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
3:16 I listened and my stomach churned; 6
the sound made my lips quiver.
My frame went limp, as if my bones were decaying, 7
and I shook as I tried to walk. 8
I long 9 for the day of distress
to come upon 10 the people who attack us.
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 “my insides trembled.”
7 tn Heb “decay entered my bones.”
8 tc Heb “beneath me I shook, which….” The Hebrew term אֲשֶׁר (’asher) appears to be a relative pronoun, but a relative pronoun does not fit here. The translation assumes a reading אֲשֻׁרָי (’ashuray, “my steps”) as well as an emendation of the preceding verb to a third plural form.
9 tn The translation assumes that אָנוּחַ (’anuakh) is from the otherwise unattested verb נָוָח (navakh, “sigh”; see HALOT 680 s.v. II נוח; so also NEB). Most take this verb as נוּחַ (nuakh, “to rest”) and translate, “I wait patiently” (cf. NIV).
10 tn Heb “to come up toward.”