2:6 “But all these nations will someday taunt him 1
and ridicule him with proverbial sayings: 2
‘The one who accumulates what does not belong to him is as good as dead 3
(How long will this go on?) 4 –
he who gets rich by extortion!’ 5
2:19 The one who says to wood, ‘Wake up!’ is as good as dead 6 –
he who says 7 to speechless stone, ‘Awake!’
Can it give reliable guidance? 8
It is overlaid with gold and silver;
it has no life’s breath inside it.
1 tn Heb “Will not these, all of them, take up a taunt against him…?” The rhetorical question assumes the response, “Yes, they will.” The present translation brings out the rhetorical force of the question by rendering it as an affirmation.
2 tn Heb “and a mocking song, riddles, against him? And one will say.”
3 tn Heb “Woe [to] the one who increases [what is] not his.” The Hebrew term הוֹי (hoy, “woe,” “ah”) was used in funeral laments and carries the connotation of death.
4 tn This question is interjected parenthetically, perhaps to express rhetorically the pain and despair felt by the Babylonians’ victims.
5 tn Heb “and the one who makes himself heavy [i.e., wealthy] [by] debts.” Though only appearing in the first line, the term הוֹי (hoy) is to be understood as elliptical in the second line.
6 tn Heb “Woe [to] the one who says.” On the term הוֹי (hoy) see the note on the word “dead” in v. 6.
7 tn The words “he who says” in the translation are supplied from the previous parallel line.
8 tn Though the Hebrew text has no formal interrogative marker here, the context indicates that the statement should be taken as a rhetorical question anticipating the answer, “Of course not!” (so also NIV, NRSV).