Mazmur 119:176

119:176 I have wandered off like a lost sheep. ¹ 

Come looking for your servant,

for I do not forget your commands.

Pengkhotbah 7:29

7:29 This alone have I discovered: God made humankind upright,

but they have sought many evil schemes.

Yesaya 53:6

53:6 All of us had wandered off like sheep;

each of us had strayed off on his own path,

but the Lord caused the sin of all of us to attack him. ² 

Yesaya 59:7-8

59:7 They are eager to do evil, ³ 

quick to shed innocent blood. ⁴ 

Their thoughts are sinful;

they crush and destroy. ⁵ 

59:8 They are unfamiliar with peace;

their deeds are unjust. ⁶ 

They use deceitful methods,

and whoever deals with them is unfamiliar with peace. ⁷ 

Yesaya 59:13-15

59:13 We have rebelled and tried to deceive the Lord;

we turned back from following our God.

We stir up ⁸  oppression and rebellion;

we tell lies we concocted in our minds. ⁹ 

59:14 Justice is driven back;

godliness ¹⁰  stands far off.

Indeed, ¹¹  honesty stumbles in the city square

and morality is not even able to enter.

59:15 Honesty has disappeared;

the one who tries to avoid evil is robbed.

The Lord watches and is displeased, ¹² 

for there is no justice.

Yeremia 2:13

2:13 “Do so because my people have committed a double wrong:

they have rejected me,

the fountain of life-giving water, ¹³ 

and they have dug cisterns for themselves,

cracked cisterns which cannot even hold water.”

Roma 3:10-12

3:10 just as it is written:

“There is no one righteous, not even one,

3:11 there is no one who understands,

there is no one who seeks God.

3:12 All have turned away,

together they have become worthless;

there is no one who shows kindness, not even one.” ¹⁴ 

Roma 3:23

3:23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

Efesus 2:3

2:3 among whom ¹⁵  all of us ¹⁶  also ¹⁷  formerly lived out our lives in the cravings of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath ¹⁸  even as the rest… ¹⁹ 

Efesus 2:2

2:2 in which ²⁰  you formerly lived ²¹  according to this world’s present path, ²²  according to the ruler of the kingdom ²³  of the air, the ruler of ²⁴  the spirit ²⁵  that is now energizing ²⁶  the sons of disobedience, ²⁷ 

Pengkhotbah 2:13-15

2:13 I realized that wisdom is preferable to folly, ²⁸ 

just as light is preferable to darkness:

2:14 The wise man can see where he is going, ²⁹  but the fool walks in darkness.

Yet I also realized that the same fate ³⁰  happens to them both. ³¹ 

2:15 So I thought to myself, “The fate of the fool will happen even to me! ³² 

Then what did I gain by becoming so excessively ³³  wise?” ³⁴ 

So I lamented to myself, ³⁵ 

“The benefits of wisdom ³⁶  are ultimately ³⁷  meaningless!”

[119:176]  ¹ tn Heb “I stray like a lost sheep.” It is possible that the point of the metaphor is vulnerability: The psalmist, who is threatened by his enemies, feels as vulnerable as a straying, lost sheep. This would not suggest, however, that he has wandered from God’s path (see the second half of the verse, as well as v. 110).

[53:6]  ² tn Elsewhere the Hiphil of פָגַע (paga’) means “to intercede verbally” (Jer 15:11; 36:25) or “to intervene militarily” (Isa 59:16), but neither nuance fits here. Apparently here the Hiphil is the causative of the normal Qal meaning, “encounter, meet, touch.” The Qal sometimes refers to a hostile encounter or attack; when used in this way the object is normally introduced by the preposition -בְּ (bet, see Josh 2:16; Judg 8:21; 15:12, etc.). Here the causative Hiphil has a double object – the Lord makes “sin” attack “him” (note that the object attacked is introduced by the preposition -בְּ. In their sin the group was like sheep who had wandered from God’s path. They were vulnerable to attack; the guilt of their sin was ready to attack and destroy them. But then the servant stepped in and took the full force of the attack.

[59:7]  ³ tn Heb “their feet run to evil.”

[59:7]  ⁴ tn Heb “they quickly pour out innocent blood.”

[59:7]  ⁵ tn Heb “their thoughts are thoughts of sin, destruction and crushing [are] in their roadways.”

[59:8]  ⁶ tn Heb “a way of peace they do not know, and there is no justice in their pathways.”

[59:8]  ⁷ tn Heb “their paths they make crooked, everyone who walks in it does not know peace.”

[59:13]  ⁸ tn Heb “speaking.” A new sentence was started here in the translation for stylistic reasons.

[59:13]  ⁹ tn Heb “conceiving and uttering from the heart words of falsehood.”

[59:14]  ¹⁰ tn Or “righteousness” (ASV, NASB, NIV, NRSV); KJV, NAB “justice.”

[59:14]  ¹¹ tn Or “for” (KJV, NRSV).

[59:15]  ¹² tn Heb “and it is displeasing in his eyes.”

[2:13]  ¹³ tn It is difficult to decide whether to translate “fresh, running water” which the Hebrew term for “living water” often refers to (e.g., Gen 26:19; Lev 14:5), or “life-giving water” which the idiom “fountain of life” as source of life and vitality often refers to (e.g., Ps 36:9; Prov 13:14; 14:27). The contrast with cisterns, which collected and held rain water, suggests “fresh, running water,” but the reality underlying the metaphor contrasts the Lord, the source of life, health, and vitality, with useless idols that cannot do anything.

