Yeremia 31:18-19

31:18 I have indeed ¹  heard the people of Israel ²  say mournfully,

‘We were like a calf untrained to the yoke. ³ 

You disciplined us and we learned from it. ⁴ 

Let us come back to you and we will do so, ⁵ 

for you are the Lord our God.

31:19 For after we turned away from you we repented.

After we came to our senses ⁶  we beat our breasts in sorrow. ⁷ 

We are ashamed and humiliated

because of the disgraceful things we did previously.’ ⁸ 

Yehezkiel 36:25-27

36:25 I will sprinkle you with pure water ⁹  and you will be clean from all your impurities. I will purify you from all your idols. 36:26 I will give you a new heart, and I will put a new spirit within you. I will remove the heart of stone ¹⁰  from your body and give you a heart of flesh. ¹¹  36:27 I will put my Spirit within you; ¹²  I will take the initiative and you will obey my statutes ¹³  and carefully observe my regulations. ¹⁴ 

Maleakhi 4:5-6

4:5 Look, I will send you Elijah ¹⁵  the prophet before the great and terrible day of the Lord arrives. 4:6 He will encourage fathers and their children to return to me, ¹⁶  so that I will not come and strike the earth with judgment.” ¹⁷ 

Lukas 1:16-17

1:16 He ¹⁸  will turn ¹⁹  many of the people ²⁰  of Israel to the Lord their God. 1:17 And he will go as forerunner before the Lord ²¹  in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers back to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, ²²  to make ready for the Lord a people prepared for him.”

[31:18]  ¹ tn The use of “indeed” is intended to reflect the infinitive absolute which precedes the verb for emphasis (see IBHS 585-86 §35.3.1f).

[31:18]  ² tn Heb “Ephraim.” See the study note on 31:9. The more familiar term is used, the term “people” added to it, and plural pronouns used throughout the verse to aid in understanding.

[31:18]  ³ tn Heb “like an untrained calf.” The metaphor is that of a calf who has never been broken to bear the yoke (cf. Hos 4:16; 10:11).

[31:18]  sn Jer 2:20; 5:5 already referred to Israel’s refusal to bear the yoke of loyalty and obedience to the Lord’s demands. Here Israel expresses that she has learned from the discipline of exile and is ready to bear his yoke.

[31:18]  ⁴ tn The verb here is from the same root as the preceding and is probably an example of the “tolerative Niphal,” i.e., “I let myself be disciplined/I responded to it.” See IBHS 389-90 §23.4g and note the translation of some of the examples there, especially Isa 19:22; 65:1.

[31:18]  ⁵ tn Heb “Bring me back in order that I may come back.” For the use of the plural pronouns see the marginal note at the beginning of the verse. The verb “bring back” and “come back” are from the same root in two different verbal stems and in the context express the idea of spiritual repentance and restoration of relationship not physical return to the land. (See BDB 999 s.v. שׁוּב Hiph.2.a for the first verb and 997 s.v. Qal.6.c for the second.) For the use of the cohortative to express purpose after the imperative see GKC 320 §108.d or IBHS 575 §34.5.2b.

[31:18]  sn There is a wordplay on several different nuances of the same Hebrew verb in vv. 16-19. The Hebrew verb shub refers both to their turning away from God (v. 19) and to their turning back to him (v. 18). It is also the word that is used for their return to their homeland (vv. 16-17).

[31:19]  ⁶ tn For this meaning of the verb see HAL 374 s.v. יָדַע Nif 5 or W. L. Holladay, Concise Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon, 129. REB translates “Now that I am submissive” relating the verb to a second root meaning “be submissive.” (See HALOT 375 s.v. II יָדַע and J. Barr, Comparative Philology and the Text of the Old Testament, 19-21, for evidence for this verb. Other passages cited with this nuance are Judg 8:16; Prov 10:9; Job 20:20.)

[31:19]  ⁷ tn Heb “I struck my thigh.” This was a gesture of grief and anguish (cf. Ezek 21:12 [21:17 HT]). The modern equivalent is “to beat the breast.”

