the Week of Proper 24 / Ordinary 29
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King James Version
Zechariah 11:1
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- InternationalParallel Translations
Lebanon, open your gates so that the fire will come and burn your cedar trees.
Open your doors, Lebanon, So that a fire may feed on your cedars.
Lebanon, open your gates so fire may burn your cedar trees.
Open your doors, O Lebanon, that the fire may devour your cedars.
Open thy doors, O Lebanon, that the fire may devour thy cedars.
Open your doors, O Lebanon, That fire may devour your cedars.
Open your doors, O Lebanon, that the fire may devour your cedars!
Open your doors, Lebanon, That the fire may devour your cedars.
Thou Liban, opene thi yatis, and fier schal ete thi cedris.
Open thy doors, O Lebanon, that the fire may devour thy cedars.
Open your doors, O Lebanon, that the fire may consume your cedars.
Lebanon, open your gates! Let the fire come in to destroy your cedar trees.
Open thy doors, O Lebanon, that the fire may devour thy cedars.
Let your doors be open, O Lebanon, so that fire may be burning among your cedars.
Open your doors, L'vanon, so that fire can consume your cedars.
Open thy doors, O Lebanon, that the fire may devour thy cedars.
Open thy doors, O Lebanon, that the fire may devour thy cedars.
Open thy doores, O Lebanon, that the fire may deuoure thy cedars.
Open your doors, Lebanon, so that fire may devour your cedar forests.
Open your doors, O Lebanon, so that fire may destroy your cedars!
Open your doors, O Lebanon, so that fire may devour your cedars!
Open thy doores, O Lebanon, and the fire shall deuoure thy cedars.
OPEN your doors, O Lebanon, that the fire may devour your cedars.
Open, O Lebanon, thy doors, - that a fire, may devour, thy cedar,
Open thy gates, O Libanus, and let fire devour thy cedars.
Open your doors, O Lebanon, that the fire may devour your cedars!
Open thy doores O Libanus, that ye fire may consume thy Cedar trees.
Open thy doors, O Libanus, and let the fire devour thy cedars.
Open your doors, Lebanon, so that fire can burn down your cedar trees!
Open your gates, Lebanon,
Open your doors, Levanon, That the fire may devour your cedars.
Open your doors, O Lebanon, so that fire will devour your cedars!
Open your doors, O Lebanon, so that the fire may devour your cedars.
Open, O Lebanon, thy doors, And fire doth devour among thy cedars.
Open thy dores (o Libanus) that the fyre maye consume thy Cedre trees.
Open your borders to the immigrants, proud Lebanon! Your sentinel trees will burn. Weep, great pine trees! Mourn, you sister cedars! Your towering trees are cordwood. Weep Bashan oak trees! Your thick forest is now a field of stumps. Do you hear the wailing of shepherds? They've lost everything they once owned. Do you hear the outrage of the lions? The mighty jungle of the Jordan is wasted. Make room for the returning exiles! God commanded me, "Shepherd the sheep that are soon to be slaughtered. The people who buy them will butcher them for quick and easy money. What's worse, they'll get away with it. The people who sell them will say, ‘Lucky me! God's on my side; I've got it made!' They have shepherds who couldn't care less about them." God 's Decree: "I'm washing my hands of the people of this land. From now on they're all on their own. It's dog-eat-dog, survival of the fittest, and the devil take the hindmost. Don't look for help from me." So I took over from the crass, money-grubbing owners, and shepherded the sheep marked for slaughter. I got myself two shepherd staffs. I named one Lovely and the other Harmony. Then I went to work shepherding the sheep. Within a month I got rid of the corrupt shepherds. I got tired of putting up with them—and they couldn't stand me. And then I got tired of the sheep and said, "I've had it with you—no more shepherding from me. If you die, you die; if you're attacked, you're attacked. Whoever survives can eat what's left." Then I took the staff named Lovely and broke it across my knee, breaking the beautiful covenant I had made with all the peoples. In one stroke, both staff and covenant were broken. The money-hungry owners saw me do it and knew God was behind it. Then I addressed them: "Pay me what you think I'm worth." They paid me an insulting sum, counting out thirty silver coins. God told me, "Throw it in the poor box." This stingy wage was all they thought of me and my work! So I took the thirty silver coins and threw them into the poor box in God 's Temple. Then I broke the other staff, Harmony, across my knee, breaking the concord between Judah and Israel. God then said, "Dress up like a stupid shepherd. I'm going to install just such a shepherd in this land—a shepherd indifferent to victims, who ignores the lost, abandons the injured, and disdains decent citizens. He'll only be in it for what he can get out of it, using and abusing any and all. "Doom to you, useless shepherd, walking off and leaving the sheep! A curse on your arm! A curse on your right eye! Your arm will hang limp and useless. Your right eye will go stone blind."
