5:5 Now I will inform you
what I am about to do to my vineyard:
I will remove its hedge and turn it into pasture, 1
I will break its wall and allow animals to graze there. 2
5:6 I will make it a wasteland;
no one will prune its vines or hoe its ground, 3
and thorns and briers will grow there.
I will order the clouds
not to drop any rain on it.
5:14 So Death 4 will open up its throat,
and open wide its mouth; 5
Zion’s dignitaries and masses will descend into it,
including those who revel and celebrate within her. 6
25:11 Moab 7 will spread out its hands in the middle of it, 8
just as a swimmer spreads his hands to swim;
the Lord 9 will bring down Moab’s 10 pride as it spreads its hands. 11
33:20 Look at Zion, the city where we hold religious festivals!
You 12 will see Jerusalem, 13
a peaceful settlement,
a tent that stays put; 14
its stakes will never be pulled up;
none of its ropes will snap in two.
61:11 For just as the ground produces its crops
and a garden yields its produce,
so the sovereign Lord will cause deliverance 15 to grow,
and give his people reason to praise him in the sight of all the nations. 16
1 tn Heb “and it will become [a place for] grazing.” בָּעַר (ba’ar, “grazing”) is a homonym of the more often used verb “to burn.”
2 tn Heb “and it will become a trampled place” (NASB “trampled ground”).
3 tn Heb “it will not be pruned or hoed” (so NASB); ASV and NRSV both similar.
4 tn Heb “Sheol” (so ASV, NASB, NRSV); the underworld, the land of the dead, according to the OT world view. Cf. NAB “the nether world”; TEV, CEV “the world of the dead”; NLT “the grave.”
5 tn Heb “so Sheol will make wide its throat, and open its mouth without limit.”
sn Death is portrayed in both the OT (Prov 1:12; Hab 2:5) and Canaanite myth as voraciously swallowing up its prey. In the myths Death is portrayed as having “a lip to the earth, a lip to the heavens … and a tongue to the stars.” (G. R. Driver, Canaanite Myths and Legends, 69, text 5 ii 2-3.) Death describes his own appetite as follows: “But my appetite is the appetite of lions in the waste…If it is in very truth my desire to consume ‘clay’ [a reference to his human victims], then in truth by the handfuls I must eat it, whether my seven portions [indicating fullness and completeness] are already in the bowl or whether Nahar [the god of the river responsible for ferrying victims from the land of the living to the land of the dead] has to mix the cup.” (Driver, 68-69, text 5 i 14-22).
6 tn Heb “and her splendor and her masses will go down, and her tumult and the one who exults in her.” The antecedent of the four feminine singular pronominal suffixes used in v. 14b is unclear. The likely referent is personified Zion/Jerusalem (see 3:25-26; 4:4-5).
7 tn Heb “he”; the referent (Moab) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
8 tn The antecedent of the third masculine singular pronominal suffix is probably the masculine noun מַתְבֵּן (matben, “heap of straw”) in v. 10 rather than the feminine noun מַדְמֵנָה (madmenah, “manure pile”), also in v. 10.
9 tn Heb “he”; the referent (the Lord) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
10 tn Heb “his”; the referent (Moab) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
11 tn The Hebrew text has, “he will bring down his pride along with the [?] of his hands.” The meaning of אָרְבּוֹת (’arbot), which occurs only here in the OT, is unknown. Some (see BDB 70 s.v. אָרְבָּה) translate “artifice, cleverness,” relating the form to the verbal root אָרָב (’arav, “to lie in wait, ambush”), but this requires some convoluted semantic reasoning. HALOT 83 s.v. *אָרְבָּה suggests the meaning “[nimble] movements.” The translation above, which attempts to relate the form to the preceding context, is purely speculative.
12 tn Heb “your eyes” (so NASB, NIV, NRSV).
13 map For location see Map5-B1; Map6-F3; Map7-E2; Map8-F2; Map10-B3; JP1-F4; JP2-F4; JP3-F4; JP4-F4.
14 tn Or “that does not travel”; NASB “which shall not be folded.”
15 tn Or perhaps, “righteousness,” but the context seems to emphasize deliverance and restoration (see v. 10 and 62:1).
16 tn Heb “and praise before all the nations.”