¹ tn Heb “besiege,” redundant with the noun “siege.”

² sn Nebuchadnezzar besieged Tyre from 585 to 571 b.c.

² tn Heb “and look, [they] were besieging it until.”

⁴ tn Heb “prisons.” Their besieged cities are compared to prisons.

⁵ tn Heb “Besiegers.” For the use of this verb to refer to besieging a city, compare Isa 1:8.

⁴ tn Heb “their prisons.” The besieged cities of the foreigners are compared to prisons.

² tn Heb “and he went up and besieged Samaria and fought against it.”

³ tn Heb “went up and camped”; NIV, NRSV “went up and besieged.”

¹ tn Heb “So Saul mustered all his army for battle to go down to Keilah to besiege against David and his men.”

² tn Heb “for he caused his faithfulness to be amazing to me in a besieged city.” The psalmist probably speaks figuratively here. He compares his crisis to being trapped in a besieged city, but the Lord answered his prayer for help. Verses 19-24 were apparently written after the Lord answered the prayer of vv. 1-18.

² sn The chief adviser alludes to the horrible reality of siege warfare, when the starving people in the besieged city would resort to eating and drinking anything to stay alive.

² tn The two perfect tense verbs וְסָבַב (v^esavav, “he besieged”) and וּבָנָה (uvanah, “he built”) may be taken in a complementary sense, qualifying the action of the main perfect tense verb וּבָא (uvaʾ, “he attacked it”).

² sn The chief adviser alludes to the horrible reality of siege warfare, when the starving people in the besieged city would resort to eating and drinking anything to stay alive.

¹ tn Heb “the valiant men.” This refers in context to the strongest or most valiant defenders of the city Joab and the Israelite army were besieging, so the present translation uses “the best enemy soldiers” for clarity.

¹ sn This cannibalism would occur as a result of starvation due to the city being besieged. It is one of the judgments threatened for a covenant law violation (Lev 26:29; see also Deut 28:53; Jer 19:9; Lam 2:20; Zech 11:9).

² tn The verb נָקַף (naqaf, “to surround”) refers to the military action of surrounding a besieged city with army encampments to prevent anyone in it from escaping (2 Kgs 6:14; 11:8; Pss 17:9; 88:18; Job 19:6).

² sn There is some irony involved in the choice of the simile since the men guarding a field were there to keep thieves from getting in and stealing the crops. Here the besiegers are guarding the city to keep people from getting out.

¹ sn Verse 26a depicts siege warfare and bloody defeat. The besieged enemy will be so starved they will eat their own flesh. The bloodstained bodies lying on the blood-soaked battle site will look as if they collapsed in drunkenness.

¹ sn Now the metaphor changes again. Since God thinks of Job as an enemy, he attacks with his troops, builds the siege ramp, and camps around him to besiege him. All the power and all the forces are at God’s disposal in his attack of Job.

³ tn Heb “And the army of Pharaoh had set out from Egypt, and the Chaldeans who were besieging Jerusalem heard a report about them, and they went up from besieging them.” The sentence has been restructured and reworded to give greater emphasis to the most pertinent fact, i.e., that the siege had been temporarily lifted. The word “temporarily” is not in the text but is implicit from the rest of the context. It is supplied in the translation here to better show that the information in vv. 4-5 is all parenthetical, providing a background for the oracle that will follow. For the meaning “given up their siege against” (Heb “had taken themselves away from against”) see BDB 749 s.v. עָלָה Niph.1.c(2); 759 s.v. עַל IV.2.b.