אֲנִי֙ אֶֽהְיֶה־לּ֣וֹ לְאָ֔ב וְה֖וּא יִֽהְיֶה־לִּ֣י לְבֵ֑ן אֲשֶׁר֙ בְּהַ֣עֲוֺת֔וֹ וְהֹֽכַחְתִּיו֙ בְּשֵׁ֣בֶט אֲנָשִׁ֔ים וּבְנִגְעֵ֖י בְּנֵ֥י אָדָֽם׃
I will be a father to him,
And he shall be a son to Me.
When he does wrong,
I will chastise him
With the rod of mortals
And the blows of humankind.*
*I.e., as a human father chastises a wayward son. Or “With the scepter of [hostile] parties and the afflictions of mortals,” i.e., respectively, foreign adversaries and disease.
(The above rendering comes from the RJPS translation, an adaptation of the NJPS translation. Before accounting for this rendering, I will analyze the plain sense of the Hebrew term containing אִישׁ—in this case, its plural form אֲנָשִׁים—by employing a situation-oriented construal as outlined in “Notes on Gender in Translation,” pp. 11–16.)
The pregnant phrase בְּשֵׁ֣בֶט אֲנָשִׁ֔ים וּבְנִגְעֵ֖י בְּנֵ֥י אָדָֽם operates on two levels (cf. Joseph Kara and Kimhi/Radak). On the level of the father-son metaphor that is already established in this verse, it denotes corporal punishment. Meanwhile, on the level of how Yhwh interacts with Israel’s kings, it denotes two distinct types of divine intervention.
The situating noun אֲנָשִׁים is amenable to both levels. (It is the default label for a speaker to employ when framing a predicted situation, for it efficiently enables the desired situation to be sketched in schematic terms.)
- On the first level, the syntactic parallel to בְּנֵי אָדָם supports a species-generic reading of אֲנָשִׁים (=humankind).
- On the second level, it is construed as a nonspecific (class) reference that is pragmatically delimited to a salient category, as in לֶחֶם אֲנָשִׁים (Ezek 24:17, 22). In the present case of שֵׁבֶט אֲנָשִׁים, the contextually defined participants that are denoted by אֲנָשִׁים are the parties to warfare. This meaning is evoked by the head term שֵׁבֶט, which can denote a king’s insignia (Gen 49:10; Isa 14:5) and by extension the one who wields it (Gen 49:16; Deut 29:9). It represents a violent political threat in Num 24:17; see also 1 Kgs 11:14, 23. For אִישׁ as denoting a foreign adversary, see Judg 12:2; 2 Sam 8:10; Isa 41:12.
For the allusion to disease in the last stich, see 2 Kgs 15:5; 20:1.
As for rendering into English, the NJPS ‘with the rod of men and the affliction of mortals’ has conflated the two levels of meaning, thus denying them much of their power. The revised rendering in the text instead expresses the first level only (as clarified in the footnote), while an alternative rendering in the footnote now expresses the second level only (as also clarified there). In order to bring out the literary quality of this phrase, the verse is formatted as poetry.