Kejadian 17:14

17:14 Any uncircumcised male ¹  who has not been circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin will be cut off ²  from his people – he has failed to carry out my requirement.” ³ 

Keluaran 19:5

19:5 And now, if you will diligently listen to me ⁴  and keep ⁵  my covenant, then you will be my ⁶  special possession ⁷  out of all the nations, for all the earth is mine,

Keluaran 24:7

24:7 He took the Book of the Covenant ⁸  and read it aloud ⁹  to the people, and they said, “We are willing to do and obey ¹⁰  all that the Lord has spoken.”

Ulangan 31:16

31:16 Then the Lord said to Moses, “You are about to die, ¹¹  and then these people will begin to prostitute themselves with the foreign gods of the land into which they ¹²  are going. They ¹³  will reject ¹⁴  me and break my covenant that I have made with them. ¹⁵ 

Yesaya 24:5

24:5 The earth is defiled by ¹⁶  its inhabitants, ¹⁷ 

for they have violated laws,

disregarded the regulation, ¹⁸ 

and broken the permanent treaty. ¹⁹ 

Yeremia 11:10

11:10 They have gone back to the evil ways ²⁰  of their ancestors of old who refused to obey what I told them. They, too, have paid allegiance to ²¹  other gods and worshiped them. Both the nation of Israel and the nation of Judah ²²  have violated the covenant I made with their ancestors.

Yeremia 31:32

31:32 It will not be like the old ²³  covenant that I made with their ancestors ²⁴  when I delivered them ²⁵  from Egypt. For they violated that covenant, even though I was like a faithful husband to them,” ²⁶  says the Lord. ²⁷ 

Yehezkiel 16:59

16:59 “‘For this is what the sovereign Lord says: I will deal with you according to what you have done when you despised your oath by breaking your covenant.

Ibrani 8:9

8:9 “It will not be like the covenant ²⁸  that I made with their fathers, on the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they did not continue in my covenant and I had no regard for them, says the Lord.

[17:14]  ¹ tn The disjunctive clause calls attention to the “uncircumcised male” and what will happen to him.

[17:14]  ² tn Heb “that person will be cut off.” The words “that person” have not been included in the translation for stylistic reasons.

[17:14]  sn The meaning of “cut off” has been discussed at great length. An entire tractate in the Mishnah is devoted to this subject (tractate Keritot). Being ostracized from the community is involved at the least, but it is not certain whether this refers to the death penalty.

[17:14]  ³ tn Heb “he has broken my covenant.” The noun בְּרִית (bÿrit) here refers to the obligation required by God in conjunction with the covenantal agreement. For the range of meaning of the term, see the note on the word “requirement” in v. 9.

[19:5]  ⁴ tn Heb “listen to my voice.” The construction uses the imperfect tense in the conditional clause, preceded by the infinitive absolute from the same verb. The idiom “listen to the voice of” implies obedience, not just mental awareness of sound.

[19:5]  ⁵ tn The verb is a perfect tense with vav (ו) consecutive; it continues the idea in the protasis of the sentence: “and [if you will] keep.”

[19:5]  ⁶ tn The lamed preposition expresses possession here: “to me” means “my.”

[19:5]  ⁷ tn The noun is סְגֻלָּה (sÿgullah), which means a special possession. Israel was to be God’s special possession, but the prophets will later narrow it to the faithful remnant. All the nations belong to God, but Israel was to stand in a place of special privilege and enormous responsibility. See Deut 7:6; 14:2; 26:18; Ps 135:4; and Mal 3:17. See M. Greenburg, “Hebrew sÿgulla: Akkadian sikiltu,” JAOS 71 (1951): 172ff.

[24:7]  ⁸ tn The noun “book” would be the scroll just written containing the laws of chaps. 20-23. On the basis of this scroll the covenant would be concluded here. The reading of this book would assure the people that it was the same that they had agreed to earlier. But now their statement of willingness to obey would be more binding, because their promise would be confirmed by a covenant of blood.

[24:7]  ⁹ tn Heb “read it in the ears of.”

[24:7]  ¹⁰ tn A second verb is now added to the people’s response, and it is clearly an imperfect and not a cohortative, lending support for the choice of desiderative imperfect in these commitments – “we want to obey.” This was their compliance with the covenant.

[31:16]  ¹¹ tn Heb “lie down with your fathers” (so NASB); NRSV “ancestors.”

