17:6 There will be some left behind,
like when an olive tree is beaten –
two or three ripe olives remain toward the very top,
four or five on its fruitful branches,”
says the Lord God of Israel.
24:13 This is what will happen throughout 1 the earth,
among the nations.
It will be like when they beat an olive tree,
and just a few olives are left at the end of the harvest. 2
27:12 At that time 3 the Lord will shake the tree, 4 from the Euphrates River 5 to the Stream of Egypt. Then you will be gathered up one by one, O Israelites. 6
34:4 All the stars in the sky will fade away, 7
the sky will roll up like a scroll;
all its stars will wither,
like a leaf withers and falls from a vine
or a fig withers and falls from a tree. 8
56:3 No foreigner who becomes a follower of 9 the Lord should say,
‘The Lord will certainly 10 exclude me from his people.’
The eunuch should not say,
‘Look, I am like a dried-up tree.’”
1 tn Heb “in the midst of” (so KJV, ASV, NASB).
2 sn The judgment will severely reduce the earth’s population. See v. 6.
3 tn Heb “and it will be in that day.” The verb that introduces this verse serves as a discourse particle and is untranslated; see note on “in the future” in 2:2.
4 tn Heb “the Lord will beat out.” The verb is used of beating seeds or grain to separate the husk from the kernel (see Judg 6:11; Ruth 2:17; Isa 28:27), and of beating the olives off the olive tree (Deut 24:20). The latter metaphor may be in view here, where a tree metaphor has been employed in the preceding verses. See also 17:6.
5 tn Heb “the river,” a frequent designation in the OT for the Euphrates. For clarity most modern English versions substitute the name “Euphrates” for “the river” here.
6 sn The Israelites will be freed from exile (likened to beating the olives off the tree) and then gathered (likened to collecting the olives).
7 tc Heb “and all the host of heaven will rot.” The Qumran scroll 1QIsaa inserts “and the valleys will be split open,” but this reading may be influenced by Mic 1:4. On the other hand, the statement, if original, could have been omitted by homoioarcton, a scribe’s eye jumping from the conjunction prefixed to “the valleys” to the conjunction prefixed to the verb “rot.”
8 tn Heb “like the withering of a leaf from a vine, and like the withering from a fig tree.”
9 tn Heb “who attaches himself to.”
10 tn The infinitive absolute precedes the finite verb for emphasis.