
Though I sit in darkness,
the LORD is a light for me.
9The LORD’s wrath I will bear
for I have offended against Him,
till He takes up my case
and renders Me justice.
He shall bring me out to the light,
I will see His vindication.
10And my enemy shall see
and shame shall cover her,
who has said to me,
“Where is the LORD your God?”
now she shall be trampled
like the mud of the streets.
11The day for rebuilding your walls,
that day the borders shall widen,
12that day—and to you shall it come,
from Assyria and the towns of Egypt
and from Egypt to the Euphrates
and from sea to sea and mountain to mountain.
13And the earth shall become a desolation
with its dwellers, as the fruit of their acts.
14Shepherd Your people with Your staff,
the flock of Your estate,
that dwells secure in the forest
in the midst of the farmland.
They shall feed in Bashan and Gilead
as in days of yore.
15As the days when you came out from the land of Egypt,
16Nations shall see and be shamed
of all their valor.
They shall put hand over mouth,
17They shall lick the dust like a snake,
like the crawlers on the ground.
They shall be shaken out from their enclosures
to the LORD our God.
They shall dread and fear You.
18Who is a God like You dismissing crime
and forgiving trespass for the remnant of His estate?
He does not cling forever to His wrath,
for He desires kindness.
19Again He shall have mercy on us.
And You shall fling into the depths of the sea
20Grant truth to Jacob,
kindness to Abraham,
as You swore to our fathers
in ancient days.
CHAPTER 7 NOTES
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1. my palate. Although nafshi might simply be an intensive alternative for the first-person pronoun, the context of a desire to eat suggests that it carries its other sense of either “throat” or “appetite.” Hence “palate” is proposed here as a readable English equivalent.
2. with a net. Nets were used for catching birds and, of course, also for catching fish.
3. For evil their hands are skilled. The Hebrew wording is odd, and thus the translation is only an educated guess.
The great one speaks the disaster he wants. Again, the Hebrew is opaque, and the text may be corrupt. This sentence does not properly scan as a line of poetry.
pervert it for him. The object would probably be a case in law. “For him” is added in the translation.
4. no straighter than a hedge. In modern horticulture, hedges are usually straight, but what is envisioned here is an informal hedge made of brambles.
5. guard your lips. The literal sense is “guard the openings of your mouth.”
6. the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. The inclusion of this item suggests that in ancient Israel, as in many other societies, the mother-in-law exercised authority over her son’s wife.
8. Rejoice not, O my enemy. In the Hebrew, all the verbs and nouns are in the feminine singular, reflecting the representation of the enemy people as a female figure. This conventional mode of representing a nation becomes a means of dramatizing the relation between Israel and its enemies: the hostile nation is a woman who would gleefully mock Israel in its downfall but who is destined to be humiliated and trampled upon.
10. I will gloat over her. As before, this translation conveys the general sense of the idiom that is literally “my eyes will see in her.”
11. the borders. The Hebrew ḥoq usually means “limit,” “fixed measure,” or “statute,” but the vision of a utopian expansion of the kingdom of Judah in the next two lines argues for the sense of “border.”
13. And the earth shall become a desolation. If in fact this verse belongs at the end of this prophecy of a grand expansion of Judah, it would mean that nations across the known earth will be subject to cataclysmic devastation as Judah triumphs.
15. I will show him wonders. The first-person verb means that God is now speaking. Many scholars prefer to emend this phrase to an imperative: “Show him wonders.”
16. their ears shall be deafened. It is obvious why they should cover their mouths—because in the face of God’s great wonders there is nothing they could possibly say. Why they should be deafened is less clear. Perhaps it is because of the great uproar in the cataclysm God brings upon the nations.
17. their enclosures. This noun, derived from the verbal stem that means “to close,” is not the ordinary term for “fortress,” but that seems to be its meaning here.
18. Who is a God like You dismissing crime. After prophecies that sharply accuse Judah for its sundry misdeeds, the collection of Micah’s writing fittingly ends with a celebration of YHWH as a forgiving God.
19. he shall cleanse our crimes. The verb in the received text, yikhbosh means something like “suppress” or even “squash.” This translation reads instead yekhabeis, the same Hebrew consonants with different vowel-points.
our offenses. The Masoretic Text has “their offenses,” but three ancient versions as well as some Hebrew manuscripts read “our offenses.”
20. truth … / kindness. This is a common instance of the so-called break-up pattern, where a known collocation—in this case, “truth-and-kindness,” i.e., faithful, unswerving kindness—is broken up and distributed between the two versets.
1A portent concerning Nineveh, the book of the vision of Nahum the Elkoshite.
2A jealous and vengeful God is the LORD;
vengeful, the LORD and master of wrath.
The LORD is avenged of His foes,
and bears a grudge against His enemies.
3The LORD is slow to anger and great in power,
but the LORD surely does not acquit.
In tempest and whirlwind His way,
and a cloud is the dust at His feet.
4He rebukes the sea and it dries up,
and all rivers He turns to dry land.
Bleak are Bashan and Carmel,
and Lebanon’s blossom is bleak.
5Mountains shake before Him,
and the hills melt.
The earth lies in ruins before Him,
the world and all who dwell in it.
6Before His fury who can stand,
and who can arise in His smoldering ire?
His wrath pours out like fire,
and the rocks are shattered by it.
7The LORD is a good stronghold on a day of distress,
and He embraces those who trust Him.
8And in his sweeping torrent He puts an end to His foes,
and His enemies the dark pursues.
9What could you plot against the LORD?
An utter end He brings about—
not twice shall the foe arise.
10For like tangled thorns—
as they swilled they were besotted—
they were consumed like heaps of dry straw.
11From you has come forth
one who plots evil against the LORD,
a worthless councillor.
12Thus said the LORD:
Though they be joined in a pact and many,
yet shall they be done with and gone.
I afflicted you but will afflict you no more.
13And now I will break his shaft from upon you
and snap your cords.
14And the LORD has charged concerning you:
There shall be no seed of your name anymore.
I will cut off from the house of your god
idol and molten image.
I will lay out your grave,
for you are of no account.
CHAPTER 1 NOTES
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1. A portent concerning Nineveh. Unlike the other prophets, Nahum concentrates exclusively on the impending fate of Judah’s enemy and includes no rebuke of his own people. The focus on the imminent destruction of the capital city of Assyria would place these prophecies close to 616 B.C.E., when Nineveh was conquered by the Medes and the Babylonians.
3. surely does not acquit. He exacts retribution against His enemies.
4. He rebukes the sea. There is a kind of a fortiori argument here: if God is so powerful that he can dry up the sea and wither Bashan, Carmel, and Lebanon, He can surely overwhelm Assyria.
5. The earth lies in ruins. The Masoretic Text reads “the earth bears,” watisaʾ, but two ancient versions reflect, more plausibly, watishaʾ, which in the Hebrew involves merely moving the dot over the letter shin from the left side to the right.
8. His foes. The received text reads, incomprehensibly, meqomah, “her place,” but both the ancient Greek and Latin versions used texts that evidently have beqamav, literally, “those who rise against him.”
9. What could you plot against the LORD? The “you” (plural) is clearly the Assyrians.
not twice shall the foe arise. The noun here, tsarah, usually means “distress,” and so, if one adheres to the received text, it could mean that Judah will not find itself in straits a second time. But it could be a collective noun for “foe” or perhaps might be corrected to tsar. Given the surrounding emphasis on the destruction of the enemy, “foe” seems the likely meaning.
10. as they swilled they were besotted. This verset interrupts the metaphor of combustible thorns, switching from figure to its referent, which would be the drunken Assyrian army unprepared to defend itself.
like heaps of dry straw. The Hebrew seems to say “like dry straw full,” but this translation assumes that the sense is “like a fully packed heap of dry straw.”
12. joined in a pact. The Hebrew shleimim usually means “complete,” but the related shlomim can mean “party to a pact or alliance”; either shleimim may mean that as well, or it could be revocalized as shlomim.
13. shaft … / cords. The image is of a harnessed draft animal.
14. concerning you. The lines that follow make clear that the person addressed is the Assyrian emperor.
1Look, upon the mountains
are the feet of the herald
announcing good tidings.
Celebrate, Judah, your pilgrim feasts,
For no more shall the base man pass through you—
he is cut off altogether.
2The battering ram has come up against you.
Put up a watch. Look out to the road.
Brace yourself, flex all your strength.
3For the LORD has brought back the pride of Jacob
like the pride of Israel.
For marauders have blighted them
and have ruined their branches.
4His warriors’ shields are reddened,
the soldiers are stained crimson.
Like torch-fire are the chariots
on the day they are made ready,
and the cypress shafts are poisoned.
5Through the streets the chariots run wild,
they rumble through the squares.
Their look is like torches,
like lightning they race.
6He calls out his staunch men—
they stumble as they go.
They rush to the wall,
7The gates of the rivers are opened
and the palace is swept away.
8And the mistress is brought out, exiled,
and her slavegirls moan like doves,
beating on their chests.
9And Nineveh in time past was like a pool of water,
but now they flee.
“Stop! Stop!” but none turns round.
10Loot the silver, loot the gold!
and there is no end to the horde,
treasure of every precious vessel.
11Stripped and distraught and despoiled,
fainting heart and buckling knees
and shuddering in all loins,
and all faces lose their luster.
12Where now is the den of the lions,
the cave of the king of beasts?
There the lion walked, the maned beast there,
the lion’s cub, with none to make them tremble.
13The lion tearing prey for its cubs
and breaking necks for his lioness,
he filled his lair with prey
and his den with torn-apart flesh.
14Here am I against you,
said the LORD of Armies.
I will burn up your chariots in smoke,
and your maned beasts the sword shall devour,
and I will cut off from the earth your prey,
nor shall the sound of your envoys be heard again.
CHAPTER 2 NOTES
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1. pledges. The “pledges” or “vows” are pledges to offer particular sacrifices in the Temple, and for this reason they are paired with “pilgrim feasts.”
2. The battering ram has come up against you. After the preceding verse, there is some ambiguity as to whether “you” is Judah or Assyria, but the sequence of lines that follows makes it clear that it is Assyria (or Nineveh) that is about to be destroyed.
Put up a watch. Look out to the road. These exhortations are ironic: no measure of self-defense will avail the besieged Nineveh.
3. For the LORD has brought back the pride of Jacob. This would be a corollary of the destruction of Assyria.
4. reddened, / … stained crimson. Several modern translations have understood this as the color of the shields and of the warrior’s garments. But the first of these two Hebrew words means “reddened,” not “red,” and in light of the havoc of battle evoked in the next few lines, it makes far better sense to see this as a depiction of the fighters and their shields splattered with gore.
the cypress shafts. That is, the shafts of the spears.
6. mantlets. The mantlet, sokheikh, is a movable shelter devised to protect the besiegers as they approach the walls.
7. The gates of the rivers are opened. The evident reference is to moats around the city.
8. And the mistress is brought out, exiled. The Masoretic Text is not coherent here. It begins with a masculine verb, wehutsav, “and it was stationed, set up,” followed by two feminine verbs. This translation is based on a frequently proposed emendation, but without great confidence, and there are no ancient versions that reflect it.
9. like a pool of water. The implication is a tranquil pool of water. Perhaps we are invited to imagine Nineveh once securely surrounded by its moats.
10. Loot the silver, loot the gold. The poem, after having addressed “Stop! Stop!” to the fugitives (or having quoted words addressed to them), turns to exhort the conquerors.
11. Stripped and distraught and despoiled. The Hebrew sound-play is more intense: buqah umevuqah umevulaqah. The basic meaning of the recurring root is to be hollowed out, emptied, but the replicated sounds go beyond lexical meaning.
13. breaking necks. The usual meaning of this verb is “to strangle,” but lions don’t strangle. This translation follows the solution of the Revised English Bible.
14. your maned beasts the sword shall devour. These two concluding lines obviously pick up the metaphor of the lion from verses 12–13, the lion being a standard trope for a warrior exercising martial prowess. An apt understanding of this line is reflected in the battle poems of Shmuel Hanagid, the great medieval Hebrew poet of Granada, who uses the same word for “lions,” kefirim, as an epithet for “warriors.”
1Woe, city of bloodshed,
all of it deceit.
prey never gone from it.
2The sound of the whip
and the sound of the wheel’s clatter,
galloping horse
and chariot bounding.
3Rearing charger
and blade of the sword
and flash of the spear,
and many the slain
and the press of the corpses—
there is no end to the bodies,
4Because of all the whoring of the whore,
the beguiling sorceress,
who ensnares nations with her whoring
and clans with her spells,
5here am I against you, said the LORD of Armies—
I will lay bare your skirts over your face
and show nations your nakedness
and kingdoms your shame.
6And I will fling foul things upon you
and make you vile and make a spectacle of you.
7And it shall be that all who see you
shall shrink from you and say:
“Nineveh is ravaged!
Who will grieve for her,
and where can I seek
comforters for her?”
8Are you better than No-Amon
that sits by the Nile,
water all around her,
9Nubia the vast
and Egypt without end,
Put and the Lybians
were her allies.
10Yet she, too, went captive into exile.
Her babes, too, were smashed
at every street corner,
and for her notables they cast lots
and all her great men were shackled in chains.
11You, too, shall be drunk,
you shall be overcome.
You, too, shall seek a stronghold against the enemy.
12All your fortresses are figs,
ripe fruit.
into the mouth of the eater.
13Look, your people are women
in your midst for your enemies.
The gates of your land are wide open.
Fire has consumed their bolts.
14Siege water draw for yourself,
reinforce your fortresses.
Come into the mud
and trample the clay,
grasp the brickwork.
15There shall fire consume you,
the sword shall cut you off,
shall consume you like locusts.
Be as many as locusts,
be as many as grasshoppers.
16You had merchants more numerous
than the stars of the heavens—
locusts spread out and flew off.
17Your commanders were like grasshoppers
and your officers like swarms of locusts
that settle on stone fences
on a cold day.
When the sun rises, they go off,
and where their place is no one knows.
18Your shepherds have slumbered, Assyrian king,
your people scattered over the mountains, none gathering them.
19There is no healing for your disaster,
your wound is grievous.
All who hear the report of you
For over whom has not passed
your constant evil?
CHAPTER 3 NOTES
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1. plunder. The Hebrew pereq in this context means “something ripped apart” and thus is a parallel to “prey” in the next verset.
2. The sound of the whip / and the sound of the wheel’s clatter. Nahum’s power as a poet is especially manifested in his ability to evoke battle scenes—in this case, the invading army with all its accoutrements charging through the streets of Nineveh.
3. they stumble on the bodies. The Hebrew says “their bodies,” meaning the bodies of their own people.
4. the whore. This is the female personification of Nineveh.
5. I will lay bare your skirts over your face. The condign punishment for the promiscuous woman is to publicly expose her sexual parts. This is a recurrent trope in the Prophets. Compare, for example, Ezekiel 16:37.
6. I will fling foul things upon you. The whoring Nineveh is first shamefully exposed and then has filth piled on her.
8. No-Amon. This is the major city of northern Egypt.
that has a sea as a rampart. A canal cut from the Nile (“that sits by the Nile”) is used as a moat to surround the city.
water is her wall. The Masoretic Text reads miyam, “from the sea,” but a simple revocalization of those three consonants to mayim yields the more coherent “water.”
9. Nubia … / Put and the Lybians. These are all contiguous nations presumed here to have been allied with No-Amon.
11. You, too, shall be drunk. The trope of the poison chalice is so common that the simple verb “be drunk” is sufficient to convey its presence to the audience.
12. All your fortresses are figs. The prophet exhibits a boldness of metaphoric imagination in turning fortresses—solid stone structures—into ripe figs that fall from the branches when they are shaken.
they fall / into the mouth of the eater. This image conveys the ease with which Nineveh’s bastions will be taken: a little shake, and the fruit falls right into the mouth of the eater, with scarcely any effort involved.
13. Fire has consumed their bolts. The Hebrew says “your bolts,” altered in the translation to “their” in order to make clear that these are the bolts used to bar the gates of the city walls. This is an instance in which the relation of second verset to first is explanatory: the gates are wide open because their wooden bars have been burned away. Fire was often used in the assault on cities.
14. Siege water. This is evidently water used in the making of bricks to reinforce the ramparts, as the next line indicates.
15. consume you like locusts. That is, as locusts consume everything before them. The locust simile will then be put to a different use.
16. merchants. Nineveh is mentioned as a great commercial center. But its trade relations with other countries may also be associated with the “whoring.”
stars … / locusts. First, the huge number of merchants is compared to the stars, a conventional biblical simile. But in the next verset, their numerousness moves from the lofty stars to swarms of nasty locusts that spread out over all the earth and then fly off, so the representation of the now vanished merchants is hardly flattering. In the next verse, Nineveh’s military commanders are represented in the same harsh light.
18. Your shepherds. As elsewhere, this means “leaders”—probably, the military officers.
are asleep. The received text shows yishkenu, “dwell,” but this is probably a scribal error for yashnu, an emendation that involves merely dropping the middle consonant.
19. All who hear the report of you. This is obviously the report of Nineveh’s downfall, depicted in the preceding lines.
clap hands. The clapping is an expression of delighted schadenfreude.
1The portent that Habakkuk the prophet saw in a vision.
2How long, O LORD, shall I cry out,
yet You do not listen?
