4:5 Burn a thank offering of bread made with yeast! 1
Make a public display of your voluntary offerings! 2
For you love to do this, you Israelites.”
The sovereign Lord is speaking!
4:6 “But surely I gave 3 you no food to eat in any of your cities;
you lacked food everywhere you live. 4
Still you did not come back to me.”
The Lord is speaking!
4:9 “I destroyed your crops 5 with blight and disease.
Locusts kept 6 devouring your orchards, 7 vineyards, fig trees, and olive trees.
Still you did not come back to me.”
The Lord is speaking!
4:11 “I overthrew some of you the way God 8 overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah. 9
You were like a burning stick 10 snatched from the flames.
Still you did not come back to me.”
The Lord is speaking!
6:14 “Look! I am about to bring 11 a nation against you, family 12 of Israel.”
The Lord, the God who commands armies, is speaking.
“They will oppress 13 you all the way from Lebo-Hamath 14 to the Stream of the Arabah.” 15
1 sn For the background of the thank offering of bread made with yeast, see Lev 7:13.
2 tn Heb “proclaim voluntary offerings, announce.”
3 tn The Hebrew construction is emphatic (pronoun + verb). It underscores the stark contrast between the judgments that the Lord had been sending with the God of blessing Israel was celebrating in its worship (4:4-5).
4 tn Heb “But I gave to you cleanness of teeth in all your cities, and lack of food in all your places.” The phrase “cleanness of teeth” is a vivid way of picturing the famine Israel experienced.
5 tn Heb “you.” By metonymy the crops belonging to these people are meant. See the remainder of this verse, which describes the agricultural devastation caused by locusts.
6 tn The Hiphil infinitive construct is taken adverbially (“kept”) and connected to the activity of the locusts (NJPS). It also could be taken with the preceding sentence and related to the Lord’s interventions (“I kept destroying,” cf. NEB, NJB, NIV, NRSV), or it could be understood substantivally in construct with the following nouns (“Locusts devoured your many orchards,” cf. NASB; cf. also KJV, NKJV).
7 tn Or “gardens.”
8 tn Several English versions substitute the first person pronoun (“I”) here for stylistic reasons (e.g., NIV, NCV, TEV, CEV, NLT).
9 tn Heb “like God’s overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah.” The divine name may be used in an idiomatic superlative sense here, in which case one might translate, “like the great [or “disastrous”] overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah.”
sn The destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah is described in Gen 19:1-29.
10 tn Heb “like that which is burning.”
11 tn Or “raise up” (KJV, NASB); NIV “stir up.”
12 tn Heb “house.”
13 sn Once again there is irony in the divine judgment. The oppressive nation itself will suffer oppression. The verb “oppress” (לָחַץ, lakhats) in this verse is not the same as that used in 4:1 (עָשַׁק, ’ashaq).
14 tn Or “from the entrance to Hamath.” The Hebrew term לְבוֹא (lÿvo’) can either be translated or considered a part of the place name.
15 sn Lebo-Hamath refers to the northern border of Israel, the Stream of the Arabah to its southern border. See 2 Kgs 14:25. Through this invader the Lord would reverse the victories and territorial expansion Israel experienced during the reign of Jeroboam II.