10:5 Assyria, the club I use to vent my anger, is as good as dead, 1
a cudgel with which I angrily punish. 2
9:4 For their oppressive yoke
and the club that strikes their shoulders,
the cudgel the oppressor uses on them, 3
you have shattered, as in the day of Midian’s defeat. 4
30:32 Every blow from his punishing cudgel, 5
with which the Lord will beat them, 6
will be accompanied by music from the 7 tambourine and harp,
and he will attack them with his weapons. 8
10:24 So 9 here is what the sovereign master, the Lord who commands armies, says: “My people who live in Zion, do not be afraid of Assyria, even though they beat you with a club and lift their cudgel against you as Egypt did. 10
1 tn Heb “Woe [to] Assyria, the club of my anger.” On הוֹי (hoy, “woe, ah”) see the note on the first phrase of 1:4.
2 tn Heb “a cudgel is he, in their hand is my anger.” It seems likely that the final mem (ם) on בְיָדָם (bÿyadam) is not a pronominal suffix (“in their hand”), but an enclitic mem. If so, one can translate literally, “a cudgel is he in the hand of my anger.”
3 tn Heb “for the yoke of his burden, and the staff of his shoulder, the scepter of the oppressor against him.” The singular pronouns are collective, referring to the people. The oppressed nation is compared to an ox weighed down by a heavy yoke and an animal that is prodded and beaten.
4 sn This alludes to Gideon’s victory over Midian (Judg 7-8), when the Lord delivered Israel from an oppressive foreign invader.
5 tc The Hebrew text has “every blow from a founded [i.e., “appointed”?] cudgel.” The translation above, with support from a few medieval Hebrew
6 tn Heb “which the Lord lays on him.”
7 tn Heb “will be with” (KJV similar).
8 tn The Hebrew text reads literally, “and with battles of brandishing [weapons?] he will fight against him.” Some prefer to emend וּבְמִלְחֲמוֹת (uvÿmilkhamot, “and with battles of”) to וּבִמְחֹלוֹת (uvimkholot, “and with dancing”). Note the immediately preceding references to musical instruments.
9 tn Heb “therefore.” The message that follows is one of encouragement, for it focuses on the eventual destruction of the Assyrians. Consequently “therefore” relates back to vv. 5-21, not to vv. 22-23, which must be viewed as a brief parenthesis in an otherwise positive speech.
10 tn Heb “in the way [or “manner”] of Egypt.”