I scream “outrage” to You,
and You do not rescue!
3Why do You show me mischief,
and You look upon wretchedness?
Plunder and outrage are before me,
quarrel and contention I bear.
4Therefore teaching fails,
and justice never comes forth.
For the wicked surrounds the righteous.
Therefore perverted justice comes forth.
5See among the nations and look,
and be altogether astonished.
For a deed is being done in your time,
you would not believe it were it told.
6For I am about to raise up the Chaldeans,
that goes to the wide reaches of the earth
to take hold of dwellings not theirs.
7Fearsome he is and frightful,
from him his rule and his majesty come forth.
8And his horses are swifter than leopards
and quicker than the wolves of the steppes.
And his horsemen spread out,
his horsemen come, they fly from afar,
like a vulture pouncing on prey.
9All of them come for outrage,
and they gather captives like the sand.
10And he is scornful of kings,
and rulers are a mockery for him.
He mocks every fortress,
piles up earth and captures it,
11then passes on like the wind
and attributes his might to his god.
12Are you not of old, O LORD,
my holy God? You shall not die!
LORD, You have arraigned him for justice
and Rock, You set him aside for censure.
13Too pure of eyes to see evil,
and You cannot look on wretchedness,
Why do You look upon traitors and stay silent,
when the wicked destroys one more righteous than he?
14And You make humankind like the fish of the sea,
like creeping things that have no ruler.
15They are all brought up with a line,
swept up in a net,
and he gathers them in his trawl,
therefore he rejoices and exalts.
16Therefore he sacrifices to his net
and burns incense to his trawl,
for through them his share is rich,
and his food is fat.
17Thus does he ever unsheathe his sword
to slay nations with no pity.
CHAPTER 1 NOTES
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2. How long, O LORD. These initial words of complaint are borrowed directly from the psalms of supplication.
3. You look upon. This is the set meaning of this verb, but it is possible that here it is used, unusually, in a causal sense: “You have made [me] look upon.”
6. the Chaldeans. These are the Babylonians.
the harsh and headlong nation. The Hebrew uses internal rhyme as well as alliteration: mar wenimhar.
7. from him his rule and his majesty come forth. Although the gist of this clause is clearly that the Chaldeans are an imposing and powerful nation, the wording of the Hebrew is a little obscure, and this translation replicates the grammatical structure of the original.
8. the wolves of the steppes. While the Hebrew might appear to say “the wolves of evening,” in this context ʿerev probably is a shortened poetic form of ʿaravah, “steppe.”
9. devastation. The Hebrew megamah appears only here, and its meaning is uncertain. Some scholars have linked it with the rabbinic root g-m-m, which means “to cut,” and thus it might have something to do with destruction. The likelihood of such a meaning is reinforced by the parallelism. Modern Hebrew, drawing on a different understanding of the term, uses megamah to mean “direction” or “tendency.”
10. piles up earth. The reference is to ramps built of earth that were used to assault a besieged city.
11. attributes. The Masoretic Text reads weʾasheim, “guilty,” but the Qumran Pesher Habakkuk shows the more likely wayasem.
12. Are you not of old, O LORD. The prophet, just having mentioned the false god of the Chaldeans, now invokes the eternity of the God of Israel.
You shall not die. The Masoretic Text shows “We shall not die,” but this is a tiqun sofrim, a euphemistic scribal correction so as to eliminate the necessity of saying “God shall not die,” when all know that death is not a category that applies to God.
14. You make humankind like the fish of the sea. The prophet now launches an extended metaphor of fish caught in a net to convey the helplessness of humanity in the face of the forces of destruction that God unleashes in history.
that have no ruler. The fish might seem to differ from human communities—which have kings to offer them a modicum of protection from predatory nations, while the fish have no monarch, government, or army to parry the ensnaring nets of the fishermen—but in the end that is the plight of humans as well.
16. Therefore he sacrifices to his net. It is unclear whether this reflects any actual cultic practice of ancient fishermen or is merely a poetic hyperbole. In any case, it picks up “attributes his might to his god” from verse 11.
17. unsheathe his sword. The received text has “his net,” ḥermo, but the Qumran Pesher Habakkuk reads ḥarbo, “his sword.” This is more likely both because the verb yariq is one used for unsheathing swords and the second verset is concerned with slaying nations, not with catching fish. The error in transcription probably occurred when a scribe inadvertently reproduced a word from the fish metaphor here in the concluding line, which actually moves from the metaphor to its referent.
1On my watch let me stand,
and let me take my station at the watchtower and look out
to see what He will speak to me
and what He will respond to my complaint.
2And the LORD answered me and said:
Write the vision, make it clear on the tablets,
so that one may read it readily.
3For there is yet a vision for the appointed time
and a witness for the end who is not false.
Though it tarries, wait for it,
for it shall surely come, it shall not delay.
4Look, the spirit within him is callous, not upright,
but the righteous man lives through his faithfulness.
5How much more so the arrogant treacherous one who presumes
and who does not prosper,
who gapes open his maw like Sheol
and like death he is never sated.
And he rounds up for himself all the nations,
gathers in to him all the peoples.
6Will not all these an adage pronounce against him,
verses and maxims against him, and say:
Woe, who amasses what is not his—for how long?—
and weighs himself down with debt.
7Will not your creditors suddenly rise
and those who will shake you will awake?
8For as you despoiled many nations,
the remnant of nations shall despoil you
for the bloodshed of people and the outrage of lands,
the town and all who dwell in it.
9Woe, who takes illicit gain,
to set his nest on high
to be saved from the clutch of harm.
10You have counseled shame for your house
and gravely offended.
11For a stone from the wall shall shriek
and a wooden beam answer it:
12Woe, who builds a town with bloodshed
founds a city with wrongdoing.
13Is it not from the LORD of Armies?
And peoples shall strive for the fire
and nations for naught shall be wearied.
14For the earth shall be filled
with knowing the LORD’s glory
as water covers the sea.
15Woe, who gives drink to his friend,
adding venom and making him drunk
so as to look on his nakedness.
16You shall be sated with shame instead of glory.
You, too, drink and expose yourself.
The cup of the LORD’s right hand shall come round to you,
and noxious shame instead of your glory.
17For the outrage of Lebanon shall cover you,
and the plunder of beasts shall dismay you
for the bloodshed of people and the outrage of lands,
the town and all who dwell in it.
18What will the idol avail when its fashioner carves it,
the molten image that gives false oracles,
Though its fashioner puts his trust in it,
making speechless ungods.
19Woe, who says to wood, “Awake,”
“Bestir” to lifeless stone.
“It will give oracles.” Look, it is inlaid with gold and silver
and no spirit is there within it.
20But the LORD is in His holy palace.
Hush before Him all the earth!
CHAPTER 2 NOTES
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1. On my watch let me stand. Although the prophet here is on the lookout for God’s response to his complaint, he draws on a familiar trope of the prophet as watchman of Israel.
2. so that one may read it readily. The literal sense is: so that he may run in reading it.
3. For there is yet a vision. Some prefer to emend ʿod, “yet,” to ʿeid, “witness,” yielding a neat parallelism with the second verset, a vision for the appointed time, the end. This phraseology was picked up by Daniel and imbued with apocalyptic meaning, but the reference here is simply to the time when Babylonian domination will come to an end, as is made clear in the verses that follow.
4. callous. The meaning of ʿuplah is uncertain, but it probably relates to a root that means “to wrap,” and so the surmise reflected in this translation is that it indicates being enveloped, impervious to true perception.
the righteous man lives through his faithfulness. The probable sense of “lives” here is “survives and thrives.”
5. who presumes. The translation reads heihin instead of the Masoretic hayayin, “the wine.”
And he rounds up for himself all the nations. At this point it becomes evident that the referent of the insatiable figure is the Babylonian empire.
6. weighs himself down with debt. Babylonia has incurred “debt” by seizing from the nations what does not belong to it and which it thus “owes” to them.
9. illicit gain. The Hebrew betsaʿ is literally “a slice cut off”—evidently, from an ingot of silver in a cheating practice.
house / … nest. The exploiter, which is to say, the Babylonian empire, carts off his loot to his home (Babylonia), foolishly imagining he will be safe within his house.
10. maimed. The translation of this Hebrew verb is conjectural.
13. And peoples shall strive for the fire. What they strive for will be consigned to destruction. This entire verse approximately duplicates Jeremiah 51:58.
15. venom. Given the context of drinking, this sense for ḥeimah rather than “wrath” seems probable.
his nakedness. The Hebrew, veering between grammatical persons, has “their nakedness.”
16. expose yourself. This is the plausible understanding of the verb heʿareih (instead of the Masoretic heʾareil, of obscure meaning), reflected in the Targum Yonatan and in at least one medieval interpreter. What is involved is measure-for-measure justice.
noxious shame. The unique qiqalon looks as if it is a portmanteau word coined by Habakkuk from qiʾ, “vomit,” and qalon, “shame” (the same word that is used near the beginning of this verse).
17. the outrage of Lebanon / … the plunder of beasts. The reference is to the many trees from the Lebanon forests cut down by the Babylonians for their building projects and the animals slaughtered for their consumption.
18. gives false oracles. This could be rendered as “teaches falsely,” but the cultic context makes the sense of oracle likely. The denunciation of idol worship in this verse and the next, reminiscent of passages in Second Isaiah and elsewhere, is not entirely in keeping with the prophecy of the downfall of Babylonia. It is possible that the prophet sees the devotion to inert wood and stone as part and parcel of the unreflective and misguided character of the Babylonian empire.
20. But the LORD is in His holy palace. This evocation of God’s majesty as He dwells in His celestial abode is calculated as a strong contrast to the witless idolators: instead of lifeless stone and wood, here is the God of heaven and earth, and all the earth is struck with silent awe in His presence.
1A prayer of Habakkuk the prophet, on the shigyonot.
2LORD, I have heard the report of You,
am in awe, O LORD, of your acts.
In these very years revive them,
in these very years make them known.
In anger, remember to show mercy.
3God shall come from Teman
and the Holy One from Mount Paran. selah.
His majesty covers the heavens,
and His splendor fills the earth.
4And the radiance is like light.
and there His might is hidden.
5Before Him pestilence goes,
and plague comes forth at His feet.
6He halts, and He makes the earth rock,
looks, and makes nations leap,
and the age-old mountains crumble,
the ancient hills collapse.
7The tents of Cushan are shattered,
shaken the tent curtains of Midian’s land.
8With Neharim is the LORD incensed,
against Neharim Your wrath, against Yamm Your fury,
when You ride Your horses,
Your chariots of victory.
9Laid bare is Your bow,
and the seven Rods of Eimar. selah.
You split the earth with rivers.
10The mountains see you, shudder.
A stream of water surges.
The deep sends forth its voice.
11Sun and moon stand still at the zenith
by the light of Your arrows they go,
by the radiance of the gleam of Your spear.
12In wrath You stride across earth,
in fury You trample nations.
13You sally forth to Your people’s rescue,
to the rescue of Your anointed.
You smash the top of the wicked’s house,
You raze the foundation down to bedrock. selah.
14You pierce the head with a rod.
His troops storm in their glee to scatter me
as one devours the poor in ambush.
15You made Your horses tread in the sea—
the great waters were roiled.
16I heard and I quaked within,
at the sound my lips quivered.
and I quake where I stand.
Will You rest on the day of distress
when a people comes up to assault us?
17For the fig tree does not bud,
and there is no yield from the vines.
The olive tree’s crop is shriveled
and the fields do not grow grain.
The sheep are gone from the fold,
and no cattle are in the barns.
18But I in the LORD will exult,
will rejoice in the God of my rescue.
19The LORD Master is my strength,
He makes my feet like the gazelle’s
and has me tread upon the heights.
For the lead player, on stringed instruments.
CHAPTER 3 NOTES
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1. A prayer. This is actually a psalm, celebrating the power of YHWH as a warrior god. It looks very much like an editorial coda attached to Habakkuk’s prophecies, perhaps because whoever assembled the text felt that these brief poems needed a kind of rounding out. Some of the references are mythological and archaic, leading one to suspect this could be a much older poem. At several points the text looks badly scrambled, either because a scribe did not understand all of its archaic language or he tried to alter its mythological content.
the shigyonot. As is often the case in the Book of Psalms, the identity of this musical instrument is not known, although the verbal stem could suggest a rhapsodic or elevated state.
2. In these very years revive them. The argument is as follows: we have heard tell of Your great deeds on behalf of Israel in the past; now, in this moment of crisis, is the time to renew these deeds.
3. selah. This is a musical notation, again of unknown character, that often appears in Psalms.
4. the radiance is like light. The Hebrew nogah is poetic diction and often used for some sort of supernal light. Thus the poet explains that the nogah has the quality of what we usually identify as light.
Beams from His hand. While qarnayim usually means “beams of light,” here it probably indicates lightning bolts, wielded as a weapon by the warrior-god in many mythologies. That would explain the reference to hidden might in the next verset.
6. The ancient marches. The term halikhot can mean “ways,” “goings,” or “processions.” Given the martial context here, it probably refers to God’s marching fearsomely across the earth.
8. Neharim … / Yamm. Although in other contexts these two words can mean, respectively, “rivers” and “sea” (the usual plural of the former is neharot), here they hark back to Canaanite mythology, where they figure as different names for the primordial sea monster that must be subdued by Baal (in Israelite literature, by YHWH).
9. the seven Rods of Eimar. The Hebrew has ‘omer, “saying,” but the scribe has either erased or was ignorant of the mythological reference that has been identified by Umberto Casutto: in Ugaritic literature, Baal wields two rods called Eimar with which he strikes Nahar or Yamm.
10. The sky swears solemnly. This is a little puzzling. The literal sense of the Hebrew is “the sky raised its hand,” which is a gesture for taking a solemn oath. Perhaps the sky is swearing to witness, or participate in, the cataclysmic events unfolding.
11. Sun and moon stand still. They stand still in astonishment, but also their light is not needed because the radiance of God’s weapons lights up the world.
13. down to bedrock. The Masoretic Text has tsawʾar, “neck,” but razing has to move downward, not upward, so this is in all likelihood a mistake for tsur. The error would have been triggered by the fact that the word translated as “top” in the preceding verset has the more common meaning of “head.”
15. You made Your horses tread in the sea. This maneuver continues the cosmogonic battle between YHWH and Yamm that was invoked above.
16. I quaked within. Literally, “my belly quaked.”
Rot comes into my bones. This sounds odd, but the idea is probably that the bones became squishy, as though they had been eaten away by rot.
Will You rest. The Masoretic Text has “I will rest,” which would be peculiar, given the speaker’s terror at this moment. The translation adopts the proposal of Yitzhak Avishur that the Masoretic reading is a tiqun sofrim, a scribal euphemism, to avoid an expression that might seem to impugn God’s majesty.
17. For the fig tree does not bud. Some take this entire verse as a reference to a plague of locusts because of a certain similarity to the language of Joel, but it is perfectly plausible that the fields and the livestock would be devastated by an invading army, “when a people comes up to assault us” (verse 16).
18. But I in the LORD will exult. As in many of the psalms, there is a sharp reversal at the end: After the evocation of a landscape of terror, the speaker affirms his confidence in God’s rescuing power.
19. He makes my feet like the gazelle’s / and has me tread upon the heights. The language here is close to Psalms 18:34, which is a victory psalm. It seems that the celebration of YHWH as warrior god has slid into the proclamation of a human victor who praises God for giving him strength on the battlefield.
For the lead player, on stringed instruments. This is actually a superscription for introducing a psalm, not a formula for concluding it. One suspects that this chapter was copied from a noncanonical manuscript of psalms and that the copyist inadvertently included at the end a line that in fact belonged to the next psalm in the manuscript.
1The word of the LORD that came to Zephaniah son of Cushi son of Gedaliah son of Amariah son of Hezekiah in the days of Josiah son of Amon king of Judah.
2I will surely sweep away everything
from the face of the earth, said the LORD.
3I will surely sweep away man and beast,
sweep away the fowl of the heavens and the fish of the sea—
with stumbling blocks for the wicked.
And I will cut off humankind
from the face of the earth, said the LORD.
4And I will reach out My hand against Judah
and against all who dwell in Jerusalem.
And I will cut off from this place
the name of the pagan priests with the priests,
5and those bowing on the roofs to the array of the heavens
and those bowing and swearing to the LORD
6and those falling back from the LORD
and who did not seek the LORD
and did not search for Him.
7Hush before the LORD!
—for the day of the LORD is near.
For the LORD has readied a slaughter,
has invited His guests.
8And on that day there shall be a slaughter for the LORD,
and I will make a reckoning with the nobles
and with the sons of the king
the garb of the foreigner.
9And I will make a reckoning with all who hop
over the threshold on that day,
who fill the house of their Master
with outrage and deceit.
10And it shall happen on that day—
the sound of outcry from the Fish Gate
and a great disaster from the hills.
11Wail, you who dwell in the Ravine,
for the people of traders is destroyed,
all weighers of silver are cut off.
12And it shall happen at that time—
I will search out Jerusalem with lamps
and make a reckoning with the men
who sit still on their lees
saying in their hearts,
“The LORD does neither good nor evil.”
13And their wealth shall become plunder
and their homes a desolation,
and they shall build homes and not dwell in them
and plant vineyards and not drink their wine.
