The verse may be translated as in R.V. And every stroke of the appointed staff which the Lord shall lay upon him shall be with tabrets and harps; and in battles of shaking will he fight with them. The expression "grounded staff" is, however, barely intelligible; the emendation "staff of correction" (Proverbs 22:15) only replaces one singular expression by another, and is besides too easy to be worth much. The phrase "battles of shaking" is also difficult. "Battles of the swinging (of Jehovah's rod)" is the construction usually put upon it, but the sense is rhetorically weak. The word for "shaking" is the technical term for the "wave offering" in the Law (e.g. Leviticus 7:30); hence Ewald renders "battles of wave-offering," i.e. battles in which Assyria is devoted to destruction.

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