Translations
F.O.G.MPrimary
F.O.G MessageTheir people were powerless and humiliated — like plants in an open field, like tender green shoots, like grass on a rooftop, withered before it can take root.'
F.O.GSecondary
The F.O.GTheir inhabitants were short of hand, shattered and ashamed; they became like plants of the field, like tender green shoots, like grass on rooftops — scorched before it can rise.'
KJV
King James VersionTherefore their inhabitants were of small power, they were dismayed and confounded; they were as the grass of the field, and as the green herb, as the grass on the housetops, and as corn blasted before it be grown up.
BSB
Berean Standard BibleTherefore their inhabitants, devoid of power, are dismayed and ashamed. They are like plants in the field, tender green shoots, grass on the rooftops, scorched before it is grown.
Footnotes
The image of *chatzir gag* ('rooftop grass') is particularly evocative: it germinates in shallow soil, looks alive briefly, but has no depth and dies in the first heat. The implied agent is the *qadim* — the devastating east wind (sirocco) that scorches vegetation within hours (cf. Ps. 90:5-6; Isa. 40:6-8). YHWH is saying the nations Sennacherib conquered were already destined to fall; their collapse was not his achievement but His design. Assyria has been a pruning hook, not the gardener.
