Mazmur 19:14

19:14 May my words and my thoughts

be acceptable in your sight, ¹ 

O Lord, my sheltering rock ²  and my redeemer. ³ 

Yesaya 56:7

56:7 I will bring them to my holy mountain;

I will make them happy in the temple where people pray to me. ⁴ 

Their burnt offerings and sacrifices will be accepted on my altar,

for my temple will be known as a temple where all nations may pray.” ⁵ 

Roma 12:1-2

Consecration of the Believer’s Life

12:1 Therefore I exhort you, brothers and sisters, ⁶  by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a sacrifice – alive, holy, and pleasing to God ⁷  – which is your reasonable service. 12:2 Do not be conformed ⁸  to this present world, ⁹  but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may test and approve ¹⁰  what is the will of God – what is good and well-pleasing and perfect.

Efesus 1:6

1:6 to the praise of the glory of his grace ¹¹  that he has freely bestowed on us in his dearly loved Son. ¹² 

Efesus 5:10

5:10 trying to learn ¹³  what is pleasing to the Lord.

Filipi 4:18

4:18 For I have received everything, and I have plenty. I have all I need because I received from Epaphroditus what you sent – a fragrant offering, an acceptable sacrifice, very pleasing to God.

Filipi 4:1

Christian Practices

4:1 So then, my brothers and sisters, ¹⁴  dear friends whom I long to see, my joy and crown, stand in the Lord in this way, my dear friends!

Pengkhotbah 2:5

2:5 I designed ¹⁵  royal gardens ¹⁶  and parks ¹⁷  for myself,

and I planted all kinds of fruit trees in them.

Pengkhotbah 2:20

2:20 So I began to despair ¹⁸  about all the fruit of ¹⁹  my labor ²⁰ 

for which I worked so hard ²¹  on earth. ²² 

[19:14]  ¹ tn Heb “may the words of my mouth and the thought of my heart be acceptable before you.” The prefixed verbal form at the beginning of the verse is understood as a jussive of prayer. Another option is to translate the form as an imperfect continuing the thought of v. 14b: “[Then] the words of my mouth and the thought of my heart will be acceptable before you.”

[19:14]  ² tn Heb “my rocky cliff,” which is a metaphor for protection; thus the translation “sheltering rock.”

[19:14]  ³ tn Heb “and the one who redeems me.” The metaphor casts the Lord in the role of a leader who protects members of his extended family in times of need and crisis.

[56:7]  ⁴ tn Heb “in the house of my prayer.”

[56:7]  ⁵ tn Heb “for my house will be called a house of prayer for all the nations.”

[12:1]  ⁶ tn Grk “brothers.” See note on the phrase “brothers and sisters” in 1:13.

[12:1]  ⁷ tn The participle and two adjectives “alive, holy, and pleasing to God” are taken as predicates in relation to “sacrifice,” making the exhortation more emphatic. See ExSyn 618-19.

[12:1]  sn Taken as predicate adjectives, the terms alive, holy, and pleasing are showing how unusual is the sacrifice that believers can now offer, for OT sacrifices were dead. As has often been quipped about this text, “The problem with living sacrifices is that they keep crawling off the altar.”

[12:2]  ⁸ tn Although συσχηματίζεσθε (suschmatizesqe) could be either a passive or middle, the passive is more likely since it would otherwise have to be a direct middle (“conform yourselves”) and, as such, would be quite rare for NT Greek. It is very telling that being “conformed” to the present world is viewed as a passive notion, for it may suggest that it happens, in part, subconsciously. At the same time, the passive could well be a “permissive passive,” suggesting that there may be some consciousness of the conformity taking place. Most likely, it is a combination of both.

[12:2]  ⁹ tn Grk “to this age.”

[12:2]  ¹⁰ sn The verb translated test and approve (δοκιμάζω, dokimazw) carries the sense of “test with a positive outcome,” “test so as to approve.”

[1:6]  ¹¹ tn Or “to the praise of his glorious grace.” Many translations translate δόξης τῆς χάριτος αὐτοῦ (doxh" th" carito" autou, literally “of the glory of his grace”) with τῆς χάριτος as an attributed genitive (cf., e.g., NIV, NRSV, ESV). The translation above has retained a literal rendering in order to make clear the relationship of this phrase to the other two similar phrases in v. 12 and 14, which affect the way one divides the material in the passage.

[1:6]  ¹² tn Grk “the beloved.” The term ἠγαπημένῳ (hgaphmenw) means “beloved,” but often bears connotations of “only beloved” in an exclusive sense. “His dearly loved Son” picks up this connotation.

[1:6]  sn God’s grace can be poured out on believers only because of what Christ has done for them. Hence, he bestows his grace on us because we are in his dearly loved Son.

[5:10]  ¹³ tn BDAG 255 s.v. δοκιμάζω 1 translates δοκιμάζοντες (dokimazonte") in Eph 5:10 as “try to learn.”

[4:1]  ¹⁴ tn Grk “brothers.” See note on the phrase “brothers and sisters” in 1:12.

[2:5]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “made.”

[2:5]  ¹⁶ tn The term does not refer here to vegetable gardens, but to orchards (cf. the next line). In the same way the so-called “garden” of Eden was actually an orchard filled with fruit trees. See Gen 2:8-9.

[2:5]  ¹⁷ tn The noun פַּרְדֵּס (pardes, “garden, parkland, forest”) is a foreign loanword that occurs only 3 times in biblical Hebrew (Song 4:13; Eccl 2:5; Neh 2:8). The original Old Persian term pairidaeza designated the enclosed parks and pleasure-grounds that were the exclusive domain of the Persian kings and nobility (HALOT 963 s.v. פַּרְדֵּס; LSJ 1308 s.v παράδεισος). The related Babylonian term pardesu “marvelous garden” referred to the enclosed parks of the kings (AHw 2:833 and 3:1582). The term passed into Greek as παράδεισος (paradeisos, “enclosed park, pleasure-ground”), referring to the enclosed parks and gardens of the Persian kings (LSJ 1308). The Greek term has been transliterated into English as “paradise.”

[2:20]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “I turned aside to allow my heart despair.” The term לִבִּי (libbi, “my heart”) is a synecdoche of part (i.e., heart) for the whole (i.e., whole person); see E. W. Bullinger, Figures of Speech, 648.

[2:20]  ¹⁹ tn The phrase “the fruit of” does not appear in the Hebrew text, but is supplied in the translation for clarity (see the following note on the word “labor”).

[2:20]  ²⁰ tn Heb “all my toil.” As in 2:18-19, the term עֲמָלִי (’amali, “my labor”) is a metonymy of cause (i.e., my labor) for effect (i.e., the fruit of my labor). The metonymy is recognized by several translations: “all the fruits of my labor” (NAB); “all the fruit of my labor” (NASB); “all the gains I had made” (NJPS).

[2:20]  ²¹ tn Here the author uses an internal cognate accusative construction (accusative noun and verb from the same root) for emphasis: שֶׁעָמַלְתִּי הֶעָמָל (he’amal she’amalti, “the toil for which I had toiled”); see IBHS 167 §10.2.1g.

[2:20]  ²² tn Heb “under the sun.”