Amsal 7:2

7:2 Keep my commands ¹  so that you may live, ² 

and obey ³  my instruction as your most prized possession. ⁴ 

Imamat 18:3-5

18:3 You must not do as they do in the land of Egypt where you have been living, ⁵  and you must not do as they do in the land of Canaan into which I am about to bring you; ⁶  you must not ⁷  walk in their statutes. 18:4 You must observe my regulations ⁸  and you must be sure to walk in my statutes. ⁹  I am the Lord your God. 18:5 So you must keep ¹⁰  my statutes and my regulations; anyone who does so will live by keeping them. ¹¹  I am the Lord.

Yesaya 55:3

55:3 Pay attention and come to me!

Listen, so you can live! ¹² 

Then I will make an unconditional covenantal promise to ¹³  you,

just like the reliable covenantal promises I made to David. ¹⁴ 

Yohanes 12:50

12:50 And I know that his commandment is eternal life. ¹⁵  Thus the things I say, I say just as the Father has told me.” ¹⁶ 

Ibrani 5:9

5:9 And by being perfected in this way, he became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him,

[7:2]  ¹ tc Before v. 2 the LXX inserts: “My son, fear the Lord and you will be strong, and besides him, fear no other.” Although this addition has the precedent of 3:7 and 9 and harmonizes with 14:26, it does not fit here; the advice is to listen to the teacher.

[7:2]  ² tn The construction of an imperative with the vav (ו) of sequence after another imperative denotes a logical sequence of purpose or result: “that you may live,” or “and you will live.”

[7:2]  ³ tn The term “obey” does not appear in the Hebrew text, but is implied by the parallelism; it is supplied for the sake of clarity and smoothness. Some English versions, in light of the second line of v. 1, supply “guard” (e.g., NIV, NCV, NLT).

[7:2]  ⁴ tn Heb “the little man in your eye.” Traditionally this Hebrew idiom is translated into English as “the apple of your eye” (so KJV, NAB, NIV, NRSV); a more contemporary rendering would be “as your most prized possession.” The word for “man” has the diminutive ending on it. It refers to the pupil, where the object focused on – a man – is reflected in miniature. The point is that the teaching must be the central focus of the disciple’s vision and attention.

[18:3]  ⁵ tn Heb “As the work [or “deed”] of the land of Egypt, which you were dwelling in it, you must not do.”

[18:3]  ⁶ tn Heb “and as the work [or “deed”] of the land of Canaan which I am bringing you to there, you must not do.” The participle “I am bringing” is inceptive; the Lord is “about to” bring them into the land of Canaan, as opposed to their having dwelt previously in the land of Egypt (see the first part of the verse).

[18:3]  ⁷ tn Heb “and you shall not walk.”

[18:4]  ⁸ tn Heb “My regulations you shall do”; KJV, NASB “my judgments”; NRSV “My ordinances”; NIV, TEV “my laws.”

[18:4]  sn The Hebrew term translated “regulation” (מִשְׁפָּט, mishpat) refers to the set of regulations about to be set forth in the following chapters (cf. Lev 19:37; 20:22; 25:18; 26:46). Note especially the thematic and formulaic relationships between the introduction here in Lev 18:1-5 and the paraenesis in Lev 20:22-26, both of which refer explicitly to the corrupt nations and the need to separate from them by keeping the Lord’s regulations.

[18:4]  ⁹ tn Heb “and my statutes you shall keep [or “watch; guard”] to walk in them.”

[18:5]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “And you shall keep.”

[18:5]  ¹¹ tn Heb “which the man shall do them and shall live in them.” The term for “a man, human being; mankind” (אָדָם, ’adam; see the note on Lev 1:2) in this case refers to any person among “mankind,” male or female. The expression וָחַי (vakhay, “and shall live”) looks like the adjective “living” so it is written וְחָיָה (vÿkhayah) in Smr, but the MT form is simply the same verb written as a double ayin verb (see HALOT 309 s.v. חיה qal and GKC 218 §76.i; cf. Lev 25:35).

[55:3]  ¹² tn The jussive with vav (ו) conjunctive following the imperative indicates purpose/result.

[55:3]  sn To live here refers to covenantal blessing, primarily material prosperity and national security (see vv. 4-5, 13, and Deut 30:6, 15, 19-20).

[55:3]  ¹³ tn Or “an eternal covenant with.”

[55:3]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “the reliable expressions of loyalty of David.” The syntactical relationship of חַסְדֵי (khasde, “expressions of loyalty”) to the preceding line is unclear. If the term is appositional to בְּרִית (bÿrit, “covenant”), then the Lord here transfers the promises of the Davidic covenant to the entire nation. Another option is to take חַסְדֵי (khasde) as an adverbial accusative and to translate “according to the reliable covenantal promises.” In this case the new covenantal arrangement proposed here is viewed as an extension or perhaps fulfillment of the Davidic promises. A third option, the one reflected in the above translation, is to take the last line as comparative. In this case the new covenant being proposed is analogous to the Davidic covenant. Verses 4-5, which compare David’s international prominence to what Israel will experience, favors this view. In all three of these interpretations, “David” is an objective genitive; he is the recipient of covenantal promises. A fourth option would be to take David as a subjective genitive and understand the line as giving the basis for the preceding promise: “Then I will make an unconditional covenantal promise to you, because of David’s faithful acts of covenantal loyalty.”

[12:50]  ¹⁵ tn Or “his commandment results in eternal life.”

[12:50]  ¹⁶ tn Grk “The things I speak, just as the Father has spoken to me, thus I speak.”