Open your gates, Lebanon, so that the fire may consume your cedars.
Open your doors, O Lebanon, That fire may devour your cedars.
Open your doors, O Lebanon, That a fire may feed on your cedars.
Open your doors, O Lebanon,That a fire may consume your cedars.
Contextual Overview
Bible Verse Review
from Treasury of Scripure Knowledge
O Lebanon: Zechariah 10:10, Jeremiah 22:6, Jeremiah 22:7, Jeremiah 22:23, Habakkuk 2:8, Habakkuk 2:17, Haggai 1:8
that: Zechariah 14:1, Zechariah 14:2, Deuteronomy 32:22, Matthew 24:1, Matthew 24:2, Luke 19:41-44, Luke 21:23, Luke 21:24
Reciprocal: Isaiah 2:13 - General Isaiah 10:34 - Lebanon Isaiah 29:17 - the fruitful Isaiah 33:9 - Lebanon Isaiah 37:24 - General Jeremiah 6:5 - let us destroy Jeremiah 21:14 - in the Jeremiah 52:13 - burned Ezekiel 20:46 - the forest Hosea 8:1 - the house Amos 8:3 - the songs Amos 9:1 - Smite Matthew 23:38 - General Luke 13:35 - your Luke 21:6 - there Luke 21:22 - all Acts 6:14 - that
Cross-References
In that day shall five cities in the land of Egypt speak the language of Canaan, and swear to the Lord of hosts; one shall be called, The city of destruction.
For then will I turn to the people a pure language, that they may all call upon the name of the Lord , to serve him with one consent.
Now when this was noised abroad, the multitude came together, and were confounded, because that every man heard them speak in his own language.
Gill's Notes on the Bible
Open thy doors, O Lebanon,.... By which may be meant, either the temple of Jerusalem, which was built of the cedars of Lebanon;
"the gates of which are said w to open of themselves forty years before the destruction of Jerusalem, when Jochanan ben Zaccai, who lived at the same time, rebuked them, saying, O temple, temple, wherefore dost thou frighten thyself? I know thine end is to be destroyed; for so prophesied Zechariah, the son of Iddo, concerning thee, "open thy doors, O Lebanon".''
So Lebanon, in Zechariah 10:10, is interpreted of the sanctuary, both by the Targum and by Jarchi; or else it may be understood of Jerusalem, and of the whole land of Judea, because it was situated by it; it was the border of it on the north side.
That the fire may devour thy cedars; of which the temple was built, and the houses of Jerusalem, which were consumed by fire; unless the fortresses of the land are meant. So the Targum paraphrases it,
"and the fire shall consume your fortresses.''
w T. Bab. Yoma, fol. 39. 2.
Barnes' Notes on the Bible
Open thy doors, O Lebanon - Lebanon, whose cedars had stood, its glory, for centuries, yet could offer no resistance to him who felled them and were carried off to adorn the palaces of its conquerors (see above at Zephaniah 2:14, and note 2. p. 276), was in Isaiah Isaiah 14:8; Isaiah 37:24 and Jeremiah Jeremiah 22:6-7 the emblem of the glory of the Jewish state; and in Ezekiel, of Jerusalem, as the prophet himself explains it Ezekiel 17:3, Ezekiel 17:12; glorious, beauteous, inaccessible, so long as it was defended by God; a ready prey, when abandoned by Him. The center and source of her strength was the worship of God; and so Lebanon has of old been understood to be the temple, which was built with cedars of Lebanon, towering aloft upon a strong. summit; the spiritual glory and the eminence of Jerusalem, as Lebanon was of the whole country, and , “to strangers who came to it, it appeared from afar like a mountain full of snow; for, where it was not gilded, it was exceeding white, being built of marble.” But at the time of destruction it was “a den of thieves” Matthew 21:13, as Lebanon, amidst its beauty, was of wild beasts.