[31:16]  ¹² tn Heb “he.” Smr, LXX, and the Targums read the plural “they,” which is necessary in any case in the translation because of contemporary English style. The third person singular also occurs in the Hebrew text twice more in this verse, three times in v. 17, once in v. 18, five times in v. 20, and four times in v. 21. Each time it is translated as third person plural for stylistic reasons.

[31:16]  ¹³ tn Heb “he.” Smr, LXX, and the Targums read the plural “they.” See note on the first occurrence of “they” in v. 16.

[31:16]  ¹⁴ tn Or “abandon” (TEV, NLT).

[31:16]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “him.” Smr, LXX, and the Targums read the plural “them.” See note on the first occurrence of “they” in v. 16.

[24:5]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “beneath”; cf. KJV, ASV, NRSV “under”; NAB “because of.”

[24:5]  ¹⁷ sn Isa 26:21 suggests that the earth’s inhabitants defiled the earth by shedding the blood of their fellow human beings. See also Num 35:33-34, which assumes that bloodshed defiles a land.

[24:5]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “moved past [the?] regulation.”

[24:5]  ¹⁹ tn Or “everlasting covenant” (KJV, NASB, NIV, NRSV, NLT); NAB “the ancient covenant”; CEV “their agreement that was to last forever.”

[24:5]  sn For a lengthy discussion of the identity of this covenant/treaty, see R. Chisholm, “The ‘Everlasting Covenant’ and the ‘City of Chaos’: Intentional Ambiguity and Irony in Isaiah 24,” CTR 6 (1993): 237-53. In this context, where judgment comes upon both the pagan nations and God’s covenant community, the phrase “permanent treaty” is intentionally ambiguous. For the nations this treaty is the Noahic mandate of Gen 9:1-7 with its specific stipulations and central regulation (Gen 9:7). By shedding blood, the warlike nations violated this treaty, which promotes population growth and prohibits murder. For Israel, which was also guilty of bloodshed (see Isa 1:15, 21; 4:4), this “permanent treaty” would refer more specifically to the Mosaic Law and its regulations prohibiting murder (Exod 20:13; Num 35:6-34), which are an extension of the Noahic mandate.

[11:10]  ²⁰ tn Or “They have repeated the evil actions of….”

[11:10]  ²¹ tn Heb “have walked/followed after.” See the translator’s note at 2:5 for the idiom.

[11:10]  ²² tn Heb “house of Israel and house of Judah.”

[31:32]  ²³ tn The word “old” is not in the text but is implicit in the use of the word “new.” It is supplied in the translation for greater clarity.

[31:32]  ²⁴ tn Heb “fathers.”

[31:32]  sn This refers to the Mosaic covenant which the nation entered into with God at Sinai and renewed on the plains of Moab. The primary biblical passages explicating this covenant are Exod 19–24 and the book of Deuteronomy; see as well the study note on Jer 11:2 for the form this covenant took and its relation to the warnings of the prophets. The renewed document of Deuteronomy was written down and provisions made for periodic public reading and renewal of commitment to it (Deut 31:9-13). Josiah had done this after the discovery of the book of the law (which was either Deuteronomy or a synopsis of it) early in the ministry of Jeremiah (2 Kgs 23:1-4; the date would be near 622 b.c. shortly after Jeremiah began prophesying in 627 [see the note on Jer 1:2]). But it is apparent from Jeremiah’s confrontation with Judah after that time that the commitment of the people was only superficial (cf. Jer 3:10). The prior history of the nations of Israel and Judah and Judah’s current practice had been one of persistent violation of this covenant despite repeated warnings of the prophets that God would punish them for that (see especially Jer 7, 11). Because of that, Israel had been exiled (cf., e.g., Jer 3:8), and now Judah was threatened with the same (cf., e.g., Jer 7:15). Jer 30–31 look forward to a time when both Israel and Judah will be regathered, reunited, and under a new covenant which includes the same stipulations but with a different relationship (v. 32).

[31:32]  ²⁵ tn Heb “when I took them by the hand and led them out.”

[31:32]  ²⁶ tn Or “I was their master.” See the study note on 3:14.

[31:32]  sn The metaphor of Yahweh as husband and Israel as wife has been used already in Jer 3 and is implicit in the repeated allusions to idolatry as spiritual adultery or prostitution. The best commentary on the faithfulness of God to his “husband-like” relation is seen in the book of Hosea, especially in Hos 1-3.

[31:32]  ²⁷ tn Heb “Oracle of the Lord.”

[8:9]  ²⁸ tn Grk “not like the covenant,” continuing the description of v. 8b.