14The great day of the LORD is near,
near and very swift.
The sound of the day of the LORD is bitter,
15A day of wrath is that day,
a day of distress and discomfort,
a day of devastation and desolation,
a day of darkness and deep dusk,
and a day of cloud and fog.
16a day of ram’s horn and trumpet blast
against the fortress towns
and against the lofty corner-towers.
17And I will bring humankind into straits,
and they shall walk about like the blind,
for they have offended against the LORD.
And their blood shall be spilled like dust
and their flesh like turds.
18Neither their silver nor their gold
shall avail to save them.
On the day of the wrath of the LORD
all the land shall be consumed in His zealous fire,
for a ghastly end
shall He make of all who dwell in the land.
CHAPTER 1 NOTES
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1. Zephaniah son of Cushi son of Gedaliah son of Amariah son of Hezekiah. No other prophet is given such a long pedigree, and the reason for it is by no means apparent. Two items are problematic: “Cushi” means “Nubian,” which would be odd for an Israelite first name, and “Hezekiah” could be the name of the Judahite king, as some commentators, traditional and modern, have proposed, but that remains questionable.
in the days of Josiah. His reign was from 640 to 609 B.C.E., so that would make Zephaniah an approximate contemporary of Isaiah. Zephaniah’s angry denunciation of idolatry in Jerusalem suggests that he prophesied before the sweeping reforms of Josiah, which began in 622.
2. I will surely sweep away everything. Zephaniah’s great power as a prophet-poet is in his evocations of the landscape of disaster.
from the face of the earth. Although presumably the impending destruction is to fall upon the inhabitants of the kingdom of Judah, the prophet’s language makes the disaster sound global. In the next verse, he will pointedly echo the language of the Creation story, implying a reversal of creation itself (“man and beast, / … the fowl of the heavens and the fish of the sea”). This is an instructive instance in which the language of Prophetic poetry, with its commitment to hyperbole, pushes beyond its intended subject to an incipiently apocalyptic horizon.
3. with stumbling blocks for the wicked. These words fit into the prophecy rather awkwardly and may be an editorial gloss.
4. the remnant of Baal, / the name of the pagan priests. The two Hebrew words sheʾar and shem, “remnant” and “name,” are a hendiadys meaning “any remnant at all” and they appear here in the two versets in what scholars call a break-up pattern. That explains the slight oddness of “the name of the pagan priests.” The term for “pagan priests,” kemarim, designates celebrants of alien cults. Its bracketing here with kohanim, “priests,” suggests that the officiants of the cult of YHWH were joining forces with their pagan counterparts in syncretistic practices, as the Book of Kings reports.
5. those bowing on the roofs to the array of the heavens. There is abundant evidence that in the seventh century B.C.E. worship of astral deities, through Assyrian influence, had become widespread in Israel.
Milcom. The Masoretic Text has malkam, “their king,” but this is almost certainly a scribal substitution in order not to mention the name of the pagan deity.
7. a slaughter. The Hebrew means both “slaughter” and “feast,” and Zephaniah intends the former while playing on the latter as he goes on to represent God inviting guests to the slaughter-feast.
8. all who don / the garb of the foreigner. The prophet probably associates the use of foreign attire with pagan practices.
9. all who hop / over the threshold. This appears to have been a pagan practice when entering sanctuaries. An etiology for it is offered in 1 Samuel 5:5.
10. the Mishneh. This is a quarter in Jerusalem. The name means “the addition” or “the annex.”
11. the Ravine. This would have to be a valley running through Jerusalem, perhaps the Valley of Ben-Hinnom, just west of the walls of the city.
the people of traders. The epithet sounds derisive and may point to sharp trading practices.
14. on it the warrior shrieks. Even the battle-hardened fighter will be terrified.
15. A day of wrath is that day. The power of this prophecy of doom is focused in the anaphoric insistence on “day” throughout these lines. It is the day of the LORD, now heightened (in verse 14) to “the great day of the LORD” rushing down bitter and swift on the kingdom of Judah.
distress and discomfort. The Hebrew sound-play is tsarah umetsuqah.
devastation and desolation. The Hebrew sound-play is shoʾah umeshoʾah.
17. And their blood shall be spilled like dust / and their flesh like turds. The similes are purposefully unpleasant. Liquid blood turns into dry dust as it might be spilled, say, from a shovel. Solid flesh becomes turds dropping to the ground. The word used for “flesh,” leḥum, is not the standard term but poetic diction, its initial consonant alliterating with the double l sound of gelalim, “turds.”
1Gather yourselves, O gather,
2before the decree is born—
before it comes upon you,
the day of the LORD’s fury.
3Seek the LORD,
all you humble of the land
who have fulfilled His law.
Seek justice, seek to be humble.
Perhaps you will be sheltered on the day of the LORD’s fury.
4For Gaza shall be abandoned
and Ashkelon a desolation.
Ashdod shall be banished at noon,
and Ekron be uprooted.
5Woe, you who dwell in the coastal region,
The word of the LORD is against you.
Canaan, land of the Philistines,
I will destroy you with none dwelling there.
6And the coastal region shall become
meadows for shepherd’s feasts and sheep pens.
7And it shall become a region
for the remnant of the house of Judah.
On these they shall graze their flocks,
in the houses of Ashkelon at evening they shall bed down,
for the LORD their God shall single them out
and restore their fortunes.
8I have heard the insult of Moab
and the jibes of the Ammonites,
who insulted My people
9Therefore, as I live, said the LORD of Armies, God of Israel:
Moab shall be like Sodom
and the Ammonites like Gomorrah—
nettle growth and salt mine
and a desolation for all time.
The remnant of My people shall despoil them,
and the remains of the nation inherit them.
10This comes to them for their pride because they insulted and gloated over the people of the LORD of Armies. 11Fearsome is the LORD over you, for He holds sway over all the gods of the earth, and all the coastlands of the nations shall bow to Him, each man in his place.
12You, too, Cushites,
are slain by My sword.
13And He shall reach out His hand in the north
and destroy Assyria
and make Nineveh a desolation,
parched land like the desert.
14And flocks shall bed down in her midst,
all the beasts of the nations.
on her capitals shall roost.
The screech owl shall hoot in the window,
for the cedarwood is laid bare.
15This the merry city,
dwelling secure,
saying in her heart,
“I and none besides me,”
how has she become a desolation,
a bedding-down place for beasts!
All who pass by her shall hiss,
CHAPTER 2 NOTES
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1. Gather yourselves. This verbal stem is generally used for the gathering of firewood and the like. Here it might suggest that the people have fallen apart, become disparate sticks or limbs, and need to be pulled together.
undesired. Though other meanings have been proposed, this verb elsewhere clearly means “to long for.”
2. the day slips by like chaff. The day is moving rapidly down on Judah, like wind-borne chaff.
4. Gaza shall be abandoned / … Ekron be uprooted. The Hebrew exhibits untranslatable wordplay for both of these: ʿazah ʿazuvah and ʿeqron teʿaqeir.
5. Cherithites. This probably means “Cypriots,” Cyprus being the approximate or putative place of origin of the Philistines.
7. they shall bed down. Because the verb used is for the bedding down of animals, the reference is still to the flocks. But, in the fluidity of pronominal reference characteristic of biblical Hebrew, “them” in the next line is the Judahites, not their flocks.
8. gloated. The Hebrew says merely “made big,” but this is in all likelihood an ellipsis for “made their mouths big,” which is to say “gloated.” The same verb is used in verse 10, where it clearly has the sense of “gloated.”
11. holds sway. The verb razah in the received text is problematic. The meaning of this root is “thin,” and so some imagine that it means YHWH has “shriveled” the gods of the nations, but that sounds odd, and nowhere else does this verbal stem occur as a transitive verb with a direct object. It is more plausible to emend it to radah (d and z being phonetically close and interchangeable between Hebrew and Aramaic).
12. Cushites. These are the Nubians, dwelling south of Egypt. God’s reaching out to the north in the next verse makes this a geographically comprehensive assault on the nations.
14. jackdaw … owl / … screech owl. As elsewhere, the precise identification of these wild birds is uncertain.
the raven. Here it is assumed in the translation that ḥorev, which has a far more common homonym that means “dry place,” is the equivalent of ʿorev, “raven.”
the cedarwood is laid bare. The meaning of the two Hebrew words is not entirely certain. The unusual noun ʾarzah is assumed to be derived from ʾerez, “cedar,” and would thus refer to the cedarwood paneling of Nineveh’s palatial buildings. The verb ʿeirah means “he laid bare,” but as elsewhere, the third-person masculine singular is probably the equivalent of the passive.
15. wag a mocking hand. The literal meaning of the Hebrew is simply “wag their hand,” but in biblical parlance this is a gesture of mockery or contempt, and so “mocking” has been added in the translation in order not to baffle the English reader.
1Woe, sullied and besmirched,
oppressive city!
2She heeded not the voice,
did not accept reproof.
In the LORD she did not trust,
nor drew near to her God.
3Her nobles within her
are roaring lions
Her judges are wolves of the steppes,
they gnawed all the bones by morning.
4Her prophets are unsteady,
men of treachery.
Her priests profaned the holy,
did outrage to the teaching.
5The LORD is righteous in her midst,
He does not do wrong.
Morning after morning He brings His justice to light—
it never lacks.
But the wrongdoer knows no shame.
6I have cut off nations,
their corner-towers are devastated.
I have destroyed their streets
with none passing by.
Their towns are demolished,
with no men, without dwellers.
7I said, “If you but fear Me,
if you accept reproof,
her abode will not be cut off,
all that I had summoned against her.”
Yet they continued acting ruinously
in all their deeds.
8Therefore, wait for Me, said the LORD,
for the day I rise as witness,
for My judgment is to gather in nations,
to assemble kingdoms,
to pour out My wrath upon them,
all my smoldering anger.
all the earth shall be consumed.
9For then will I transform peoples
for them all to call in the name of the LORD,
to serve Him with single intent.
10From beyond the rivers of Cush
they who entreat Me, whom I dispersed,
shall bring My tribute.
11On that day:
You shall not be shamed by all your acts
in which you trespassed against Me,
for then will I remove from your midst
those merry with your pride,
and no longer shall you be haughty
on My holy mountain.
12And I will leave in your midst
and they shall shelter in the LORD’s name.
13They shall do no wrong
nor speak lies,
and there shall be in their mouth
no tongue of deceit,
but they shall graze and bed down,
and none shall make them tremble.
14Sing gladly, Daughter Zion,
shout out, Israel.
Rejoice and delight with whole heart,
O Daughter Jerusalem.
15The LORD has set aside your judgments
removed your enemy.
The King of Israel, the LORD, is in your midst.
You need no longer fear evil.
16On that day shall it be said to Jerusalem:
Do not fear, O Zion,
let not your hands fall slack.
The LORD your God is in your midst,
a rescuing warrior.
He delights over you with rejoicing,
He exults over you with glad song.
17Those sorrowing from lack of festivals, bearing her disgrace,
I will gather from you.
I am about to deal with all your tormentors at that time.
18And I will rescue the lame,
and the scattered I will gather,
and I will make them a glorious name
through all the land of their shame.
19At that time I will bring you,
at that time gather you,
for I will make you a glorious name
among all the peoples of the earth
when I restore your fortunes before your eyes.
—said the LORD.
CHAPTER 3 NOTES
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2. She heeded not the voice, / did not accept reproof. This entire verse reflects a tendency here to rely on formulaic language.
3. they gnawed all the bones by morning. The literal sense of the Hebrew is “they did not gnaw by morning”—that is, they had finished gnawing.
4. Her priests profaned the holy, / did outrage to the teaching. The two main functions of the priests are to perform the cult within the Temple scrupulously and to provide proper instruction to the people. In both of these tasks, they have failed miserably.
6. I have cut off nations. This is another verse composed entirely of formulaic language.
8. For in My zealous fire / all the earth shall be consumed. This is another instance in which the orientation of Prophetic poetry toward hyperbole pushes a statement about judging the nations into language that is incipiently apocalyptic.
9. a pure language. There is an interesting idea here that perverse or harmful behavior is entrammeled with a corruption of language—a notion George Orwell would develop in a celebrated essay written during World War II about how Nazi totalitarianism had subverted the German language. Thus, the gift of a pure language is necessary so that the peoples can truly call to God.
10. Cush. As elsewhere, this is Nubia, south of Egypt.
12. a poor and lonely people. This is an obvious antithesis to the haughty and the proud invoked in the previous verse. The sins of Judah are associated with the arrogance and self-importance of its ruling class, which will be replaced by the simple people who preserve the true values of the nation.
13. there shall be in their mouth / no tongue of deceit. This picks up the idea of the need for a transformation of language as a precondition of moral transformation.
they shall graze and bed down. Both verbs invoke the familiar metaphor of the people as a flock to be led by a faithful shepherd, the just king.
16. He renews His love. The Masoretic Text reads yaḥarish beʾahavato, “He is silent in His love,” but it is unclear why the living God should be silent. The translation follows the reading of the Septuagint, which appears to have used a Hebrew text that showed yeḥadesh ʾahavato (the Hebrew graphemes for r and d being quite close).
17. Those sorrowing from lack of festivals. This rather awkward English phrase translates two compact Hebrew words, nugey mimoʿeid. What they mean is not altogether certain, but it is most plausible to understand the prefix mi, which usually means “from,” in its other sense of “without.” The sorrowful ones, then, are sad because they have been deprived access to the Temple to celebrate the pilgrim festivals.
19. when I restore your fortunes before your eyes. The prophecies of Zephaniah begin with a vision of doom threatening the kingdom of Judah, the terrible “day of the LORD.” They end here with a promise of restoration after exile. Either this chapter is by the hand of a prophet writing after 586 B.C.E., as some scholars conclude, or Zephaniah is following out the logic of the scenario he has been sketching: first catastrophe will overtake the kingdom, resulting in its destruction and the exile of its people; then the people will be restored to its land.
1In the second year of King Darius in the sixth month, on the first day of the month, came the word of the LORD through Haggai the prophet to Zerubbabel son of Shealtiel, the prefect of Judah, and to Joshua son of Jehozadak the high priest, saying, 2Thus said the LORD of Armies, saying, “This people have said, ‘The time has not come, the time for rebuilding the house of the LORD.’” 3And the word of the LORD came through Haggai the prophet, saying: 4“Is this the time for you to sit in your paneled houses when this house is in ruins?” 5And now, thus said the LORD of Armies, “Pay mind to your ways. 6You have sown much and brought in little; eaten, but were not sated; drunk, but not to intoxication; were clothed, but without warmth from it. And he who earns wages earns for a purse with holes.” 7Thus said the LORD of Armies, “Pay mind to your ways. 8Go up to the mountain and bring timber and build the house, and I will be pleased with it, that I may be honored, said the LORD. 9You have sought much and, look, there was little and brought it home, and I blew it away. Because of what, said the LORD of Armies? Because of this house that lies in ruins while you rush off each to his home. 10Therefore, the heavens have held back dew from you, and the earth has held back its yield. 11And I called forth a drought upon the land and upon the mountains and upon the new grain and upon the new wine and upon the new oil and upon what the soil brings forth and upon man and upon beast and upon all the effort of your hands.” 12And Zerubbabel son of Shealtiel, and with him Joshua son of Jehozadak the high priest and all the remnant of the people, heeded the voice of the LORD and the words of Haggai the prophet as the LORD their God had sent him, and the people feared the LORD. 13And Haggai, the LORD’s messenger, on the LORD’s mission, said to the people, saying, “I am with you, said the LORD.” 14And the LORD roused the spirit of Zerubbabel son of Shealtiel prefect of Judah and the spirit of Joshua son of Jehozadak the high priest, and the spirit of all the remnant of the people, and they came and performed the tasks in the house of the LORD of Armies their God, 15aon the twenty-fourth day of the sixth month,
CHAPTER 1 NOTES
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1. In the second year of King Darius. This is 520 B.C.E. Small groups of exiles have returned, under the initial authorization of Cyrus, to the kingdom of Judah, now the Persian province of Yehud. As Haggai immediately makes clear, little progress as yet has been made in rebuilding the Temple.
Zerubbabel … the prefect … Joshua … the high priest. These are the principal secular authority and the principal religious authority, respectively. Haggai’s mission, unlike that of the earlier prophets, is to the leaders, not to the people, and only through the leaders to the general populace.
2. The time has not come, the time for rebuilding. The Hebrew syntax is somewhat distorted, and similar problems will occur as the book progresses.
6. You have sown much and brought in little. The comprehensive catalogue initiated by these words suggests that these are metaphorical assertions to the following effect: whatever you have done has been futile and has given you no satisfaction. Nevertheless, in the background of these assertions are the dire material circumstances of the returned exiles at this moment.
8. Go up to the mountain and bring timber. Solomon’s temple was built with fine cedarwood imported from Lebanon. In the present reduced circumstances, such luxurious materials are not an option, so the people are asked to cut down trees from a local mountain.
9. I blew it away. The intention behind the choice of this verb is unclear. It is the verb generally used for blowing on a fire, as with a bellows.
11. I called forth a drought upon the land. The failure to rebuild the Temple is conceived as a collective sin that brings disaster upon the land, in a way analogous to the presence of Oedipus, the incestuous parricide, bringing a plague on Thebes.