Rup.: “I suppose Lebanon itself, that is, “the temple,” felt the command of the prophet’s words, since, as its destruction approached, its doors opened without the hand of man. Josephus relates how , “at the passover, the eastern gate of the inner temple, being of brass and very firm, and with difficulty shut at eventide by twenty men; moreover with bars strengthened with iron, and having very deep bolts, which went down into the threshold, itself of one stone, was seen at six o’clock at night to open of its own accord. The guards of the temple running told it to the officer, and he, going up, with difficulty closed it. This the uninstructed thought a very favorable sign, that God opened to them the gate of all goods. But those taught in the divine words, understood that the safety of the temple was removed of itself, and that the gate opened.”
A saying of this sort is still exstant. : “Our fathers have handed down, forty years before the destruction of the house, the lot of the Lord did not come up on the right hand, and the tongue of splendor did not become white, nor did the light from the evening burn, and the doors of the temple opened of their own accord, until Rabbi Johanan ben Zaccai rebuked them, and said, ‘O temple, why dost thou affright thyself? I know of thee that thy end is to be destroyed, and of this Zechariah prophesied, “Open thy doors, O Lebanon, and let the fire devour thy cedars.’” The “forty years” mentioned in this tradition carry back the event exactly to the Death of Christ, the temple having been burned 73 a.d. . Josephus adds that they opened at the passover, the season of His Crucifixion. On the other hand, the shutting of the gates of the temple, when they had “seized Paul and dragged him out of the temple” Acts 21:30, seems miraculous and significant, that, having thus violently refused the preaching of the Gospel, and cast Paul out, they themselves were also shut out, denoting that an entrance was afterward to be refused them.
And let afire devour thy cedars - Jerusalem, or the temple, were, after those times, burned by the Romans only. The destruction of pride, opposed to Christ, was prophesied by Isaiah in connection with His Coming Isaiah 10:34; Isaiah 11:1.
Clarke's Notes on the Bible
CHAPTER XI
The commencement of this chapter relates to the destruction of
Jerusalem and the Jewish polity, probably by the Babylonians;
at least in the first instance, as the fourth verse speaks of
the people thus threatened as the prophet's charge, 1-6.
The prophet then gives an account of the manner in which he
discharged his office, and the little value that was put on his
labours. And this he does by symbolical actions, a common mode
of instruction with the ancient prophets, 7-14.
After the prophet, on account of the unsuccessfulness of his
labours, had broken the two crooks which were the true badges
of his pastoral office, (to denote the annulling of God's
covenant with them, and their consequent divisions and
dispersions,) he is directed to take instruments calculated to
hurt and destroy, perhaps an iron crook, scrip, and stones, to
express by these symbols the judgments which God was about to
inflict on them by wicked rulers and guides, who should first
destroy the flock, and in the end be destroyed themselves,
15-17.
Let us now view this prophecy in another light, as we are
authorized to do by Scripture, Matthew 27:7.
In this view the prophet, in the person of the Messiah, sets
forth the ungrateful returns made to him by the Jews, when he
undertook the office of shepherd in guiding and governing them;
how they rejected him, and valued him and his labours at the
mean and contemptible price of thirty pieces of silver, the
paltry sum for which Judas betrayed him. Upon which he
threatens to destroy their city and temple; and to give them
up to the hands of such guides and governors as should have no
regard to their welfare.
NOTES ON CHAP. XI
Verse Zechariah 11:1. Open thy doors, O Lebanon — I will give Mr. Joseph Mede's note upon this verse:-
"That which moveth me more than the rest, is in chap. xi., which contains a prophecy of the destruction of Jerusalem, and a description of the wickedness of the inhabitants, for which God would give them to the sword, and have no more pity upon them. It is expounded of the destruction by Titus; but methinks such a prophecy was nothing seasonable for Zachary's time, (when the city yet for a great part lay in her ruins, and the temple had not yet recovered hers,) nor agreeable to the scope. Zachary's commission, who, together with his colleague Haggai, was sent to encourage the people, lately returned from captivity, to build their temple, and to instaurate their commonwealth. Was this a fit time to foretell the destruction of both, while they were yet but a-building? And by Zachary too, who was to encourage them? Would not this better befit the desolation by Nebuchadnezzar?" I really think so. See Mr. J. Mede's lxi. Epistle.
Lebanon signifies the temple, because built of materials principally brought from that place.
