50:13 After I vent my wrath on it Babylon will be uninhabited. 1
It will be totally desolate.
All who pass by will be filled with horror and will hiss out their scorn
because of all the disasters that have happened to it. 2
50:39 Therefore desert creatures and jackals will live there.
Ostriches 3 will dwell in it too. 4
But no people will ever live there again.
No one will dwell there for all time to come. 5
50:40 I will destroy Babylonia just like I did
Sodom and Gomorrah and the neighboring towns.
No one will live there. 6
No human being will settle in it,”
says the Lord. 7
50:45 So listen to what I, the Lord, have planned against Babylon,
what I intend to do to the people who inhabit the land of Babylonia. 8
Their little ones will be dragged off.
I will completely destroy their land because of what they have done.
1 tn Heb “From [or Because of] the wrath of the
2 sn Compare Jer 49:17 and the study note there and see also the study notes on 18:16 and 19:8.
3 tn The identification of this bird has been called into question by G. R. Driver, “Birds in the Old Testament,” PEQ 87 (1955): 137-38. He refers to this bird as an owl. That identification, however, is not reflected in any of the lexicons including the most recent, which still gives “ostrich” (HALOT 402 s.v. יַעֲנָה) as does W. S. McCullough, “Ostrich,” IDB 3:611. REB, NIV, NCV, and God’s Word all identify this bird as “owl/desert owl.”
4 tn Heb “Therefore desert creatures will live with jackals and ostriches will live in it.”
5 tn Heb “It will never again be inhabited nor dwelt in unto generation and generation.” For the meaning of this last phrase compare the usage in Ps 100:5 and Isaiah 13:20. Since the first half of the verse has spoken of animals living there, it is necessary to add “people” and turn the passive verbs into active ones.
6 tn Heb “‘Like [when] God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah and the neighboring towns,’ oracle of the
sn Compare Jer 49:18 where the same prophecy is applied to Edom.
7 tn Heb “Oracle of the
8 tn The words “of Babylonia” are not in the text but are implicit from the context. They have been supplied in the translation to clarify the referent.
sn The verbs in vv. 22-25 are all descriptive of the present, but all of this is really to take place in the future. Hebrew poetry has a way of rendering future actions as though they were already accomplished. The poetry of this section makes it difficult, however, to render the verbs as future as the present translation has regularly done.