13. the LORD’s messenger. Although this is basically how the role of the prophet is conceived, the use of the term is rare. It will, however, be picked up as the fictive name of the prophet Malachi, “my messenger.”
14. roused the spirit. This is a different formulation from the “descent” of the spirit on prophets and judges. It suggests the instilling of motivation and morale.
15a. on the twenty-fourth day of the sixth month. This is when they begin work on the Temple. The second half of this brief verse actually belongs at the beginning of the next chapter, where it has been moved in this translation, and which explains why this chapter ends with a comma.
1:15bin the second year of Darius 1in the seventh month, on the twenty-first of the month, the word of the LORD came through Haggai the prophet, saying, 2“Say, pray to Zerubbabel son of Shealtiel the prefect of Judah and to Joshua son of Jehozadak the high priest and to the remnant of the people, saying, 3‘Who among you remains who saw this house in its former glory? And how do you see it now? Is it not as nothing in your eyes?’ 4And now, be strong, Zerubbabel, said the LORD, and be strong, Joshua son of Jehozadak the high priest, and be strong, all the people, said the LORD, and act, for I am with you, said the LORD of Armies. 5Remember this word that I sealed with you when you came out of Egypt and My spirit was standing in your midst. Do not fear. 6For thus said the LORD of Armies: Soon I will shake the heavens and the earth and the sea and the dry land. 7And I will shake the nations, and the precious things of all the nations shall come, and I will fill this house with glory, said the LORD of Armies. 8Mine is the silver and mine the gold, said the LORD of Armies. 9Great shall be the glory of this house, the latter more than the former, said the LORD of Armies, and in this place I will bestow peace, said the LORD of Armies.”
10On the twenty-fourth of the ninth month in the second year of Darius, the word of the LORD came to Haggai the prophet, saying, 11“Thus said the LORD of Armies: Inquire, pray, teaching of the priests, saying, 12If a man carries sacrificial flesh in the skirt of his garment and touches with his skirt bread or stew or wine or oil or any food, is it sanctified? And the priests answered and said, ‘No.’” 13And Haggai said, “If someone unclean from a corpse touches any of these, does it become unclean?” And the priests answered and said, “It becomes unclean.” 14And Haggai answered and said, “So is this people and so is this nation before Me, said the LORD, and so is all the work of their hands and what they sacrifice there—it is unclean. 15And now, put your mind, pray, to it; from this day forward, from before stone was put upon stone in the LORD’s Temple, 16from when they were coming to a heap of twenty measures and it was ten, coming to the wine vat to draw out fifty measures from the winepress and it was twenty, 17I smote you with blight and with mildew and with hail—all the work of your hands—and there was none with you for Me, said the LORD. 18Put your mind, pray, to it: from this day forward, from the twenty-fourth day of the ninth month, from the day that the foundation of the LORD’s Temple was laid, 19when the seed was still in the granary, and the vine and the fig tree and the pomegranate tree and the olive tree had not yet borne fruit, from this day will I grant blessing.”
20And the word of the LORD came again to Haggai on the twenty-fourth of the month, saying, 21“Say to Zerubbabel the prefect of Judah, saying, ‘I am about to shake the heavens and the earth, 22And I will overturn the thrones of kingdoms, and I will destroy the strength of the kingdoms of the nations, and I will overturn chariot and its riders, and horses and their riders shall go down, each by the sword of his fellow. 23On that day, said the LORD of Armies, I will take you, Zerubbabel son of Shealtiel, My servant, said the LORD, and I will set you as a seal, for you have I chosen,’” said the LORD of Armies.
CHAPTER 2 NOTES
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3. Who among you remains who saw this house in its former glory? There could be a few in Haggai’s audience who had actually seen the First Temple, but they would be very old because sixty-seven years had passed since its destruction.
Is it not as nothing in your eyes? The foundation for the Temple, according to the Book of Ezra, had been laid during the reign of Cyrus, but the work did not go forward, so what met the eye was a half-finished foundation and no structure above it.
5. Remember. In the received text, this verse begins with the particle ʾet, which ordinarily is placed before the direct object of a verb, but there is no verb. It is assumed in this translation that a verb such as “remember” was dropped from the text.
7. I will shake the nations. Through the authorization of Cyrus, exiles had returned from Babylonia, but their material existence was meager and their Davidic ruler was merely a functionary of the Persian empire. Against this background, Haggai envisages a grand triumphal moment when all the nations will be shaken and their riches flow to Zion.
the precious things of all the nations shall come. When the Temple was destroyed, its precious vessels were carried off by the conquerors.
9. peace. Others construe this as “well-being” or “prosperity.”
11. Inquire, pray, teaching of the priests. From what follows, it becomes clear that the “teaching,” torah, that the priests are to provide involves issues of religious law, what the rabbis later would call halakhah. In this case, however, the teaching becomes an analogy for the condition of the people in its relation to God.
14. So is this people … before Me. At first, it may seem puzzling that Haggai should proclaim the uncleanness of the people before God when he has just urged them to devote themselves to the rebuilding of the Temple and has reported that God had roused a spirit within them. The answer to the ostensible contradiction may be in the phrase “what they sacrifice there.” Although “there” is left vague, if the people have been sacrificing—and worship without sacrifice would be difficult for ancient Israelites to imagine—this would have to take place on improvised altars, for there was as yet no temple. Such unauthorized sacrifices would then be the source of impurity.
16. when they were coming to a heap of twenty measures and it was ten. This harks back to 1:6: “You have sown much and brought in little.” The Hebrew shows only numbers in this verse but “measure,” or perhaps a specific unit of measure, is implied.
18. from this day forward. As the work of rebuilding the Temple moves ahead, a new era is launched. Now there will again be people for the LORD, and the sundry blights that had stricken the community will come to an end.
the day that the foundation of the LORD’s temple was laid. Rashi’s explanation in light of the earlier foundation work is apt: “They were now beginning again to add to the first foundation that had been built in the time of Cyrus.”
19. not yet. This translation reads ʿod, “yet,” for the Masoretic ʿad, “until.”
21. I am about to shake the heavens and the earth. The passage that begins here is a kind of concluding recapitulation of 2:6–9. In this instance, explicit battle imagery is introduced—the overturning of chariots and horses and riders.
22. each by the sword of his fellow. What is suggested is a general panic in the armies of the nations in which confusion and mutual slaughter take place.
23. I will set you as a seal. The expression is elliptical. The ellipsis is elucidated in Song of Songs 8:6: “Set me as a seal on your heart, / as a seal on your arm.”
for you have I chosen. While neither “king” nor “anointed” appears in the text—might Haggai have feared these could be politically dangerous terms?—the strong implication is that Zerubbabel, as a descendant of the line of David now presiding over the rebuilding of the Temple, is the chosen heir to David’s throne.
1In the seventh month, in the second year of Darius, the word of the LORD came to Zechariah the prophet son of Berechiah son of Iddo, saying, 2“The LORD was very furious with your fathers. 3And you shall say to them, Thus said the LORD of Armies: Turn back to Me, said the LORD of Armies, that I may turn back to you, said the LORD of Armies. 4Do not be like your fathers to whom the former prophets called saying, Thus said the LORD of Armies: Turn back, pray, from your evil ways and from your evil acts. But they did not listen to Me, said the LORD. 5Your fathers, where are they?” “And the prophets, did they live forever?” 6“But My words and My statutes that I charged to My servants the prophets, did they not overtake your fathers?” And they turned back and said, “As the LORD of Armies aimed to do to us according to our ways and according to our acts, so He has done with us.”
7On the twenty-fourth day of the eleventh month, which is the month of Shebat, in the second year of Darius, the word of the LORD came to Zechariah the prophet son of Berechiah son of Iddo, saying, 8“I saw at night, and, look, there was a man riding on a bay horse, and he was standing among the myrtles that are by the deep, and behind him were bay, sorrel, and white horses. 9And I said, ‘What are these my lord?’ And the messenger speaking to me answered, ‘I shall show you what these are.’ 10And the man standing among the myrtles answered and said, ‘It is these that the LORD has sent to go about the earth.’ 11And they answered the LORD’s messenger who was standing among the myrtles and they said, ‘We have gone about the earth, and, look, all the earth dwells tranquilly.’ 12And the LORD’s messenger answered and said, ‘O LORD of Armies, how long will You show no mercy to Jerusalem and to the towns of Judah against which You have been wrathful now seventy years?’ 13And the LORD answered the messenger who was speaking to me good words, comforting words. 14And the messenger who was speaking to me said to me, ‘Call out, saying, Thus said the LORD of Armies: I have been greatly zealous for Jerusalem and for Zion. 15And I am very greatly furious with the nations resting quiet; as I was but a little furious yet they piled on the harm. 16Therefore, thus said the LORD, I have turned back in mercy to Jerusalem, and a building line shall be stretched over Jerusalem. My house shall be built in her.’” 17Call out again, saying, Thus said the LORD of Armies: “Again shall my towns spread out from bounty, and again shall the LORD comfort Zion, and again shall He choose Jerusalem.”
CHAPTER 1 NOTES
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4. the former prophets. Zechariah has in mind especially Jeremiah but probably also Isaiah, Ezekiel, and perhaps others. He thus inserts himself at this late date, 520 B.C.E., in the long line of prophecy. It was the failure of the earlier generations to listen to their prophets that brought upon them the national catastrophe, and he implores his own audience to make a new start by listening to him.
5. And the prophets, did they live forever? This is best construed as the people’s rejoinder to Zechariah: if their forefathers are now gone, so are the prophets who inveighed against them.
6. As the LORD of Armies aimed to do to us. The people now concede the justice of the prophet’s argument: not only our fathers but we as well have suffered for our acts, as our present reduced condition bears witness, and we are thus ready to change our ways.
7. On the twenty-fourth day of the eleventh month. This is just two months after the foundation work for the Temple had begun, with Haggai’s exhortation to Zerubbabel and Joshua.
8. I saw at night, and, look. Though the word “dream” does not appear, this is manifestly a dream-vision, using the formulaic language that reports the beginning of a dream.
a bay horse. While this is the realistic color for a horse, the Hebrew ʾadom could also mean, more surrealistically, “red.” This would be the color of blood, perhaps a prelude to God’s fury with the nations expressed in verse 15.
standing among the myrtles that are by the deep. These details may be evocative but their purpose is mystifying.
9. the messenger. Now the mysterious “man” on the bay horse is explicitly identified as a divine messenger. The Book of Daniel will use “man” in this same sense.
10. to go about the earth. The horses, then, are themselves agents of the divine, sent to see what is happening on earth. In a moment, they will speak, delivering their reconnaissance report.
15. as I was but a little furious yet they piled on the harm. God had used them as an instrument to punish Israel, but in their vicious treatment of the conquered people, they exceeded all limits. The literal sense of “they piled on harm” is “they helped for harm [or, for evil].”
16. a building line. These were lines used to assure the straight rectilinear contours of the building.
1And I raised my eyes and saw and look, there were four horns. 2And I said to the messenger speaking to me, “What are these?” And he said to me, “These are the horns that scattered Judah, Israel, and Jerusalem.” 3And the LORD showed me four smiths. 4And I said, “What have these come to do?” And he said, saying, “These are the horns that scattered Judah, so no man could raise his head, and these have come to rattle them, to hurl down the horns of the nations that bore horns against the land of Judah to scatter it.” 5And I raised my eyes and saw, and, look, there was a man and in his hand a measuring cord. 6And I said, “Where are you going?” And he said to me, “To measure Jerusalem, to see what is its width and what is its length.” 7And, look, the messenger speaking to me was going out and another messenger was coming out to meet him. 8And he said to him, “Run, speak to that lad, saying: ‘Jerusalem shall dwell as an unwalled city because of all the people and beasts within her. 9And I will be for her, said the LORD, a wall of fire all around, and for glory will I be within her. 10Away, away, flee from the land of the north, said the LORD, for like the four corners of the heavens did I spread you out, said the LORD. 11Away, Zion, escape, you who dwell with the Daughter of Babylon.’ 12For thus said the LORD of Armies Whose glory sent me to the nations that despoil you. For he who touches you touches the apple of His eye. 13For I am about to swing My hand against them, and they shall be spoil for their slaves, and you shall know that the LORD of Armies sent me. 14Sing gladly and rejoice, Daughter of Zion, for I am coming and will abide in your midst, said the LORD. 15And many nations shall join the LORD on that day and become My people, and I will abide in your midst, and you shall know that the LORD of Armies sent me to you. 16And the LORD shall bestow upon Judah its portion on the holy soil and again choose Jerusalem. 17Hush, all flesh before the LORD, for He has stirred from His holy abode!”
CHAPTER 2 NOTES
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1. four horns. Throughout biblical literature, horns are an image of power—in this instance, destructive power.
2. scattered. This verb, generally used for the winnowing of grain, is one of several somewhat odd choices of verb in this passage. It obviously refers to the exiling of the Judahites.
Judah, Israel. Three centuries have passed since the exile of the population of Israel, the northern kingdom, but Zechariah preserves, as do other prophets, a utopian hope for its restoration.
3. smiths. They are probably ironsmiths, who could fashion weapons to hack horns.
4. rattle. As in verse 2, this is an unusual word choice. The verb generally means “to shake” or “to strike with terror.” One might have expected a verb like “to cut down.”
to hurl down. This verb usually means “to cast stones.”
7. the messenger speaking to me was going out and another messenger was coming out to meet him. The apparatus of the vision becomes complicated: it seems that there are teams, or perhaps hierarchies, of divine messengers.
8. speak to that lad. The probable referent is Zechariah, the recipient of all these prophetic messages. “Lad” would not necessarily indicate his age but rather his (necessarily) subservient position in relation to the celestial messengers.
an unwalled city. Every important city in the ancient Near East had walls to protect it against enemies. Jerusalem, however, will have no walls because its spectacular expansion cannot be contained within walls. Instead, God will be a wall of fire all around it.
10. Away, away. The Hebrew hoy usually means “woe,” but here it has to be an interjection of urging. This is the solution of at least two modern translations.
flee. This imperative is prefixed by the particle that means “and.” Either that is a scribal error, or, as Kimchi proposes, a word such as “go out” was dropped.
11. Away, Zion, escape. One could also construe this as “to Zion escape,” with the particle for “to” omitted by ellipsis.
12. Whose glory sent me. The Masoretic Text reads, enigmatically, “after glory He sent me.” This translation adopts a frequently proposed emendation.
the apple of His eye. The Midrash Tanhuma lists this as a scribal euphemistic correction for “the apple of My eye,” introduced to avoid anthropomorphism. But if, as in several modern languages, “apple of the eye” is an idiom for what is most precious to a person, its use would not necessarily imply that God has an eye with a pupil.
13. sent me. The first person, which at the beginning of this verse was God, now refers to the prophet. Such unmarked transitions are common biblical usage.
14. will abide in your midst. This is in all likelihood a reference to the Temple, in the process of being rebuilt, for the Temple was conceived as God’s terrestrial abode, His “house.”
15. And many nations shall join the LORD on that day. The idea of a universal acceptance of YHWH as God strikes a new note in this passage. It is in keeping with a theme in Third Isaiah.
17. Hush, all flesh before the LORD. “All flesh” means “all humankind” and so continues the idea of a conversion of the nations introduced in verse 15.
1And he showed me Joshua the high priest standing before a messenger of the LORD, and the Adversary was standing on his right to accuse him. 2And the LORD said to the Adversary, “The LORD rebuke you, Adversary, the LORD, Who has chosen Jerusalem, rebuke you. Is not this a brand saved from the fire? 3And Joshua was clothed in foul garments and was standing before the messenger. 4And he spoke out and said before all those standing before him, saying, “Remove the foul garments from him.” And he said to him, “See, I have taken away your guilt from you and dressed you in fine raiment.” 5And he said, “Let them put a pure diadem on his head.” And they put a pure diadem on his head and dressed him in fit garments with the LORD’s messenger standing by. 6And the LORD’s messenger warned Joshua, saying, 7“Thus said the LORD of Armies: If you walk in My ways and if you keep My watch, and also if you oversee My house and also guard My courts, I will let you come and go among these attendants. 8Listen, pray, Joshua, high priest, you and your companions sitting before you, for they are men who have had a portent that I am about to bring My servant, Branch. 9For, look, the stone that I set before Joshua, on a single stone are seven eyes. I am about to engrave its engraving, said the LORD of Armies, and I will wipe away the guilt of this land on a single day. 10On that day, said the LORD of Armies, you shall invite, each man his fellow, to come under the vine and under the fig tree.”
CHAPTER 3 NOTES
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1. the Adversary. This is the satan (note the definitive article, indicating someone filling a role rather than a proper name), not to be confused with the later mythological Satan. In Job, this translation renders the term as “the Adversary,” but “accuser” would also work here to pick up the link with the cognate verb at the end of this sentence. The Accuser, a kind of prosecuting attorney who belongs to the divine entourage (“the sons of God” in Job), carries out the task of calling attention to the sundry trespasses of the people, but now he is rebuked because God is ready to remove the guilt of the people.
3. foul. The Hebrew word is associated with excrement. It is not that the high priest is personally culpable, but as chief sacerdotal officiant for the people, the residue of all their heinous acts clings to him.
4. all those standing before him. The idiom means “standing in attendance.”
5. fit garments. “Fit” is merely implied in the Hebrew, but that must be the sense.
