Ayub 20:11

20:11 His bones ¹  were full of his youthful vigor, ² 

but that vigor will lie down with him in the dust.

Mazmur 25:7

25:7 Do not hold against me ³  the sins of my youth ⁴  or my rebellious acts!

Because you are faithful to me, extend to me your favor, O Lord! ⁵ 

Amsal 5:11-13

5:11 And at the end of your life ⁶  you will groan ⁷ 

when your flesh and your body are wasted away. ⁸ 

5:12 And you will say, “How I hated discipline!

My heart spurned reproof!

5:13 For ⁹  I did not obey my teachers ¹⁰ 

and I did not heed ¹¹  my instructors. ¹² 

Yeremia 31:19

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

After we came to our senses ¹³  we beat our breasts in sorrow. ¹⁴ 

We are ashamed and humiliated

because of the disgraceful things we did previously.’ ¹⁵ 

Yohanes 5:5

5:5 Now a man was there who had been disabled for thirty-eight years. ¹⁶ 

Yohanes 5:14

5:14 After this Jesus found him at the temple and said to him, “Look, you have become well. Don’t sin any more, ¹⁷  lest anything worse happen to you.”

[20:11]  ¹ tn “Bones” is often used metonymically for the whole person, the bones being the framework, meaning everything inside, as well as the body itself.

[20:11]  ² sn This line means that he dies prematurely – at the height of his youthful vigor.

[25:7]  ³ tn Heb “do not remember,” with the intention of punishing.

[25:7]  ⁴ sn That is, the sins characteristic of youths, who lack moral discretion and wisdom.

[25:7]  ⁵ tn Heb “according to your faithfulness, remember me, you, for the sake of your goodness, O Lord.”

[5:11]  ⁶ tn Heb “at your end.”

[5:11]  ⁷ tn The form is the perfect tense with the vav consecutive; it is equal to a specific future within this context.

[5:11]  sn The verb means “to growl, groan.” It refers to a lion when it devours its prey, and to a sufferer in pain or remorse (e.g., Ezek 24:23).

[5:11]  ⁸ tn Heb “in the finishing of your flesh and your body.” The construction uses the Qal infinitive construct of כָּלָה (calah) in a temporal clause; the verb means “be complete, at an end, finished, spent.”

[5:13]  ⁹ tn The vav that introduces this clause functions in an explanatory sense.

[5:13]  ¹⁰ tn The Hebrew term מוֹרַי (moray) is the nominal form based on the Hiphil plural participle with a suffix, from the root יָרָה (yarah). The verb is “to teach,” the common noun is “instruction, law [torah],” and this participle form is teacher (“my teachers”).

[5:13]  ¹¹ sn The idioms are vivid: This expression is “incline the ear”; earlier in the first line is “listen to the voice,” meaning “obey.” Such detailed description emphasizes the importance of the material.

[5:13]  ¹² tn The form is the Piel plural participle of לָמַד (lamad) used substantivally.

[31:19]  ¹³ 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]  ¹⁴ 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]  ¹⁵ 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.

[5:5]  ¹⁶ tn Grk “who had had thirty-eight years in his disability.”

[5:14]  ¹⁷ tn Since this is a prohibition with a present imperative, the translation “stop sinning” is sometimes suggested. This is not likely, however, since the present tense is normally used in prohibitions involving a general condition (as here) while the aorist tense is normally used in specific instances. Only when used opposite the normal usage (the present tense in a specific instance, for example) would the meaning “stop doing what you are doing” be appropriate.