Yeremia 21:10

21:10 For I, the Lord, say that ¹  I am determined not to deliver this city but to bring disaster on it. ²  It will be handed over to the king of Babylon and he will destroy it with fire.’” ³ 

Ulangan 11:12

11:12 a land the Lord your God looks after. ⁴  He is constantly attentive to it ⁵  from the beginning to the end of the year. ⁶ 

Ulangan 11:2

11:2 Bear in mind today that I am not speaking ⁷  to your children who have not personally experienced the judgments ⁸  of the Lord your God, which revealed ⁹  his greatness, strength, and power. ¹⁰ 

Ulangan 16:9

The Festival of Weeks

16:9 You must count seven weeks; you must begin to count them ¹¹  from the time you begin to harvest the standing grain.

Nehemia 5:19

5:19 Please remember me for good, O my God, for all that I have done for this people.

Ayub 33:27-28

33:27 That person sings ¹²  to others, ¹³  saying:

‘I have sinned and falsified what is right,

but I was not punished according to what I deserved. ¹⁴ 

33:28 He redeemed my life ¹⁵ 

from going down to the place of corruption,

and my life sees the light!’

Mazmur 34:15

34:15 The Lord pays attention to the godly

and hears their cry for help. ¹⁶ 

Mazmur 34:1

Psalm 34 ¹⁷ 

Written by David, when he pretended to be insane before Abimelech, causing the king to send him away. ¹⁸ 

34:1 I will praise ¹⁹  the Lord at all times;

my mouth will continually praise him. ²⁰ 

Pengkhotbah 3:12

Enjoy Life in the Present

3:12 I have concluded ²¹  that there is nothing better for people ²² 

than ²³  to be happy and to enjoy

themselves ²⁴  as long as they live,

[21:10]  ¹ tn Heb “oracle of the Lord.”

[21:10]  ² tn Heb “I have set my face against this city for evil [i.e., disaster] and not for good [i.e., well-being].” For the use of the idiom “set one’s face against/toward” see, e.g., usage in 1 Kgs 2:15; 2 Kgs 2:17; Jer 42:15, 17 and note the interesting interplay of usage in Jer 44:11-12.

[21:10]  ³ tn Heb “he will burn it with fire.”

[11:12]  ⁴ tn Heb “seeks.” The statement reflects the ancient belief that God (Baal in Canaanite thinking) directly controlled storms and rainfall.

[11:12]  ⁵ tn Heb “the eyes of the Lord your God are continually on it” (so NIV); NASB, NRSV “always on it.”

[11:12]  sn Constantly attentive to it. This attention to the land by the Lord is understandable in light of the centrality of the land in the Abrahamic covenant (cf. Gen 12:1, 7; 13:15; 15:7, 16, 18; 17:8; 26:3).

[11:12]  ⁶ sn From the beginning to the end of the year. This refers to the agricultural year that was marked by the onset of the heavy rains, thus the autumn. See note on the phrase “the former and the latter rains” in v. 14.

[11:2]  ⁷ tn Heb “that not.” The words “I am speaking” have been supplied in the translation for stylistic reasons.

[11:2]  ⁸ tn Heb “who have not known and who have not seen the discipline of the Lord.” The collocation of the verbs “know” and “see” indicates that personal experience (knowing by seeing) is in view. The term translated “discipline” (KJV, ASV “chastisement”) may also be rendered “instruction,” but vv. 2b-6 indicate that the referent of the term is the various acts of divine judgment the Israelites had witnessed.

[11:2]  ⁹ tn The words “which revealed” have been supplied in the translation to show the logical relationship between the terms that follow and the divine judgments. In the Hebrew text the former are in apposition to the latter.

[11:2]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “his strong hand and his stretched-out arm.”

[16:9]  ¹¹ tn Heb “the seven weeks.” The translation uses a pronoun to avoid redundancy in English.

[33:27]  ¹² tc The verb יָשֹׁר (yashor) is unusual. The typical view is to change it to יָשִׁיר (yashir, “he sings”), but that may seem out of harmony with a confession. Dhorme suggests a root שׁוּר (shur, “to repeat”), but this is a doubtful root. J. Reider reads it יָשֵׁיר (yasher) and links it to an Arabic word “confesses” (ZAW 24 [1953]: 275).

[33:27]  ¹³ tn Heb “to men.”

[33:27]  ¹⁴ tn The verb שָׁוָה (shavah) has the impersonal meaning here, “it has not been requited to me.” The meaning is that the sinner has not been treated in accordance with his deeds: “I was not punished according to what I deserved.”

[33:28]  ¹⁵ sn See note on “him” in v. 24.

[34:15]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “the eyes of the Lord [are] toward the godly, and his ears [are] toward their cry for help.”

[34:1]  ¹⁷ sn Psalm 34. In this song of thanksgiving the psalmist praises God for delivering him from distress. He encourages others to be loyal to the Lord, tells them how to please God, and assures them that the Lord protects his servants. The psalm is an acrostic; vv. 1-21 begin with successive letters of the Hebrew alphabet. (Verse 6 begins with the letter he (ה) and v. 7 with the letter zayin (ז). The letter vav (ו), which comes between ה and ז, seems to be omitted, although it does appear at the beginning of v. 6b. The final verse of the psalm, which begins with the letter pe (פ), is outside the acrostic scheme.

[34:1]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “By David, when he changed his sense before Abimelech and he drove him away and he went.”

[34:1]  sn Pretended to be insane. The psalm heading appears to refer to the account in 1 Sam 21:10-15 which tells how David, fearful that King Achish of Gath might kill him, pretended to be insane in hopes that the king would simply send him away. The psalm heading names the king Abimelech, not Achish, suggesting that the tradition is confused on this point. However, perhaps “Abimelech” was a royal title, rather than a proper name. See P. C. Craigie, Psalms 1-50 (WBC), 278.

[34:1]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “bless.”

[34:1]  ²⁰ tn Heb “continually [will] his praise [be] in my mouth.”

[3:12]  ²¹ tn Heb “I know.”

[3:12]  ²² tn Heb “for them”; the referent (people, i.e., mankind) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[3:12]  ²³ tn Qoheleth uses the exceptive particle אִם…כִּי (ki…’im, “except”) to identify the only exception to the futility within man’s life (BDB 474 s.v. כִּי 2).

[3:12]  ²⁴ tn Heb “to do good.” The phrase לַעֲשׂוֹת טוֹב (la’asot tov) functions idiomatically for “to experience [or see] happiness [or joy].” The verb עָשַׂה (’asah) probably denotes “to acquire; to obtain” (BDB 795 s.v. עָשַׂה II.7), and טוֹב (tov) means “good; pleasure; happiness,” e.g., Eccl 2:24; 3:13; 5:17 (BDB 375 s.v. טוֹב 1).