7. if you oversee My house and also guard My courts. This injunction to see to the maintenance of the Temple anticipates its rebuilding, which at this moment has just begun.
I will let you come and go among these attendants. This is an extraordinary promise because the attendants are divine beings.
8. men who have had a portent. The literal sense is “men of a portent.” But it is hard to see how Joshua’s priestly colleagues could be the portent, as they are represented in most translations. The rendering here follows the Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 93A, which says “for whom a portent was performed.” Perhaps they have witnessed Joshua’s change from foul garments to fine raiment, which would be the portent.
My servant, Branch. The Hebrew term for “Branch,” tsemaḥ, has clear dynastic associations. There is a debate among interpreters as to whether this refers to an eschatological Davidic ruler or to Zerubbabel, but the latter seems more likely because the grand restoration appears to be imminent. Political considerations may have led Zechariah to suppress his name.
9. seven eyes. These will recur in a different context in chapter 4.
wipe away. The verbal stem m-w-sh indicates “removal,” but it does not appear elsewhere in this conjugation as a transitive verb. The Hebrew mashti could be a mistake for maḥiti, the verb usually employed for the expunging of guilt.
10. to come under the vine. “Come” is supplied in the translation for idiomatic coherence in English. Sitting under the vine and under the fig tree is a proverbial expression for a time of peace and prosperity. Only later would it take on an eschatological meaning, as in the mention of Jesus sitting under the fig tree in the first chapter of John’s gospel.
1And the messenger speaking to me came back and woke me as a man wakes from his sleep. 2And he said to me, “What do you see?” And I said, “I have seen, and, look, a lampstand all of gold and a bowl on its top, and its lamps were on it, seven pipes for the lamps on its top. 3And there were two olive trees by it, one to the right of the bowl and one to its left.” 4And I spoke out and said to the messenger speaking to me, saying, “What are these, my lord?” 5And the messenger speaking to me answered and said, “Why, you know what these are.” And I said, “No, my lord.” 6And he answered and said to me, saying, “This is the word of the LORD to Zerubbabel, saying, Not by might and not by power but by My spirit, said the LORD of Armies. 7What are you, great mountain? Before Zerubbabel you become a plain. And he shall bring out the capstone—shouts of ‘lovely, lovely’ for it.” 8And the word of the LORD came to me, saying, 9“Zerubbabel’s hands laid the foundation for this house, and his hands shall complete it, and you shall know that the LORD of Armies sent me to you. 10For who has despised the day of small things? They shall rejoice and see the stone of separation in Zerubbabel’s hand. These seven are the eyes of the LORD that roam through all the earth.” 11And I spoke out and said to him, “What are these two olive trees on the right of the lampstand and on its left?” 12And I spoke out again and said to him, “What are these two branches of the olive trees that are by the golden tubes emptying out the gold?” 13And he said to me, saying, “Why, you know what these are.” And I said, “No, my lord.” 14And he said, “These are the two men consecrated with oil who attend upon the Master of all the earth.”
CHAPTER 4 NOTES
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1. woke me as a man wakes from his sleep. There is a pointed ambiguity in this statement because all of these visions convey a sense of things seen in a dream. He awakes, then, from one dream to another.
2. a bowl. This is probably a receptacle for the oil.
seven pipes. The oil would be conducted through these pipes.
6. Not by might and not by power but by My spirit. These memorable words have great resonance, but how do they follow from the vision of the golden lampstand? The golden lampstand, with its seven burning oil lamps, is to be a focal point in the Temple, its light a token of God’s radiant presence in His house, in the midst of His people. Thus the rebuilding of the Temple, in difficult material conditions and perhaps with some resistance from the Persian imperial power, will be consummated through God’s spirit, which is symbolized in the lampstand. The idea of imposing obstacles that are set as naught is spelled out in the next verse.
7. And he shall bring out the capstone—shouts of “lovely, lovely” for it. What is imagined here is the completion of the rebuilding of the Temple, with Zerubbabel setting the capstone in place and the assembled people bursting out in cheers.
10. For who has despised the day of small things? This rather crabbed formulation probably means: you who have dismissed the humble beginning of the construction as unimpressive will be filled with joy when you witness its completion by Zerubbabel.
the stone of separation. The Hebrew, haʾeven habedil, is enigmatic (“the tin stone”?). Most scholars emend the second word to hamavdil, “separating.” It could be identical with the capstone, ʾeven haro’shah, though it is not clear what it separates—perhaps, two large sections of the roof.
12. I spoke out again. Perhaps Zechariah is obliged to repeat his question by the divine messenger because the initial formulation is insufficiently specific.
the golden tubes emptying out the gold. The entire lampstand is golden, but the color of the fine olive oil is also golden. The tubes presumably empty out into the receptacles of the seven lamps.
14. the two men consecrated with oil. The literal sense is “the two sons of oil.” It should be recalled that “sons” has many broad applications in biblical Hebrew. The word for “oil” used is not the common shemen but yitshar, perhaps adopted as a literary effect or perhaps an encoding device, so as not to make too explicit a reference to anointing. The two men are Zerubbabel and Joshua, so the anointing of the former would be royal, not sacerdotal.
1And again I raised my eyes and saw and, look, a flying scroll. 2And he said to me, “What do you see?” And I said, “I see a flying scroll, twenty cubits long and ten cubits wide.” 3And he said to me, “This is the imprecation going out to all the land. Whoever steals, as on one side of it, has not been condemned, and whoever swears, as on the other side of it, has not been condemned. 4I have brought it out, said the LORD of Armies, and it shall enter the house of the thief and the house of him who swears falsely in My name and lodge within his house and make an utter end of it, with its timbers and with its stones.” 5And the messenger speaking to me came out and said to me, “Raise your eyes, pray, and see what is this going out.” 6And I said, “What is this?” And he said, “This is a measuring basin going out.” And he said, “This is their crime through all the land.” 7And, look, an ingot of lead was being lifted, and there was a certain woman seated in the basin. 8And he said, “This is Wickedness,” and he flung her down within the basin and flung the lead stone over its opening. 9And I raised my eyes and saw and, look, two women were going out, and there was wind in their wings, and they had wings like the wings of a stork. And they lifted the basin between the earth and the heavens. 10And I said to the messenger speaking to me, “Where are they taking the basin?” 11And he said to me, “To build a house for it in the land of Shinar, and it shall be founded, and they shall set it down there on its firm place.”
CHAPTER 5 NOTES
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1. and, look, a flying scroll. By this point, it is evident that Zechariah’s mode of prophecy is essentially different from that of his predecessors. They occasionally experience enigmatic visions that are then explained, but their principal vehicle is direct address—castigations for trespasses, predictions of doom, prophecies of consolation—usually cast in poetry. Zechariah, by contrast, witnesses a series of puzzling visions shown him by a divine emissary, and they seem to become progressively more bizarre, as this chapter abundantly illustrates.
2. twenty cubits long and ten cubits wide. This computes to roughly thirty-three feet by seventeen feet, making this a decidedly supernatural scroll.
3. going out. This verb recurs insistently throughout the visions here. It conveys a sense of mysterious visual objects emerging before the eyes of the prophet, as well as of the agencies of divine judgment (as here) or divine scrutiny going out over the land.
as on one side of it … as on the other side of it. The Hebrew formulation is terse and somewhat opaque, but the probable sense is that the injunctions against theft and false swearing are written on the two sides of the huge scroll—another manifestation of its supernatural character. Until now, the violators of these injunctions have gone scot-free, but that is about to change.
6. a measuring basin. The Hebrew reads ʾefah, the most common unit of dry measure, but this object is clearly a receptacle that is one ʾefah in capacity.
This is their crime. The Masoretic Text has ʿeynam, “their eye,” but two ancient versions and one Hebrew manuscript show the more likely ʿawonam. The ʾefah, then, either is associated with their crooked practices, using a false measure, or indicates the measure of justice that will now be applied to them.
7. an ingot of lead was being lifted. This probably means that the ingot of lead was covering the basin. Lead on a measuring basin would make it yield a falsely large weight and so might be associated with cheating by means of a crooked ʾefah.
8. flung the lead stone over its opening. In this fashion, Wickedness is now trapped within the basin.
9. two women. The enigma of the vision is compounded. After the woman embodying wickedness, we have two winged women—clearly divine agents and not ordinary women—who are to carry off the basin.
11. To build a house for it in the land of Shinar. Shinar is the archaic name for Babylonia, and the designation used at the beginning of the story of the Tower of Babel, in Genesis 11:2. Many commentators conclude that Wickedness is transported to Shinar because that is the location of humankind’s transgressive presumption in seeking to build a tower with its top in the heavens.
they shall set it down. The Masoretic Text has a hybrid and grammatically impossible vocalization, wehuniḥah, but the Septuagint shows wehiniḥuha, a grammatically correct form that is reflected in this translation.
1And again I raised my eyes and saw and, look, four chariots were going out from between two mountains, and the mountains were mountains of copper. 2The first chariot had bay horses and the second chariot black horses. 3And the third chariot had white horses and the fourth chariot dappled, spotted horses. 4And I spoke out and said to the messenger speaking to me, “What are these, my lord?” 5And the messenger answered and said to me, “These are the four winds of the heavens going out from standing in attendance before the Master of all the earth 6in which the black horses go out to the land of the north and the white ones have gone out to the western sea, and the dappled ones have gone out to the land of the south, 7and the red ones have gone out and sought to go about on the earth. And he said, ‘Go, go about on the earth,’ and they went about on the earth.” 8And He summoned me and spoke to me, saying, “See, the ones going out to the north have pleased Me in the land of the north.”
9And the word of the LORD came to me, saying, 10“Take from the exiles, from Hildi and from Tobiah and from Jediah, who have come from Babylonia, and as for you, on that day you shall come to the house of Josiah son of Zephaniah. 11And you shall take silver and gold and make diadems and put one on the head of Joshua son of Jehozadak the high priest. 12And you shall say to him, saying, “Thus said the LORD of Armies, saying: Here is the man named Branch, and from his place it shall branch out, and he shall build the LORD’s Temple. 13And he shall build the LORD’s Temple, and he shall assume majesty, and he shall sit on his throne and rule. And the priest shall be by his throne, and there shall be a counsel of harmony between the two of them. 14And the diadems shall be in the LORD’s Temple as a memorial, for Tobiah and Jedaiah and Hen son of Zephaniah. The far-away shall come and build in the LORD’s Temple, and you shall know that the LORD of Armies has sent me to you. And it shall happen, if you heed the voice of the LORD your God.”
CHAPTER 6 NOTES
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1. two mountains … mountains of copper. It is probably wise not to translate these details into any symbolism. The gap between the two mountains provides a dramatic entrance point for the chariots, and the fact that the mountains are copper highlights their supernatural character.
5. the four winds of the heavens. Though this is the idiomatic expression for “the four corners of the heavens” (“wind” can mean “direction” in Hebrew), the literal sense needs to be preserved in this case because the four chariots rushing off in four directions appear to be the embodiment of the winds, which have been “standing in attendance” before God.
6. to the western sea. As elsewhere, this is the Mediterranean. The Masoretic Text reads ʾel-ʾaḥareyhem, “to after them,” which is ungrammatical and also confusing. This translation supposes that the original reading was ʾel hayam haʾaḥaron or an equivalent phrase.
7. the red ones. The received text has haʾamutsim, “the spotted ones,” but this is a synonym for “the dappled ones,” who have already been accounted for, and the red horses seem to have disappeared. The translation therefore reads haʾadumim, “the red ones.”
have gone out and sought to go about on the earth. This is somewhat puzzling because one would expect that these horses would head off in the fourth direction. Some scholars correct the phrase to “had gone out to the east,” but there is only a logical warrant for the emendation, not a textual one.
8. the ones going out to the north have pleased Me. It is from the north that the destruction comes, and this is probably a prophecy of doom.
10. Take from the exiles. The object of the taking does not appear until the beginning of the next verse. It seems that some of the returning exiles brought substantial riches with them.
11. diadems. The Hebrew ʿatarot is not the word generally used for royal crowns, and the high priest would be wearing a diadem, not a crown.
put one. “One” is merely implied in the Hebrew.
13. the priest shall be by his throne. The preposition could also mean “on,” but priests do not have thrones, and this translation follows an interpretation proposed by Kimchi and many others.
there shall be a counsel of harmony between the two of them. This prophecy of smooth cooperation between Zerubbabel and Joshua probably reflects a sense that there might be some tension between them. Zerubbabel is of the Davidic line but an appointee of the Persian rulers, whereas Joshua is the legitimate heir to the high priesthood with no foreign intervention. Zechariah repeatedly elevates Zerubbabel’s importance as Davidic ruler.
14. The far-away. The most likely reference is to returning exiles (who have already provided silver and gold for the Temple). Zechariah may be seeking to promote a unity of purpose between those who have remained in Jerusalem and those who have recently come back from Babylonia.
1And it happened in the fourth year of King Darius that the word of the LORD came to Zechariah on the fourth of the ninth month, Kislev. 2And Beth-El Sar-Ezer and Regen-Melech and his men had sent to entreat the LORD, 3saying to the priests who were in the house of the LORD of Armies and to the prophets, saying, “Shall I weep and practice abstinence in the fifth month as I have done for years?” 4And the word of the LORD of Armies came to me, saying, 5“Say to the people of the land and to the priests, saying, ‘Though you fasted and mourned in the fifth month and the seventh these seventy years, have you actually fasted for Me? 6And if you eat and if you drink, are you not the ones who eat and you the ones who drink? 7Are not these the words that the LORD proclaimed through the former prophets when Jerusalem was dwelling tranquil and her towns round about her and the Negeb and the lowland dwelled tranquil?’”
8And the word of the LORD came to Zechariah, saying, 9“Thus said the LORD of Armies, saying: Judge true justice, and do kindness and mercy each man with his fellow. 10And do not exploit widow and orphan, sojourner and poor man, and do not plot evil in your heart, each man against his fellow.” 11But they refused to listen and turned their backs in defiance, and their ears they stopped up from hearing. 12And they made their heart adamantine against hearing the teaching and the words that the LORD of Armies had sent with His spirit through the former prophets, and there was a great fury from the LORD of Armies. 13“And just as He had called and they would not hear, so shall they call and I will not hear, said the LORD of Armies. 14And I will whirl them out over all the nations that they did not know, and the land behind them shall be desolate of passersby. They turned a precious land into a desolation.”
CHAPTER 7 NOTES
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2. Beth-El. Though this was the location of one of the two principal sanctuaries of the northern kingdom, it cannot be a place-name here, and it is also not used as a designation for the Temple (its literal meaning is “house of God”). On the evidence of documents from the Jewish community of Elephantine in Egypt from this period, it was also used as a man’s name.
3. the fifth month. This is the month of Av, when the destruction of the First Temple occurred.
5. in the fifth month and the seventh. The latter would be the fast commemorating the assassination of Gedaliah, who was appointed governor of Judah after the Babylonian conquest. Neither of these fasts, of course, has any basis in the Torah, and so the people understandably want a directive from God (“to entreat the LORD,” verse 2) through the Temple priests and the Temple prophets about whether these fasts should be observed.
have you actually fasted for Me? God has not enjoined these fasts, and they are no more than a human initiative to express collective grief, which is not the thing God wants.
6. are you not the ones who eat and you the ones who drink? Eating and drinking, like abstention, are a human affair that does not really concern God.
7. Are not these the words that the LORD proclaimed through the former prophets. The words are not spelled out, but Zechariah would have in mind such prophecies as the one in Isaiah 1, where God proclaims that He does not want people to trample through the courts of the Temple when their hands are filled with blood.
dwelled tranquil. “Tranquil” does not appear here in the Hebrew. Either it was dropped in scribal transmission or “tranquil” in the preceding clause was meant to do double duty.
9. Judge true justice. Although this appears to be a new prophecy, the editorial logic of its placement here is that these demands for social justice are God’s “words,” what He wants rather than fasts.
14. And I will whirl them out over all the nations. Given Zechariah’s role promising a Davidic restoration and urging the rebuilding of the Temple, it is unlikely that he could be addressing this blistering prophecy of exile to his contemporaries. Rather, this would be a citation of God’s pronouncement of doom on the rebellious generation seven decades earlier. This situation of the prophecy in the historical moment leading up to 586 B.C.E. is spelled out in the last sentence here, which uses a past tense (the so-called converted future) for its report of turning the land into a desolation. The grandparents of Zechariah’s audience, then, ignored God’s teaching and consequently reduced their land to ruins. Now the people of Zechariah’s time, inhabiting the ruins, have been summoned to the task of rebuilding.
