2:11 Has a nation ever changed its gods
(even though they are not really gods at all)?
But my people have exchanged me, their glorious God, 1
for a god that cannot help them at all! 2
2:25 Do not chase after other gods until your shoes wear out
and your throats become dry. 3
But you say, ‘It is useless for you to try and stop me
because I love those foreign gods 4 and want to pursue them!’
2:28 But where are the gods you made for yourselves?
Let them save you when you are in trouble.
The sad fact is that 5 you have as many gods
as you have towns, Judah.
1 tn Heb “have exchanged their glory [i.e., the God in whom they glory].” This is a case of a figure of speech where the attribute of a person or thing is put for the person or thing. Compare the common phrase in Isaiah, the Holy One of Israel, obviously referring to the
2 tn Heb “what cannot profit.” The verb is singular and the allusion is likely to Baal. See the translator’s note on 2:8 for the likely pun or wordplay.
3 tn Heb “Refrain your feet from being bare and your throat from being dry/thirsty.”
4 tn Heb “It is useless! No!” For this idiom, see Jer 18:12; NEB “No; I am desperate.”
5 tn This is an attempt to render the Hebrew particle כִּי (ki, “for, indeed”) contextually.