[31:19]  ⁸ tn Heb “because I bear the reproach of my youth.” For the plural referents see the note at the beginning of v. 18.

[31:19]  sn The expression the disgraceful things we did in our earlier history refers to the disgrace that accompanied the sins that Israel did in her earlier years before she learned the painful lesson of submission to the Lord through the discipline of exile. For earlier references to the sins of her youth (i.e., in her earlier years as a nation) see 3:24-25; 22:21 and see also 32:29. At the time that these verses were written, neither northern Israel or Judah had expressed the kind of contrition voiced in vv. 18-19. As one commentator notes, the words here are both prophetic and instructive.

[36:25]  ⁹ sn The Lord here uses a metaphor from the realm of ritual purification. For the use of water in ritual cleansing, see Exod 30:19-20; Lev 14:51; Num 19:18; Heb 10:22.

[36:26]  ¹⁰ sn That is, a heart which symbolizes a will that is stubborn and unresponsive (see 1 Sam 25:37). In Rabbinic literature a “stone” was associated with an evil inclination (b. Sukkah 52a).

[36:26]  ¹¹ sn That is, a heart which symbolizes a will that is responsive and obedient to God.

[36:27]  ¹² tn Or “in the midst of you.” The word “you” is plural.

[36:27]  ¹³ tn Heb “and I will do that which in my statutes you will walk.” The awkward syntax (verb “to do, act” + accusative sign + relative clause + prepositional phrase + second person verb) is unique, though Eccl 3:14 contains a similar construction. In the last line of that verse we read that “God acts so that (relative pronoun) they fear before him.” However, unlike Ezek 36:27, the statement has no accusative sign before the relative pronoun.

[36:27]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “and my laws you will guard and you will do them.” Jer 31:31-34 is parallel to this passage.

[4:5]  ¹⁵ sn I will send you Elijah the prophet. In light of the ascension of Elijah to heaven without dying (2 Kgs 2:11), Judaism has always awaited his return as an aspect of the messianic age (see, e.g., John 1:19-28). Jesus identified John the Baptist as Elijah, because he came in the “spirit and power” of his prototype Elijah (Matt 11:14; 17:1-13; Mark 9:2-13; Luke 9:28-36).

[4:6]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “he will turn the heart[s] of [the] fathers to [the] sons, and the heart[s] of [the] sons to their fathers.” This may mean that the messenger will encourage reconciliation of conflicts within Jewish families in the postexilic community (see Mal 2:10; this interpretation is followed by most English versions). Another option is to translate, “he will turn the hearts of the fathers together with those of the children [to me], and the hearts of the children together with those of their fathers [to me].” In this case the prophet encourages both the younger and older generations of sinful society to repent and return to the Lord (cf. Mal 3:7). This option is preferred in the present translation; see Beth Glazier-McDonald, Malachi (SBLDS), 256.

[4:6]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “[the] ban” (חֵרֶם, kherem). God’s prophetic messenger seeks to bring about salvation and restoration, thus avoiding the imposition of the covenant curse, that is, the divine ban that the hopelessly unrepentant must expect (see Deut 7:2; 20:17; Judg 1:21; Zech 14:11). If the wicked repent, the purifying judgment threatened in 4:1-3 will be unnecessary.

[1:16]  ¹⁸ tn Grk “And he.” Here καί (kai) has not been translated because of differences between Greek and English style.

[1:16]  ¹⁹ sn The word translated will turn is a good summary term for repentance and denotes John’s call to a change of direction (Luke 3:1-14).

[1:16]  ²⁰ tn Grk “sons”; but clearly this is a generic reference to people of both genders.

[1:17]  ²¹ tn Grk “before him”; the referent (the Lord) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[1:17]  ²² sn These two lines cover all relationships: Turn the hearts of the fathers back to their children points to horizontal relationships, while (turn) the disobedient to the wisdom of the just shows what God gives from above in a vertical manner.