1And the word of the LORD of Armies came, saying, 2“Thus said the LORD of Armies: I have been very jealous for Zion, and with great wrath I have been jealous for her. 3Thus said the LORD: I have come back to Zion and abided within Jerusalem, and Jerusalem shall be called the City of Truth, and the Mountain of the LORD, the Holy Mountain. 4Thus said the LORD of Armies: Again shall old men and old women sit in the squares of Jerusalem, each with his staff in hand because of their many years. 5And the squares of the city shall be filled with boys and girls playing in her squares. 6Thus said the LORD of Armies: Does it seem beyond the remnant of this people in these days? So it would be beyond Me, said the LORD of Armies. 7Thus said the LORD of Armies: I am about to rescue My people from the land of the east and from the land of the sunset, and I will bring them, and they shall abide in Jerusalem and be My people and I will be their God in truth and in righteousness. 8Thus said the LORD of Armies: May your hands be strong, you who hear in these days these words from the prophets who are in the time the foundation of the house of the LORD of Armies was laid for the Temple to be rebuilt. 9For before these days the wages of man was naught and the wages of beast was nothing, and for him coming and going there was no peace from the foe, and I set each man against his fellow. 10And now not as in the former days am I to the remnant of this people, said the LORD of Armies. 11For the peaceful sowing—the vine shall give its fruit and the land shall give its yield and the heavens shall give their dew, and I will bestow on the remnant of this people all these. 12And it shall be, as you were a curse among the nations, house of Judah and house of Israel, so will I rescue you and you shall become a blessing. Do not fear, and may your hands be strong. 13For thus said the LORD of Armies: As I devised to do harm to you when your fathers infuriated me, said the LORD of Armies, and I did not repent, 14so I have again devised in these days to do good for Jerusalem and for the house of Judah. Do not fear. 15These are the things that you should do: Speak truth, each man to his neighbor, and render truth and justice in your gates. 16And do not plot evil in your hearts, each man against his fellow, and do not love a false vow, for all these do I hate, said the LORD.”
17And the word of the LORD of Armies came to me, saying, 18“Thus said the LORD of Armies: the fast of the fourth month and the fast of the fifth month and the fast of the tenth month shall become a rejoicing for the house of Judah and gladness and good festivals. And love truth and peace.”
19Thus said the LORD of Armies: “Peoples and the dwellers of many towns yet shall come, and the dwellers of one town shall go to another, saying, ‘Let us go to entreat the LORD and to seek the LORD of Armies—I, too, shall go.’ 20And many peoples and vast nations shall come to seek the LORD in Jerusalem and to entreat the LORD.” 21Thus said the LORD of Armies: “In those days ten people from all the tongues of the nations shall grasp the border of a Jew’s garment, saying, ‘Let us go up with you, for we have heard that God is with you.’”
CHAPTER 8 NOTES
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3. Jerusalem shall be called the City of Truth. Zechariah here follows the practice of Third Isaiah, who attributes new names to Jerusalem in keeping with its dramatically transformed nature in the restoration of Zion.
4. each with his staff in hand because of their many years. In the new era of peace and prosperity, the city will be filled with people who will have lived to a ripe old age. The complement to this multiplication of elders is the children playing in the squares.
6. Does it seem beyond the remnant of this people in these days? This rhetorical question is addressed to those who might doubt the capacity of the people to complete the project of rebuilding the Temple. It is surely not beyond God to conceive such a consummation, and it should not be beyond the people. One might note that many scholars view the recurrent phrase “the remnant of this people” as a designation for those who remained in Judah after its conquest by the Babylonians.
7. I am about to rescue My people from the land of the east. The plausible inference from these words is that a substantial population of exiles from Judah remained in Babylonia after Cyrus’s decree permitting return, and this seems historically very likely. “The land of the sunset” is added to convey the sense “everywhere.”
8. May your hands be strong. These words, which will be repeated in verse 12, are an exhortation to those engaged in the arduous effort of rebuilding the Temple, as the reference to the rebuilding in the second part of this verse makes clear.
these words from the prophets. The reference is probably to Haggai and to Zechariah himself.
9. the wages of man was naught and the wages of beast was nothing. Man reaped no profit for his labor, and there was no food for his beasts of burden.
and for him coming and going there was no peace from the foe. Although other identifications have been proposed, the language sounds like a reference to siege. The same Hebrew phrase (literally, “going out and coming in”) is used to describe the besieged Jericho in Joshua.
I set each man against his fellow. If these lines in fact refer to Jerusalem besieged by the Babylonians, what this formulation reflects is the bitter divisions within the people during that moment of crisis. Jeremiah, one recalls, was the object of a murderous conspiracy.
12. a curse … a blessing. Zechariah invokes common biblical usage, in which “curse” means a byword of calamity and “blessing” the opposite.
18. the fast of the fourth month. This reversal of a whole series of fasts addresses the question of the people in Jerusalem as to whether they should continue to keep two particular fasts.
good festivals. This rather odd use of “good” with “festivals” may be influenced by the Late Biblical yamim tovim, “good days,” for “festivals,” which occurs in Esther and becomes standard in rabbinic Hebrew.
And love truth and peace. Abraham ibn Ezra aptly observes that what God really wants of His people is not the awkward practice of fasts but the love of truth and peace, a life of ethical behavior.
19. Peoples and the dwellers of many towns yet shall come. This vision of the nations coming to seek out the God of Israel is in keeping with a recurrent theme in Third Isaiah and may well be influenced by him.
21. ten people from all the tongues of the nations shall grasp the border of a Jew’s garment. This vivid image conveys the sense of throngs of foreigners desperate to join the people with whom God dwells. The term yehudi, “Jew,” never appears in earlier biblical literature, although it occurs frequently in Esther, which also belongs to the Persian period. Yehudi is palpably moving toward the meaning of “Jew” because it is now hard to speak of a “Judahite” (Hebrew, ben yehudah), given that the kingdom of Judah no longer exists, having been replaced by the Persian province of Yehud.
1A portent.
The word of the LORD in the land of Hadrach, and Damascus is His resting place, for toward the LORD is the eye of humankind and all the tribes of Israel. 2And Hamath, too, borders on it, Tyre and Sidon, though they have great wisdom.
3And Tyre built herself a fortress
and piled up silver like dust
and finest gold like sand in the streets.
4Look, the LORD shall beggar her
and strike her wealth down into the sea,
and she shall be consumed by fire.
5Ashkelon shall see and be afraid
and Gaza greatly tremble
and Ekron, for her stronghold has failed.
6And a bastard shall be enthroned in Ashdod,
and I will cut off the Philistines’ pride.
7And I will take away the blood from his mouth
and the disgusting things from between his teeth,
and he, too, shall remain for our God
and become like a friend in Judah
8And I will camp at My house against armies,
against any who pass by,
and no more shall oppressors pass over them,
for now I have seen their affliction.
9Greatly exult, Zion’s Daughter,
shout for joy, Jerusalem’s Daughter.
Look, your king shall come to you,
victor and triumphant is he,
on a donkey, the foal of a she-ass.
10And I will cut off the chariots from Ephraim
and the horses from Jerusalem,
and the bow of battle shall be cut off,
and he shall parley for peace with the nations,
and they shall rule from sea to sea
and from the Euphrates to the ends of the earth.
11You, too, through the blood of the covenant,
I have freed your prisoners from the waterless pit.
12Go back to the fortress,
This very day proclaiming,
double I will give back to you.
13For I have bent Me Judah as a bow,
strong Ephraim as an arrow.
And I have roused your sons, O Zion,
against your sons, O Javan,
and made you as a warrior’s sword.
14And the LORD shall be seen over them,
and His arrow come out like lightning,
and the Master, the LORD, shall blast the ram’s horn
and go forth in the storms of the south.
15The LORD of Armies shall defend them,
and the slingstone shall consume and conquer
and be filled like ritual basins,
like the corners of an altar.
16And the LORD shall rescue them on that day—
for they are crown jewels that gleam on His soil.
17How goodly and how lovely
the young men like new grain
and the virgins like lush new wine.
CHAPTER 9 NOTES
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1. A portent. The very anomaly of this “heading” signals that we have moved on to a new unit of prophecies. In regard to both style and subject matter, these last chapters of the book are quite different from the prophecies of Zechariah, and the mention of Javan (which is to say “Ion,” or Greece) in verse 13 is a possible indication that this text was composed after the conquest of the region by Alexander the Great in 332 B.C.E., more than a century after the time of Zechariah. Although the first two verses are in prose, these prophecies continue in poetry, unlike the prose writing of Zechariah.
Hadrach. This is a city in Syria north of Damascus.
2. though they have great wisdom. The “wisdom,” in keeping with one prevalent sense of the Hebrew ḥokhmah, is their skill in shipbuilding and in the construction of buildings, perhaps especially fortifications, as the next verse suggests. While these Phoenician cities are famed for their “wisdom,” they are doomed to fall through the sovereign decree of the God of all the earth.
4. beggar her. If one construes the Hebrew verb as deriving from a different root, it might mean “dispossess her,” but the mention in the preceding line of silver and gold argues for the sense of “beggar.”
her wealth. The Hebrew ḥayil has three different meanings—“wealth,” “wall,” and “military force”—and one must concede that any of these three senses would work here. This translation opts for “wealth” because of the invocation of silver and gold.
5. Ashkelon … / Gaza … / Ekron. These are Philistine cities, like Tyre and Sidon on the Mediterranean coast but considerably to the south. When the Philistines hear of the fall of the Phoenician towns, they are seized with panic.
7. take away the blood from his mouth / and the disgusting things from between his teeth. The consumption of blood is explicitly forbidden in the Torah. The “disgusting things” are probably pork, a staple of the Philistine diet, as the evidence of bones uncovered in Philistine sites indicates. The Philistines, in this utopian scenario, will put aside their odious practices and join the people of Israel.
a friend. The Hebrew ʾaluf, which also means “guide,” does have the sense of “friend” or “companion.”
Ekron like the Jebusite. The Jebusites, after their city Jerusalem was conquered by David, appear to have had amicable relations with the Israelites.
8. I have seen their affliction. The Masoretic Text has “I have seen with My eyes” (beʿeynay), but the Septuagint seems to have used a Hebrew text that showed beʿonyam, “their affliction,” and that makes better sense.
9. a lowly man riding on an ass. This is the surprising switch: though a victor, the king comes as a lowly man. In the earlier biblical period, donkeys were actually the mount of royalty, but at this late moment, horses would have been used. The introduction of the ass here anticipates the elimination of horses from Jerusalem in the next verse.
10. I will cut off the chariots from Ephraim / and the horses from Jerusalem. Ordinarily, this language would signal a prophecy of doom. Here, however, it conveys the idea that the implements of warfare will be cast aside because the ideal ruler will be able to “parley for peace with the nations.”
from sea to sea. Although this could mean from the Dead Sea to the Mediterranean, given the expansive dimensions of the province of rule, it may instead refer to the Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf, far to the south.
11. through the blood of the covenant. In all likelihood, this is the blood of the covenant of circumcision. Because Israel has remained faithful to its covenant with God, He will now liberate its captives.
12. the fortress. The Hebrew word might instead be a place-name, Bitsaron.
you prisoners of hope. This evocative phrase so caught the imagination of the great medieval Hebrew poet Judah HaLevi that he used it several times in his poems.
13. I have bent Me Judah as a bow, / strong Ephraim as an arrow. This follows from the idea that horses and chariots are put aside, for Judah itself now is embodied as a weapon.
14. blast the ram’s horn. This is a call to battle.
15. drink blood like wine. The Masoretic Text has “drink and roar [hamu] like wine,” but the Septuagint reads dam, “blood,” which is more plausible. Drinking blood like wine is a topos of ancient Hebrew martial poetry.
like ritual basins, / like the corners of an altar. Blood was collected in basins as part of the animal sacrifices, and it was also sprinkled at the four corners of the altar.
16. His people like sheep. Though the syntactic placement is a little odd, the clear sense is that God will rescue Israel as a shepherd rescues his sheep.
17. lush. The Hebrew uses a verb, yenoveiv, that means something like “to bring forth produce.”
1Ask of the LORD rain
in the season of the latter rains.
The LORD makes lightning
He gives to every man
the grass of the field.
2For the household gods spoke deceit,
and the sorcerers envisioned lies,
and vain dreams do they speak,
with mere breath they console.
Therefore they have strayed like sheep,
wandered, for there is no shepherd.
3Against the shepherds I am incensed
and with the he-goats I will make a reckoning.
For the LORD of Armies has singled out His flock,
the house of Judah,
and made them like a stallion, His glory in battle.
4From them the cornerstone and from them the tent peg,
from them the bow of battle,
from them all commanders together.
5And they shall be as warriors
trampling the mud of the streets in battle,
and they shall battle, for the LORD is with them,
and they shall put the horsemen to shame.
6And I will make the house of Judah mighty,
and the house of Joseph I will make victorious.
And I will restore them, for I have mercy upon them,
and they shall be as though I never forsook them,
for I am the LORD their God and will answer them.
7And Ephraim shall be like a warrior,
and their heart shall rejoice as from wine,
and their children shall see and rejoice,
their heart shall exult in the LORD.
8I will whistle to them and gather them,
for I will ransom them, and they shall increase as before.
9And I will sow them among the peoples, in far places they shall recall Me,
and they shall thrive with their children and return.
10And I will bring them back from the land of Egypt
and from Assyria I will gather them.
And to the land of Gilead and Lebanon I will bring them,
and still it shall not suffice for them.
11And he shall pass through the sea against the foe
and strike waves in the sea,
and all the depths of the Nile shall dry up,
and the pride of Assyria be brought down,
and the scepter of Egypt shall vanish.
12And I will make them mighty in the LORD,
and in His name they shall go about
—said the LORD.
CHAPTER 10 NOTES
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1. drenching rain. In the Hebrew, two synonyms, metar-geshem, are joined in the construct state, signifying intensification.
2. the household gods. These domestic icons, terafim, were used for divination.
wandered. The Masoretic Text reads yaʿanu, “answered” or “were afflicted.” This translation supposes a reversal of consonants and reads instead yanuʿu.
3. the shepherds. This stock epithet for “leaders” picks up the sheep metaphor of the previous line. In the second verset, “he-goats” is another fixed epithet for leaders.
make a reckoning / … singled out. The same verb, paqad, is used for both, but because it has both a positive and a negative meaning, divergent English equivalents are necessary.
4. cornerstone … tent peg, / … bow. These are all metaphors for the leaders or champions of the people. At the end of the line, the literal referent of all these is introduced in “commanders.” It should be noted that the Hebrew term used for “commander,” nogeis, generally has a negative meaning (“taskmaster,” “overseer”), but that cannot be the case here. The shift in meaning may reflect the fluidity of Late Biblical Hebrew.
5. trampling the mud of the streets in battle. It is not entirely evident why the warriors should be trampling mud. Perhaps this is intended as an image of conquest—the troops stomp through the streets of the conquered city, overwhelming all that stands in their way. It is also possible that an object of the verb has dropped out (the literal sense of the Hebrew is “in the mud of the streets”) and that the original text read: “trampling the slain like the mud of the streets.”
8. I will whistle to them. Whistling appears elsewhere as a signal for the marshaling of troops, a sound that may have been produced with some sort of wooden whistle.
they shall increase as before. More literally, “they shall increase as they increased.”
9. sow. The idea is that the exiles are planted far and wide in order to flourish.
10. And I will bring them back from the land of Egypt / and from Assyria. This invocation of lands to the south and to the far northeast is meant to express the comprehensiveness of the ingathering of exiles. In the fourth century B.C.E. there was a substantial diaspora community in Egypt. Assyria no longer existed, but it had become a byword for distant exile.
11. And he shall pass through the sea against the foe. The “he” would be Israel, transformed by God into a mighty warrior. But the three Hebrew words of this verset, weʿavar bayam tsarah, are cryptic. One possible literal rendering would be: “And he shall pass through the sea [in?] straits.” Given the militant context, the last of these three words has been construed as a collective noun meaning “foe,” and “against” is assumed to be implied by ellipsis.
1Open, O Lebanon, your doors,
that fire consume your cedars.
2Wail, O cypress,
for the cedar has fallen,
as the majestic ones are ravaged.
Wail, O Bashan oaks,
for the dense forest is taken down.
3Hark! The wailing of shepherds,
for their majesty is ravaged.
Hark! The roar of lions,
for Jordan’s bends are ravaged.
4Thus said the LORD my God: “Look after the sheep to be slaughtered, 5whose buyers will slaughter them and bear no guilt and whose sellers will say, ‘Praise the LORD, and I will get rich.’ And their shepherds show no pity for them. 6For I will no longer show pity for the dwellers of the land, said the LORD, and I am about to deliver every man into the hand of his fellow and into the hand of his king, and they shall grind up the land, and I will not save it from their hand.” 7And I looked after the sheep to be slaughtered for the sheep traders, and I took me two staffs. One I called Pleasantness and the other I called Bruising, and I looked after the sheep. 8But I got rid of the three shepherds in a single month and lost patience with them, and they on their part were disgusted with me. 9And I said, “I will not look after you.” The sheep dying will die, and the missing will go missing, and those rescuing, each will eat the other’s flesh. 10And I took my staff Pleasantness and broke it apart to annul my covenant that I had sealed with all the peoples. 11And on that very day it was annulled, and the sheep traders watching me knew that it was the word of the LORD. 12And I said to them, “If it is good in your eyes, give me my wages, and if not, don’t.” And they weighed out my wages, thirty silver shekels. 13And the LORD said to me, “Fling it into the potter’s kiln,” this majestic sum that I was worth to them. And I took the thirty silver shekels and flung them into the potter’s kiln at the house of the LORD. 14And I broke apart my second staff, Bruising, to annul the brotherhood between the house of Judah and the house of Israel. 15And the LORD said to me once again, “Take you the gear of a foolish shepherd. 16For I am about to raise up a shepherd in the land of the missing sheep. The lad shall not count them nor seek for them, and the injured he shall not heal nor the immobile one sustain, but the fat one he shall eat and break off their hooves.”
