Ayub 35:12-13

35:12 Then ¹  they cry out – but he does not answer –

because of the arrogance of the wicked.

35:13 Surely it is an empty cry ²  – God does not hear it;

the Almighty does not take notice of it.

Mazmur 18:41

18:41 They cry out, but there is no one to help them; ³ 

they cry out to the Lord, ⁴  but he does not answer them.

Mazmur 66:18

66:18 If I had harbored sin in my heart, ⁵ 

the Lord would not have listened.

Mazmur 109:7

109:7 When he is judged, he will be found ⁶  guilty! ⁷ 

Then his prayer will be regarded as sinful.

Amsal 1:28

1:28 Then they will call to me, but I will not answer;

they will diligently seek ⁸  me, but they will not find me.

Amsal 28:9

28:9 The one who turns away his ear ⁹  from hearing the law,

even his prayer ¹⁰  is an abomination. ¹¹ 

Yesaya 1:15

1:15 When you spread out your hands in prayer,

I look the other way; ¹² 

when you offer your many prayers,

I do not listen,

because your hands are covered with blood. ¹³ 

Yeremia 11:11

11:11 So I, the Lord, say this: ¹⁴  ‘I will soon bring disaster on them which they will not be able to escape! When they cry out to me for help, I will not listen to them.

Yeremia 14:12

14:12 Even if they fast, I will not hear their cries for help. Even if they offer burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them. ¹⁵  Instead, I will kill them through wars, famines, and plagues.” ¹⁶ 

Yehezkiel 8:18

8:18 Therefore I will act with fury! My eye will not pity them nor will I spare ¹⁷  them. When they have shouted in my ears, I will not listen to them.”

Mikha 3:4

3:4 Someday these sinners will cry to the Lord for help, ¹⁸ 

but he will not answer them.

He will hide his face from them at that time,

because they have done such wicked deeds.”

Zakharia 7:13

7:13 “‘It then came about that just as I ¹⁹  cried out, but they would not obey, so they will cry out, but I will not listen,’ the Lord Lord who rules over all had said.

Yohanes 9:31

9:31 We know that God doesn’t listen to ²⁰  sinners, but if anyone is devout ²¹  and does his will, God ²²  listens to ²³  him. ²⁴ 

Yakobus 4:3

4:3 you ask and do not receive because you ask wrongly, so you can spend it on your passions.

[35:12]  ¹ tn The adverb שָׁם (sham, “there”) connects this verse to v. 11. “There” can be locative or temporal – and here it is temporal (= “then”).

[35:13]  ² tn Heb “surely – vanity, he does not hear.” The cry is an empty cry, not a prayer to God. Dhorme translates it, “It is a pure waste of words.”

[18:41]  ³ tn Heb “but there is no deliverer.”

[18:41]  ⁴ tn Heb “to the Lord.” The words “they cry out” are supplied in the translation because they are understood by ellipsis (see the preceding line).

[18:41]  sn They cry out. This reference to the psalmist’s enemies crying out for help to the Lord suggests that the psalmist refers here to enemies within the covenant community, rather than foreigners. However, the militaristic context suggests foreign enemies are in view. Ancient Near Eastern literature indicates that defeated enemies would sometimes cry out for mercy to the god(s) of their conqueror. See R. B. Chisholm, “An Exegetical and Theological Study of Psalm 18/2 Samuel 22” (Th.D. diss., Dallas Theological Seminary, 1983), 271.

[66:18]  ⁵ tn Heb “sin if I had seen in my heart.”

[109:7]  ⁶ tn The prefixed verbal form could be taken as a jussive, but the use of the imperfect form in the following line suggests that v. 7 anticipates the outcome of the accusation envisioned in v. 6.

[109:7]  ⁷ tn Heb “he will go out [as] a criminal” (that is, guilty).

[1:28]  ⁸ tn Heb “look to.” The verb שָׁחַר (shakhar, “to look”) is used figuratively of intensely looking (=seeking) for deliverance out of trouble (W. L. Holladay, Concise Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon, 366); cf. NLT “anxiously search for.” It is used elsewhere in parallelism with בָּקַשׁ (baqash, “to seek rescue”; Hos 5:15). It does not mean “to seek early” (cf. KJV) as is popularly taught due to etymological connections with the noun שַׁחַר (shakhar, “dawn”; so BDB 1007 s.v. שָׁחַר).

[28:9]  ⁹ sn The expression “turn away the ear from hearing” uses a metonymy to mean that this individual will not listen – it indicates a deliberate refusal to follow the instruction of the law.

[28:9]  ¹⁰ sn It is hard to imagine how someone who willfully refuses to obey the law of God would pray according to the will of God. Such a person is more apt to pray for some physical thing or make demands on God. (Of course a prayer of repentance would be an exception and would not be an abomination to the Lord.)

[28:9]  ¹¹ sn C. H. Toy says, “If a man, on his part, is deaf to instruction, then God, on his part, is deaf to prayer” (Proverbs [ICC], 499). And W. McKane observes that one who fails to attend to God’s law is a wicked person, even if he is a man of prayer (Proverbs [OTL], 623).

[1:15]  ¹² tn Heb “I close my eyes from you.”

[1:15]  ¹³ sn This does not just refer to the blood of sacrificial animals, but also the blood, as it were, of their innocent victims. By depriving the poor and destitute of proper legal recourse and adequate access to the economic system, the oppressors have, for all intents and purposes, “killed” their victims.

[11:11]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “Therefore, thus, says the Lord.” The person has been shifted in the translation in accordance with the difference between Hebrew and English style.

[14:12]  ¹⁵ sn See 6:16-20 for parallels.

[14:12]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “through sword, starvation, and plague.”

[14:12]  sn These were penalties (curses) that were to be imposed on Israel for failure to keep her covenant with God (cf. Lev 26:23-26). These three occur together fourteen other times in the book of Jeremiah.

[8:18]  ¹⁷ tn The meaning of the Hebrew term is primarily emotional: “to pity,” which in context implies an action, as in being moved by pity in order to spare them from the horror of their punishment.

[3:4]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “then they will cry out to the Lord.” The words “Someday these sinners” have been supplied in the translation for clarification.

[7:13]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “he.” Since the third person pronoun refers to the Lord, it has been translated as a first person pronoun (“I”) to accommodate English style, which typically does not exhibit switches between persons of pronouns in the same immediate context as Hebrew does.

[9:31]  ²⁰ tn Grk “God does not hear.”

[9:31]  ²¹ tn Or “godly.”

[9:31]  ²² tn Grk “he”; the referent (God) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[9:31]  ²³ tn Or “hears.”

[9:31]  ²⁴ tn Grk “this one.”