[3:12]  ¹⁴ sn Verses 10-12 are a quotation from Ps 14:1-3.

[2:3]  ¹⁵ sn Among whom. The relative pronoun phrase that begins v. 3 is identical, except for gender, to the one that begins v. 2 (ἐν αἵς [en Jais], ἐν οἵς [en Jois]). By the structure, the author is building an argument for our hopeless condition: We lived in sin and we lived among sinful people. Our doom looked to be sealed as well in v. 2: Both the external environment (kingdom of the air) and our internal motivation and attitude (the spirit that is now energizing) were under the devil’s thumb (cf. 2 Cor 4:4).

[2:3]  ¹⁶ tn Grk “we all.”

[2:3]  ¹⁷ tn Or “even.”

[2:3]  ¹⁸ sn Children of wrath is a Semitic idiom which may mean either “people characterized by wrath” or “people destined for wrath.”

[2:3]  ¹⁹ sn Eph 2:1-3. The translation of vv. 1-3 is very literal, even to the point of retaining the awkward syntax of the original. See note on the word dead in 2:1.

[2:2]  ²⁰ sn The relative pronoun which is feminine as is sins, indicating that sins is the antecedent.

[2:2]  ²¹ tn Grk “walked.”

[2:2]  sn The Greek verb translated lived (περιπατέω, peripatew) in the NT letters refers to the conduct of one’s life, not to physical walking.

[2:2]  ²² tn Or possibly “Aeon.”

[2:2]  sn The word translated present path is the same as that which has been translated [this] age in 1:21 (αἰών, aiwn).

[2:2]  ²³ tn Grk “domain, [place of] authority.”

[2:2]  ²⁴ tn Grk “of” (but see the note on the word “spirit” later in this verse).

[2:2]  ²⁵ sn The ruler of the kingdom of the air is also the ruler of the spirit that is now energizing the sons of disobedience. Although several translations regard the ruler to be the same as the spirit, this is unlikely since the cases in Greek are different (ruler is accusative and spirit is genitive). To get around this, some have suggested that the genitive for spirit is a genitive of apposition. However, the semantics of the genitive of apposition are against such an interpretation (cf. ExSyn 100).

[2:2]  ²⁶ tn Grk “working in.”

[2:2]  ²⁷ sn Sons of disobedience is a Semitic idiom that means “people characterized by disobedience.” However, it also contains a subtle allusion to vv. 4-10: Some of those sons of disobedience have become sons of God.

[2:13]  ²⁸ tn Heb “and I saw that there is profit for wisdom more than folly.”

[2:14]  ²⁹ tn Heb “has his eyes in his head.” The term עַיִן (’ayin, “eye”) is used figuratively in reference to mental and spiritual faculties (BDB 744 s.v. עַיִן 3.a). The term “eye” is a metonymy of cause (eye) for effect (sight and perception).

[2:14]  ³⁰ sn The common fate to which Qoheleth refers is death.

[2:14]  ³¹ tn The term כֻּלָּם (kullam, “all of them”) denotes “both of them.” This is an example of synecdoche of general (“all of them”) for the specific (“both of them,” that is, both the wise man and the fool).

[2:15]  ³² tn The emphatic use of the 1st person common singular personal pronoun אֲנִי (’ani, “me”) with the emphatic particle of association גַּם (gam, “even, as well as”; HALOT 195–96 s.v. גַּם) appears to emphasize the 1st person common singular suffix on יִקְרֵנִי (yiqreni) “it will befall [or “happen to”] me” (Qal imperfect 3rd person masculine singular + 1st person common singular suffix from קָרָה, qarah, “to befall; to happen to”); see GKC 438 §135.e. Qoheleth laments not that the fate of the wise man is the same as that of the fool, but that even he himself – the wisest man of all – would fare no better in the end than the most foolish.

[2:15]  ³³ tn The adjective יוֹתֵר (yoter) means “too much; excessive,” e.g., 7:16 “excessively righteous” (HALOT 404 s.v. יוֹתֵר 2; BDB 452 s.v. יוֹתֵר). It is derived from the root יֶתֶר (yeter, “what is left over”); see HALOT 452 s.v. I יֶתֶר. It is related to the verbal root יתר (Niphal “to be left over”; Hiphil “to have left over”); see HALOT 451–52 s.v. I יתר. The adjective is related to יִתְרוֹן (yitron, “advantage; profit”) which is a key-term in this section, creating a word-play: The wise man has a relative “advantage” (יִתְרוֹן) over the fool (2:13-14a); however, there is no ultimate advantage because both share the same fate, i.e., death (2:14b-15a). Thus, Qoheleth’s acquisition of tremendous wisdom (1:16; 2:9) was “excessive” because it exceeded its relative advantage over folly: it could not deliver him from the same fate as the fool. He had striven to obtain wisdom, yet it held no ultimate advantage.

[2:15]  ³⁴ tn Heb “And why was I wise (to) excess?” The rhetorical question is an example of negative affirmation, expecting a negative answer: “I gained nothing!” (E. W. Bullinger, Figures of Speech, 949).

[2:15]  ³⁵ tn Heb “So I said in my heart.”

[2:15]  ³⁶ tn Heb “and also this,” referring to the relative advantage of wisdom over folly.

[2:15]  ³⁷ tn The word “ultimately” does not appear in the Hebrew text, but is supplied in the translation for clarity.