17Woe, O useless shepherds,
forsakers of the sheep.
Let a sword be over his arm
and over his right eye.
Let his arm entirely wither
and his right eye go utterly dark.
CHAPTER 11 NOTES
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1. Open, O Lebanon, your doors. There is a double meaning here. These are the doors of the kingdom within which are the great stands of cedar; and they are the gates of the city within which are buildings with sumptuous cedarwood paneling.
2. dense forest. Though batsir usually means “vintage,” a forest is not a vineyard, and hence in this instance the word may reflect the verbal stem that means “fortified” or, by implication, “impenetrable.”
3. shepherds, / … lions. As in many other lines of poetry, these are the leaders (in the case of the lions, perhaps military commanders).
4. the sheep to be slaughtered. The prophet continues the metaphor of the leaders as shepherds and the people as their flock. Here, the flock is bought and sold and slaughtered with impunity.
7. the sheep traders. The received text reads aniyey hatsoʾn, “the poor of the sheep,” but poverty seems an odd attribute for sheep. The Septuagint, which appears to have used a Hebrew text that had likhenaʿaney hatso’n, “for sheep traders,” is followed in this translation.
Bruising. The Hebrew ḥovlim reflects one of two homonymous verbal stems, one meaning “to bruise” and the other “to bundle together.” Some translations opt for the latter and render the name as Unity. But there is a biblical notion of antithetical staffs, one for mercy and one for punishment, and the present translation assumes that this is reflected here.
8. the three shepherds. They are introduced without explanation.
9. I said. It appears that the prophet is now speaking, not God.
each will eat the other’s flesh. The metaphor of the flock now takes a fantastic, and grisly, turn: the herbivore sheep, reflecting the nature of the people they represent figuratively, turn into voracious carnivores consuming each other’s flesh.
10. my covenant that I had sealed with all the peoples. The reference is by no means transparent. First, since it would be strange for Zechariah to have a covenant with all the peoples, he may have segued into speaking on behalf of God, such slippage being not uncommon in biblical usage. But the content of the covenant is unclear. It might be a tacit agreement—not at all like God’s covenant with Israel—that the peoples are not to destroy Israel. “Pleasantness” might then be linked with this covenant through its pacific connotation.
12. If it is good in your eyes. That is, if you accept my breaking of the staff, even though as a shepherd I would need it.
give me my wages. In the metaphor of the flock, the prophet, observing what is happening to the flock, is represented as someone hired by the sheep traders.
13. the potter’s kiln. The Hebrew noun hayotseir is opaque. Many interpreters understand it as though it were haʾotsar, “the treasury,” but there is scant evidence for interchangeability between those two terms, despite a limited phonetic similarity, and the violent verb “fling” for putting something in a treasury would be surprising. Yotseir means “potter,” and perhaps here, through metonymy, it refers to the potter’s kiln, where the weights of silver would be smelted.
14. to annul the brotherhood between the house of Judah and the house of Israel. This is still another anomalous detail in this enigmatic prophecy, because the northern kingdom of Israel ceased to exist three centuries before this prophet wrote.
15. a foolish shepherd. His foolishness is spelled out in the next verse.
16. The lad. This word, naʿar, is used because it was often young men (alternately, subalterns) who tended the flocks, as we see at the beginning of David’s career in 1 Samuel 16. Again, the reference is to the king.
the immobile one. The Hebrew hanitsavah is unclear. It would ordinarily mean “one who is standing,” hence the guess of this translation.
1A portent.
The word of the LORD concerning Israel, said the LORD, Who stretches out the heavens and founds the earth and fashions the spirit of man within him. 2I am about to make Jerusalem a bowl of poison to all the peoples round about, and Judah, too, shall be caught in the siege against Jerusalem. 3And it shall happen on that day that I will make Jerusalem a burdensome stone for all the peoples. All who lift her burden shall surely be scraped, while all the nations of the earth gather against her. 4On that day, said the LORD, I will strike every horse with confusion and its rider with madness, but upon the house of Judah I will open My eyes, while all the horses of the peoples I will strike with blindness. 5And the leaders of Judah shall say in their heart, “The dwellers of Jerusalem are strength for me through the LORD their God.” 6On that day I will make the leaders of Judah like a flaming brazier among wood and like a flaming torch among sheaves, and they shall consume on the right and on the left all the peoples round about, and Jerusalem shall again dwell in its place. 7And the LORD shall rescue the tents of Judah first so that the glory of the house of David and the glory of Jerusalem’s dwellers shall not surpass Judah. 8On that day, the LORD shall defend Jerusalem, and the faltering among them on that day shall be like David and the house of David like a god, like the LORD’s messenger at their head. 9And on that day I will set about to destroy all the nations coming against Jerusalem. 10And I will pour out upon the house of David and upon Jerusalem’s dwellers a spirit of grace and graciousness, and they shall look upon those who were stabbed and mourn for them like the mourning for an only child, and they shall grieve bitterly for them as one grieves bitterly for a firstborn. 11On that day the mourning in Jerusalem shall be as great as the mourning for Hadad-Rimmon in the Valley of Megiddo. 12And the land shall mourn clan by clan, the house of Nathan by itself and their women by themselves, 13the clan of the house of Levi by itself and their women by themselves, the house of Shimei by itself, and their women by themselves, 14all the remaining clans, clan by clan by itself, and their women by themselves.
CHAPTER 12 NOTES
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2. I am about to make Jerusalem a bowl of poison. The besiegers will imagine that they are about to overwhelm Jerusalem, but instead they themselves will be destroyed.
Judah, too, shall be caught in the siege. There is no “caught” in the Hebrew, but this translation follows the precedent of two other modern English versions in adding it in order to avoid the impression that the kingdom of Judah is to take part in the siege against Jerusalem. Though one can lay siege only to a city, not to a kingdom, the obvious sense is that Judah, too, will be attacked by invaders.
3. a burdensome stone. This is a complementary metaphor to the bowl of poison. The stone is too heavy to be lifted (by the invaders), and those who attempt it will only injure themselves.
4. I will strike every horse with confusion. Now the two metaphors are translated into military facts: the enemy’s horses will run amok and then go blind, and their riders will lose their minds, and thus the invading army will fall into fatal disarray.
5. strength for me. The Hebrew ʾamtsah, a familiar verbal stem but an anomalous form, is best construed as a noun.
6. a flaming brazier … a flaming torch. This is the third figurative representation of Jerusalem’s destructive force and the most violent of the three.
7. And the LORD shall rescue the tents of Judah first. The prophet introduces a somewhat surprising political note here: even though Jerusalem is the capital, it should not think of itself as the exclusively important domain of God’s people, and, to that end, He will rescue the regions outside Jerusalem first. But the next verse offers a counterbalance to this statement.
8. like a god. The Hebrew uses the polyvalent ʾelohim, which can mean “God,” “god,” or “divine being.” The first of these three senses should be excluded because it would be too extravagant, and theologically inadmissible, to say that the house of David was like God.
10. grace and graciousness. Two cognates appear in the Hebrew, ḥein and taḥanunim. While the latter elsewhere means “supplications,” the present context suggests that here it has sense close to ḥein.
look upon. The Masoretic Text has “look to Me [ʾeilay], revocalized here as ʾeiley [“to” or “upon”].
mourn for them like the mourning for an only child. It is puzzling that a prophecy promising the destruction of Judah’s enemies and the pouring out of a spirit of grace upon the people should conclude in this wave of desperate mourning. The least complicated explanation is Rashi’s: in the battle to defend the city, many have fallen by the sword, and so the triumph is darkened by a deep sadness over these terrible losses.
11. as great as the mourning for Hadad-Rimmon. These are two Canaanite gods, here conflated, as they may have been in popular religion. The mourning indicates that Hadad-Rimmon was a dying god, like Tammuz and like the Greek Adonis, whose annual descent into the underworld was marked by rites of grief.
1On that day shall a spring be opened for the house of David and for Jerusalem’s dwellers for the cleansing of offense and impurity. 2And it shall happen on that day, said the LORD of Armies, that I will cut off the names of the idols from the land, and they no longer shall be recalled, and the prophets, too; and the spirit of uncleanness I will take away from the land. 3And it shall happen that should a man still prophesy, his father and his mother, his begetters, shall say, “You shall not live, for you have spoken lies in the name of the LORD.” And his father and his mother shall stab him for his prophesying. 4And it shall happen on that day that the prophets shall be shamed, each of his visions when he prophesies, and they shall not wear a hairy mantle in order to deceive. 5And he shall say, “I am no prophet. I am a tiller of the soil, for the soil has been consigned to me from my youth.” 6And one shall say to him, “What are these wounds on your chest?” And he shall say, “Because I was struck in the house of my lovers.”
7Sword, rouse against My shepherd,
against My companion man
—said the LORD of Armies.
Strike the shepherd
and let the sheep be scattered,
and I will bring My hand back against the shepherd lads.
8And it shall happen throughout the land,
said the LORD,
two-thirds within it shall be cut off, perish,
and a third shall be left within it.
9And I will bring the third into fire
and purge them as silver is purged
and try them as gold is tried.
As for Me, I will answer him.
And he shall say, “The LORD is my God.”
CHAPTER 13 NOTES
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1. for the cleansing of offense and impurity. “Cleansing” is merely implied in the Hebrew through ellipsis.
2. the names of the idols. Not only will the idols be destroyed but their very names will be expunged—thus, “they no longer shall be recalled.” One should note that invoking the name of a deity in a vow was considered to be a very weighty act.
the prophets. These are false prophets, as the mention immediately afterward of “the spirit of uncleanness” makes clear.
3. his father and his mother, his begetters. This extreme case highlights the terrible gravity of the crime of false prophecy: his own parents condemn him to death and then carry out the sentence.
for his prophesying. An alternate construction of this single Hebrew word is “when he prophesies.”
4. a hairy mantle. There is some indication that the early prophets (that is, earlier than the so-called Literary Prophets) wore hairy mantles, and so this would be the outward show of his status as a prophet.
5. I am no prophet. I am a tiller of the soil. Confronted with the charge of false prophecy, which is a capital crime, he pretends to have nothing to do with prophecy but to be only a simple farmer.
for the soil has been consigned to me. The noun in the received text is ʾadam, “man” or “humankind,” but this is probably an error for ʾadamah, “soil,” the final heh having been lost through haplography because it is also the first letter of the next word.
6. What are these wounds on your chest? His own body bears evidence against him. The wounds would be gashes, self-inflicted or made by others, as one sees with the prophets of Baal in 1 Kings 18:28, in a pagan rite to rouse the attention of a deity.
Because I was struck in the house of my lovers. Most translators render the last word as “friends,” but its general meaning is “lovers.” The usage is probably influenced by the common representation in Prophetic literature of pagan deities as “lovers” of the adulterous Israel. The wounds do not reflect any homosexual sadomasochistic practice but rather the cultic excesses of a pagan ritual.
7. My shepherd. Once again, the shepherd is the king.
the shepherd lads. The Hebrew tsoʿarim means “assistant shepherds,” which would refer figuratively to people in the royal court and administration.
9. He shall call out. As often happens in biblical usage, the pronouns switch from plural to singular, Israel now imagined as a collective.
1Look, a day is coming for the LORD when what is despoiled from you shall be shared out in your midst, 2and I will gather all the nations against Jerusalem for battle. And the city shall be captured and the houses looted and the women ravished. And half the city shall go out in exile, but the rest of the people shall not be cut off from the city. 3And the LORD shall sally forth and do battle with those nations as on the day He fought, on the day of battle. 4And His feet shall stand on that day on the Mount of Olives, which faces Jerusalem from the east. And the Mount of Olives shall split in half, from east to west, into a very great valley, and half the mountain shall shift to the north and half to the south. 5And the valley of My mountains shall be blocked, as the valley of the mountains reaches as far as Azal, and it shall be blocked as it was blocked by the earthquake in the days of Uzziah king of Judah. And the LORD my God shall come, all the holy ones with Him. 6And it shall happen that on that day there shall be no daylight nor chill moonlight. 7And it shall be a single day—it shall be known to the LORD—neither day nor night, and it shall be, at eventide there shall be light. 8And it shall happen on that day, fresh waters shall come out from Jerusalem, half of them toward the eastern sea and half of them toward the western sea, in summer and in winter it shall be. 9And the LORD shall be king over all the earth. On that day the LORD shall be one and His name one. 10All the land shall become as a plain, from Geba to Rimmon south of Jerusalem, but the city shall rise high and sit in her place, from the Benjamin Gate to the site of the Former Gate as far as the Armor Gate and from Hanamel Tower as far as the king’s winepress. 11And they shall dwell within her, and no more shall there be devastation, and Jerusalem shall dwell secure. 12And this shall be the plague with which the LORD shall strike all the peoples that marshaled against Jerusalem: their flesh shall rot as they stand on their feet, and their eyes shall rot in their sockets, and their tongues shall rot in their mouths. 13And it shall happen on that day, the panic from the LORD among them shall be great, and every man shall seize his fellow, and his hand shall be raised against the hand of his fellow. 14And Judah, too, shall do battle in Jerusalem, and the wealth of the nations round about shall be gathered in—gold and silver and very many garments. 15And so shall there be a plague against horse and mule and camel and donkey and every beast that will be in those camps, like this plague. 16And it shall happen that all who remain of the nations coming up against Jerusalem shall go up year after year to bow to the King, the LORD of Armies, and to celebrate the Festival of Booths. 17And it shall happen that he who does not go up from the clans of the earth to Jerusalem to bow to the King, the LORD of Armies, no rain shall fall on him. 18And if the clan of Egypt does not go up and does not come, upon them shall be the plague with which the LORD shall strike all the nations that do not go up to celebrate the Festival of Booths. 19This shall be the punishment for the offense of Egypt and for the offense of all the nations that do not go up to celebrate the Festival of Booths. 20On that day there shall be on the bells of the horses “Holy to the LORD,” and the pails in the house of the LORD shall be like the basins before the altar. 21And every pail in Jerusalem and in Judah shall be “Holy to the LORD of Armies.” And all those offering sacrifice shall come and take from them and cook in them, and there shall no longer be a merchant in the house of the LORD of Armies on that day.
CHAPTER 14 NOTES
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2. the city … the houses … the women. The panorama of conquest moves inward, and intensifies, in concentric circles: first the city falls, then the homes are ransacked, and—worst of all—within the homes the women are raped.
but the rest of the people shall not be cut off. This prepares the ground for the great pivot, in which the LORD sallies forth as a warrior-god to route the enemies.
4. the Mount of Olives, which faces Jerusalem from the east. The enemies would have come from the east.
And the Mount of Olives shall split in half. God’s principal weapon in this battle is a cataclysmic earthquake.
5. shall be blocked. The Masoretic Text reads wenastem, “and you shall flee,” but the strong scholarly consensus is that the word should be revocalized to show wenistam, as it does in some Hebrew manuscripts and in three ancient versions.
all the holy ones. These would be the divine entourage.
with Him. The Masoretic reading is “with you,” but almost all the ancient versions have “with Him.”
6. there shall be no daylight nor chill moonlight. This is the construction of many modern versions, but the Hebrew is cryptic.
8. fresh waters shall come out from Jerusalem. Jerusalem thus becomes a source of fructification for all its distant environs. The vision may be inspired by the stream flowing out from the Temple in Ezekiel 47.
10. the city. The Hebrew says only “she,” but “the city” is added in the translation in order to avoid the impression that it is the land that rises high.
12. And this shall be the plague. The prophet is not content with the evocation of Jerusalem dwelling secure but goes on to describe the ghastly fate of its enemies.
their flesh. The Hebrew uses a masculine singular throughout the plague passage, but this is basically a collective noun, hence the plural in the translation.
14. Judah, too, shall do battle in Jerusalem. Hebrew usage also allows one to construe this as “do battle against Jerusalem,” and a few scholars have proposed a background of bitter enmity between the population in Jerusalem and the inhabitants of the outlying districts, but this seems unlikely.
15. like this plague. That is, the plague in which the living body rots.
16. all who remain of the nations … shall go up year after year to bow to the King, the LORD of Armies. This passage picks up the idea proclaimed in Third Isaiah that all the nations will embrace the worship of YHWH. It is for this reason that God here is given the epithet King, for He is king of all the earth.
the Festival of Booths. This is the fall festival, which, because it was celebrated after the labor of harvesting was completed, drew the largest throngs of pilgrims. Evidently, the obligation of the sundry nations is just this festival and not all three pilgrim festivals.
17. who does not go up … to bow to the King. Unlike the parallel passages in Third Isaiah, this call to universalism is accompanied by a threat to those who do not comply.
18. the clan of Egypt … upon them shall be the plague. The withholding of rain is not a threat to Egypt because it has the Nile as its water source, so the Egyptians will be punished by plague.
19. the punishment for the offense. “Punishment” is merely implied in the Hebrew.
20. Holy to the LORD. This is the formulaic phrase that indicates consecration to the Temple. The horses will no longer serve as mounts for battle but will be part of the sacred service.
the pails in the house of the LORD shall be like the basins before the altar. The intention of this statement is obscure. Since the next verse goes on to say that all the pails (others translate the Hebrew term as “pots)—in the kingdom will be inscribed with the words dedicating them to the sanctuary, perhaps the meaning may be that even receptacles commonly used for mundane purposes will be devoted to the service of God.
