152 TRANSLATION, NOTES, AND COMMENTS- You who dwell in Lebanon, you who are nested in the cedars. Whereas
"Lebanon" in v 20 meant the mountains of Lebanon, here the reference is to
cedar-lined buildings atop Jerusalem, one of which was called "The House of
the Forest of Lebanon." See also 22:6. The focus now is upon the king and his
royal compatriots, who are nicely nested in their posh, protected Jerusalem pal-
ace (Rashi; KimQ.i). The phrase "who are nested in the cedars" is an abusio (im-
plied metaphor), on which see Note for 4:4. Compare also 49: 16, where Edom
mistakenly thinks that dwelling in a lofty, seemingly secure nest will put her out
of enemy reach. Habakkuk says: "Woe to him who makes an evil profit for his
house, to set his nest on high, to save himself from the reach of evil" (Hab 2:9).
How you will be favored when pangs come upon you. More irony, if one reads
ne/:zant as an N-stem of /:znn, meaning "you will be favored!" The AV translated
the verb f:znn ("How gracious thou shalt be"), which Blayney interpreted to
mean that the inhabitant of Lebanon, once obstinate and inflexible in prosper-
ity, will be changed by adversity and made gracious in temper and disposition.
Such an interpretation hardly fits the context, which is one of judgment. The
NJV translates "How much grace will you have, when pains come upon you
... ,'' which is an improvement, but not a particularly compelling rendering of
the Hebrew. Most commentators and modern Versions follow the LXX, S, and
Vg, which translate an equivalent of "groan." The LXX has katastenaxeis, "you
will groan,'' and the Vg congemuisti, "you have groaned." The context requires
a future, but Volz says that a perfect verb with mah ("How") can indicate future
tense. The usual explanation, then, is that the present verb does not derive
from /:znn ("to be favored"), since no other N-stems are attested in the OT, but
rather from 'n/:z, "to groan,'' where the 'aleph has fallen away (nenaf:zat =
ne'enaf:zat; KB^3 ; GKC §23f n. l says the form is corrupt). Dahood (l 962b: 70;
1965: 66 #l630a) arrives at "groan" by proposing a Hebrew root n/:zn based on
Ugaritic. "Groan" admittedly fits the context, but an N-stem participle of /:znn
is attested on a Phoenician inscription from Sidon (CIS i 3, 12: n/:zn), which
Cooke (l 903: 30-31, 36) tentatively translated as "to be pitied." One may then
propose that nef:zant is, after all, an N-stem perfect of /:znn, which besides re-
quiring no change has the added advantage of preserving an additional ironic
reading in what is already a highly ironic poem.
pain like a woman in labor. Hebrew /:zfl kayyoleda. The phrase occurs also in
6:24 and 50:43. One of the curses of a defeated people, particularly the sol-
diers, was that they would become (weak like) women (see Notes for 4:31 and
6:24). But here, since the figure in the poem is already a woman, the point may
be that Jerusalem's anguish will be comparable to the pain of childbirth with-
out the compensation of gaining a child (D. N. Freedman).MESSAGE AND AUDIENCE
This poem is totally lacking in specifics about speaker and addressee: no mes-
senger formula to confirm that the "I" of v 21 is the divine "I" and no identifi-