Roma 2:23

2:23 You who boast in the law dishonor God by transgressing the law!

Yeremia 8:8

8:8 How can you say, “We are wise!

We have the law of the Lord”?

The truth is, ¹  those who teach it ²  have used their writings

to make it say what it does not really mean. ³ 

Mikha 3:11

3:11 Her ⁴  leaders take bribes when they decide legal cases, ⁵ 

her priests proclaim rulings for profit,

and her prophets read omens for pay.

Yet they claim to trust ⁶  the Lord and say,

“The Lord is among us. ⁷ 

Disaster will not overtake ⁸  us!”

Yohanes 5:45

5:45 “Do not suppose that I will accuse you before the Father. The one who accuses you is Moses, in whom you have placed your hope. ⁹ 

Roma 9:4

9:4 who are Israelites. To them belong ¹⁰  the adoption as sons, ¹¹  the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the temple worship, ¹²  and the promises.

[8:8]  ¹ tn Heb “Surely, behold!”

[8:8]  ² tn Heb “the scribes.”

[8:8]  ³ tn Heb “The lying pen of the scribes have made [it] into a lie.” The translation is an attempt to make the most common interpretation of this passage understandable for the average reader. This is, however, a difficult passage whose interpretation is greatly debated and whose syntax is capable of other interpretations. The interpretation of the NJPS, “Assuredly, for naught has the pen labored, for naught the scribes,” surely deserves consideration within the context; i.e. it hasn’t done any good for the scribes to produce a reliable copy of the law, which the people have refused to follow. That interpretation has the advantage of explaining the absence of an object for the verb “make” or “labored” but creates a very unbalanced poetic couplet.

[3:11]  ⁴ sn The pronoun Her refers to Jerusalem (note the previous line).

[3:11]  ⁵ tn Heb “judge for a bribe.”

[3:11]  ⁶ tn Heb “they lean upon” (so KJV, NIV, NRSV); NAB “rely on.”

[3:11]  ⁷ tn Heb “Is not the Lord in our midst?” The rhetorical question expects the answer, “Of course he is!”

[3:11]  ⁸ tn Or “come upon” (so many English versions); NCV “happen to us”; CEV “come to us.”

[5:45]  ⁹ sn The final condemnation will come from Moses himself – again ironic, since Moses is the very one the Jewish authorities have trusted in (placed your hope). This is again ironic if it is occurring at Pentecost, which at this time was being celebrated as the occasion of the giving of the Torah to Moses on Mt. Sinai. There is evidence that some Jews of the 1st century looked on Moses as their intercessor at the final judgment (see W. A. Meeks, The Prophet King [NovTSup], 161). This would mean the statement Moses, in whom you have placed your hope should be taken literally and relates directly to Jesus’ statements about the final judgment in John 5:28-29.

[9:4]  ¹⁰ tn Grk “of whom.” Because of the length and complexity of the Greek sentence, a new sentence was started here in the translation.

[9:4]  ¹¹ tn The Greek term υἱοθεσία (Juioqesia) was originally a legal technical term for adoption as a son with full rights of inheritance. BDAG 1024 s.v. notes, “a legal t.t. of ‘adoption’ of children, in our lit., i.e. in Paul, only in a transferred sense of a transcendent filial relationship between God and humans (with the legal aspect, not gender specificity, as major semantic component).” Although some modern translations remove the filial sense completely and render the term merely “adoption” (cf. NAB, ESV), the retention of this component of meaning was accomplished in the present translation by the phrase “as sons.”

[9:4]  ¹² tn Or “cultic service.”