21. there shall no longer be a merchant in the house of the LORD. The presence of merchants was required in order to exchange gold and silver for chattel that could be offered as sacrifice. Jesus, it will be remembered, objected to such commercial activity in the Temple and drove out the money changers. It would appear that this prophet was actuated by that same impulse of purism or zealotry.
1A portent: the word of the LORD through Malachi.
2I have loved you, said the LORD,
and you said, “How have you loved us?”
Is not Esau Jacob’s brother? said the LORD.
And I loved Jacob,
3but Esau I hated,
and I made his mountains a desolation
and his estate—for the desert jackals.
4Should Edom say, “We are beggared,
but once more we will build the ruins,”
thus said the LORD of Armies:
They shall build but I will destroy,
and they shall be called the region of wickedness
and the people the LORD cursed for all time.
5And your own eyes shall see and you shall say,
“May the LORD be great beyond the region of Israel.”
6A son honors his father,
and a slave his master,
but if I am a father,
where is My honor,
and if I am a master,
where is the fear of Me?
said the LORD of Armies to you,
And you said, “How have we despised Your name?”
7Bringing on My altar
defiled food,
and you say, “How have we defiled You?”
When you say the LORD’s table
is despised,
8and when you bring a blind beast to sacrifice—
“there is nothing wrong.”
And when you bring a lame and sickly beast—
“there is nothing wrong.”
Offer it, pray, to your prefect.
Will he be pleased with you or favor you?
said the LORD of Armies.
9And now, entreat, pray,
God, that He be gracious to us
From your hand this was.
Will He show favor to you?
said the LORD of Armies.
10Who then among you would close double doors
and not light fire on My altar in vain?
I have no desire of you,
said the LORD of Armies,
and with grain offering from your land I will not be pleased.
11For from the sun’s rising to its setting
great is My name among the nations,
and in every place incense is offered to My name
and pure grain offering,
for great is My name among the nations,
said the LORD of Armies.
12But you profane it
when you say, “The Master’s table is defiled,
13And you say, “How tiresome,”
and you insult Me, said the LORD of Armies.
And you bring the stolen and the lame and the sickly,
and you bring the grain offering.
Will I be pleased with it from your hand?
said the LORD.
14And cursed be the schemer who has in his flock a sound male but pledges and sacrifices a damaged one to the Master. For I am a great king, said the LORD of Armies, and My name is fearsome among the nations.
CHAPTER 1 NOTES
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1. Malachi. In contrast to many of the other prophets, no father’s name is given, and no indication of the years of his prophecy is offered. This suppression of identifying context lends support to the inference that “Malachi” is not actually a name but a common noun designating a role, “My messenger.”
3. but Esau I hated. Esau is Edom, and the bitter lingering memory of the Edomites’ collaboration with the Babylonians in the destruction of Jerusalem informs these lines.
5. May the LORD be great beyond the region of Israel. This idea that God’s kingship will be reverentially recognized by the nations of the earth is picked up in verse 11.
6. priests who despise My name. The prophecy began by addressing the people of Israel. Now attention is focused on the priests and their abuse of the Temple cult. Since the prophet assumes that the Temple service is being conducted, his own discourse would have to occur at some point after the completion of the rebuilding of the Temple around 514 B.C.E.
How have we despised Your name? This articulation of the prophecy through challenge and response (compare verse 2) is characteristic of Malachi.
8. blind … / lame … sickly. All such maimed animals are forbidden as offerings in the sacrificial cult. The priests may be passing off cheaply acquired beasts of this sort while keeping the sound animals for their own consumption.
your prefect. The Hebrew word used here, peḥah, is a loanword taken from the Persian (compare the English “pasha,” which entered the language through a Turkish intermediary) and is thus linguistic evidence of the setting of this prophecy in the Persian period.
10. close double doors / and not light fire on My altar. Given the egregious abuse of the Temple cult, what needs to be done is to close the doors of the sanctuary and stop lighting the lampstands on the altar.
11. in every place incense is offered to My name / and pure grain offering. While the offerings in the Jerusalem temple are contaminated, elsewhere the nations serve God with pure sacrifices. One must construe the assertion either as a rhetorical maneuver or as a monotheistic fantasy.
12. when you say, “The Master’s table is defiled.” The priests, of course, would not actually make such an open declaration of their own contempt for the sacred altar, but the prophet attributes to them words that expose the effect of their actions.
the food on it despised. The received text includes a word, nivo (“its fruit”?), that has not been translated because it is syntactically awry and looks like a scribal error. It may be a dittography triggered by the next word in the text, nivzeh.
13. How tiresome. The Masoretic Text shows an odd formation, matlaʾah, and this translation follows many critics in breaking it into two words, mah telaʾah.
14. a sound male. “Sound” is merely implied in the Hebrew.
My name is fearsome among the nations. The prophet reverts here to the idea introduced in verse 11 that the sundry nations fear and worship Him with the appropriate sacrifices while the priests in Jerusalem offer up tainted beasts.
1And now, for you is this command, O priests. 2If you do not heed and do not pay mind to give honor to My name, said the LORD of Armies, I will let loose the curse among you and make your blessings curses, yes, make them curses, for you do not pay mind. 3I am about to rebuke your seed and scatter dung on your faces, the dung of your festival offerings, and it shall carry you off to where it is. 4And you shall know that I have sent you this command, for My covenant to be with Levi, said the LORD of Armies. 5My covenant has been with him, life and peace, and I have given them to him—fear, and he did fear Me, and before My name he was awestruck. 6A teaching of truth was in his mouth, and no wrong was found on his lips. In peace and in uprightness he walked with Me, and many did he bring back from crime. 7For the lips of the priest preserved knowledge, and teachings they sought from his mouth, for he was the messenger of the LORD of Armies. 8Yet you yourselves swerved from the way; you made many stumble through rulings. You made a ruin of the covenant of the Levite, said the LORD of Armies. 9And I on My part made you despised and lowly to every people, as you have not been keeping My ways, and you have been showing favoritism in rulings.
10Do we not all have one father,
did not one God create us?
Why should we each betray our brothers
to profane the covenant of our fathers?
11Judah has betrayed, and an abomination was done in Israel and in Jerusalem. For Judah profaned the LORD’s sanctity that He had loved and coupled with the daughter of an alien god. 12May the LORD cut off for the man who does this, a witness and answerer from the tents of Jacob and bringer of grain offering to the LORD of Armies. 13And this, besides, did you do: cause to cover with tears the LORD’s altar, with weeping and groans, because there is no more turning to the grain offering or accepting with favor from your hand. 14And you say, “Why?” Because the LORD bore witness between you and the wife of your youth. It was you who betrayed her when she was your friend and your covenanted wife. 15And did not one do [right], who has exceeding spirit? And what does the one seek?—seed of God. And you should guard yourselves with your spirit and not betray the wife of your youth. 16For I hate divorce, said the LORD God of Israel, and one who covers his garb with outrage, said the LORD of Armies. And you shall guard yourselves with your spirit and not betray. 17You have wearied the LORD with your words, and you say, “How have we wearied Him?” In your saying, “All evildoers are good in the eyes of the LORD, and them He desires,” or, “Where is the God of justice?”
CHAPTER 2 NOTES
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2. give honor to My name. This phrasing reflects a tendency in the Second Temple period to substitute God’s “name” for direct references to the deity.
make your blessings curses. The literal sense is “curse your blessings,” but this is the obvious meaning. An important function of the priests was to bless the people.
3. your seed. It is not entirely clear whether the reference is to the offspring of the priests or to anything, literal or figurative, that they plant.
scatter dung on your faces. Though shameful and disgusting for anyone, this is particularly disgraceful for priests, who are obliged to remain in a condition of purity.
it shall carry you off to where it is. The translation reflects the obscurity of the Hebrew. What might be intended is the dung-heap, but it remains puzzling how dung scattered on a face could carry a person off.
6. A teaching of truth. An important responsibility of the priests was to provide instruction (torah) to the people concerning the laws and moral imperatives they were obliged to observe. But the term also has the sense of judicial ruling, as in verses 7, 8, and 9.
9. showing favoritism in rulings. This perversion of justice is precisely what a judge is enjoined not to do.
11. coupled with the daughter of an alien god. The prophet here, like Ezra, inveighs against mixed marriages, though he may be referring simply to sexual relations with foreign women. Calling such a woman “daughter of an alien god” is a way of stressing the involvement of non-Israelite women in paganisim.
12. a witness and answerer. The received text says ʿer, “one awake,” which this translation, following one version of the Septuagint, emends to ʿed. Given the parallelism with “bringer of grain offering to the LORD,” this would then refer to a priestly function—perhaps, bearing witness in legal matters.
13. cause to cover with tears. While the literal sense of the Hebrew is simply “cover with tears,” this could not be the act of the priests, for that would suggest profound contrition. Rather, by consorting with alien women, the priests impel God to reject their offerings on the altar, and thus the people they serve are stricken with despair and weep in the Temple.
14. It was you who betrayed her when she was your friend and your covenanted wife. Since the next verse explicitly mentions divorce, one must conclude that the prophet actually rejects divorce as a “betrayal” of one’s wife. This view puts aside the legislated provision for divorce in the Torah. It is an attitude adopted by Jesus in Matthew.
15. And did not one do [right]. The entire sentence is obscure. Some interpreters think that “one” refers to God, but that seems strained. The understanding reflected in this translation is: although many among you have betrayed your spouses by divorcing them (and perhaps taking foreign women as mates), there is one—implicitly, a few—among you of “exceeding spirit” who does the right thing. (The word “right” has been added speculatively, in brackets.) What this person seeks is the “seed of God,” which would be pure Israelite offspring. If in fact this whole passage is addressed to the priests, it may be that Malachi objects only to divorce among priests, not to divorce in general. The wording, however, at the beginning of the next verse, “For I hate divorce, said the LORD,” does sound like a generalizing statement.
16. I hate divorce. Unfortunately, the “I” is lacking in the Hebrew text, opening up a window of ambiguity as to what these words mean.
17. You have wearied the LORD. This verse might be the introduction to the prophecy recorded in the next chapter because the malfeasance now is not divorce but a general perversion or rejection of divine justice.
1I am about to send My messenger,
and he shall clear the way before Me.
In a trice He shall enter His Temple,
the Master Whom you seek,
and the covenant’s messenger whom you desire,
look, he comes, said the LORD of Armies.
2And who can bear the day of His coming
and who can stand when He appears?
For He is like the smelter’s fire
and like the launderers’ lye.
3And the smelter shall sit and purify silver,
and purify the sons of Levi,
and refine them like gold and silver,
and they shall become grain offerings to the LORD in righteousness.
4And the grain offering of Judah and Jerusalem
shall be sweet to the LORD
as in days of yore and in former years.
5But I will approach you for judgment,
and I will be a swift witness
against sorcerers and against adulterers
and against those who swear falsely,
and against those who extort the hired man’s wages,
who wrong widow and orphan and sojourner
and do not fear Me,
said the LORD of Armies.
6For I am the LORD, I have not changed,
and you, sons of Jacob, have not come to an end.
7From your fathers’ days you swerved from My statutes
and you did not keep them.
Turn back to Me, that I may turn back to you,
said the LORD of Armies.
But you said, “How shall we turn back?”
8Can a human cheat God?
For you are cheating Me.
And you said, “How did we cheat You?”
9Despite the curse with which you are cursed,
Me you cheat, the whole nation.
10Bring the whole tithe
to the treasure house
that there be provision in My house.
and test Me, pray, in this,
said the LORD of Armies.
the casements of the heavens
blessings without end.
11And I will rebuke for you the devourer,
and it shall not ruin for you the fruit of the soil,
nor shall the vine of the field lose its yield,
said the LORD of Armies.
12And all the nations shall call you happy,
for you shall be a land desired,
said the LORD of Armies.
13Your words against Me have been harsh,
said the LORD.
And you said, “How did we speak against You?”
14You said, “It is for naught to serve God,
and what profit if we keep His watch
and if we walk downcast because of the LORD of Armies?
15And now we see the arrogant happy,
evildoers actually flourish,
actually test God and escape.”
16Then did the LORD-fearers speak together,
each man to his neighbor,
and the LORD hearkened and He heard,
and a book of remembrance was written before Him
for the LORD-fearers who value His name.
17And they shall become for Me, said the LORD of Armies,
a treasure on the day that I prepare.
And I will have pity on them
as a man has pity
18And you shall turn back and see
between righteous and wicked,
and him who does not serve Him.
19For, look, the day is coming,
burning like a kiln,
when all the arrogant and all the evildoers shall be straw.
And the day that is coming shall set them ablaze,
said the LORD of Armies,
shall not leave them root or branch.
20But to you who fear My name shall dawn
a sun of righteousness with healing in its wings,
and you shall go forth and become plump
like stall-fed calves.
21And you shall trample the wicked, for they shall be ashes
beneath the soles of your feet
on the day that I prepare,
said the LORD of Armies.
22Recall the teaching of Moses My servant
for all Israel, statutes and laws.
23Look, I am about to send to you
Elijah the prophet
before the coming of the day of the LORD,
great and fearsome.
24And he shall bring fathers’ hearts back to sons
and the sons’ hearts to their fathers—
lest I come and strike the land with utter destruction.
CHAPTER 3 NOTES
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1. My messenger. Although this is the designation of the prophet responsible for the book (malʾakhi), here the obvious reference is to a divine messenger who will herald God’s entrance into the Temple.
2. the day of His coming. Because of the fiery power of the one who comes, it is most probably God, even though grammatically the pronominal references might be attached to the divine messenger.
the smelter’s fire / … the launderers’ lye. Malachi may have borrowed these images of purification from Isaiah.
5. But I will approach you for judgment. While this sharp antithesis to what precedes could signal the beginning of a new prophecy, it could also be a dialectic swing within a continuous prophetic utterance: God will restore the purity of the Levites when He comes back to the Temple, but He will also make a reckoning with the sundry wrongdoers in Israel.
against those who extort the hired man’s wages. Until now, Malachi has been concerned chiefly with the corruption of the Temple cult, but now he moves into the denunciation of the sundry social injustices familiar from the First Commonwealth prophets.
8. How did we cheat You? Malachi again invokes his favored form of dialogic challenge and response.
in tithes and in donations. Now he returns to the dominant theme of abuse of the cult. In this instance, the object of critique is the failure to deliver tithes and donations to the Temple—or, perhaps, shortchanging in the delivery.
9. Despite the curse. The people palpably suffer as punishment for their misdeeds but still persist in them.
10. that there be provision in My house. The tithe was not currency—this was still not a money economy—but a tithe of agricultural products and livestock, hence “provision.”
I will surely open for you / the casements of the heavens. Approximately the same phrasing occurs at the beginning of the Flood in Genesis 7:11. In Genesis, it designates a devastating deluge, but here it is rain that fructifies the land.
shower upon you. More literally, “empty out upon you.”
11. the devourer. This is an epithet for the locust, as becomes clear in what immediately follows.
14. if we walk downcast because of the LORD of Armies. The Hebrew represented here as “downcast” suggests something like “gloomy.” The idea is contrition in the presence of God, which, according to these naysayers, is pointless.
15. And now we see the arrogant happy. This subversive perception by the rebellious people turns out to be quite similar to the recurrent argument against the traditional moral calculus articulated in the Book of Job.
17. the day that I prepare. This is the prophetic Day of the LORD, when the evildoers will be punished and the righteous redeemed.
his son who serves him. What is envisaged is a stable social order in which sons dutifully serve their fathers. Malachi will give the theme of the union of fathers and sons a grand flourish in his concluding prophecy.
18. him who serves God. The service of son to father is now transposed into the service of God by man. At the beginning of the book (1:6), God identifies Himself as father to humankind.
19. shall not leave them root or branch. Though “root or branch” is idiomatic for “all of it,” these are combustible materials, like the straw just mentioned.
20. a sun of righteousness with healing in its wings. This beautiful phrase takes advantage of the multivalent Hebrew kenafayim, “wings” and also “hems of a garment.” The dawning sun of righteousness has wings either because of the radiant beams around it or because it sails through the sky. The Near Eastern sun can be blistering and lethal, as we are often reminded in the Bible, but this sun instead gives restorative warmth and brightness.
21. trample. The unusual word used in the Hebrew generally means “knead.”
22. Horeb. This is another name for Sinai.
23. I am about to send to you / Elijah the prophet. This verse inaugurates a rich legendary tradition in which Elijah is imagined as the harbinger of the messiah. Elijah would appear to be a different harbinger from the “messenger” mentioned in 3:1, and it is by no means certain that these concluding verses are from the same hand as the rest of the book. Whether this text is drawing on an already existent folk tradition is a matter of speculation. Elijah, because of the stories of his miraculously aiding common people, would have been a likely candidate for a folk hero, and his seclusion on Mount Horeb (1 Kings 19:8ff.), where he is vouchsafed an epiphany, aligns him with Moses, who is invoked in the previous verse.
24. lest I come and strike the land with utter destruction. This grim warning, immediately after the vision of perfect harmony between fathers and sons, seems a discordant note on which to conclude the book. The framers of Jewish tradition recognized the discordance and ruled that when this passage was chanted in synagogue, one must end by going back to repeat from the preceding verse the lines about the coming of Elijah.
