Deuteronomy 32:39

The Vindication of the Lord

32:39 “See now that I, indeed I, am he!” says the Lord, ¹ 

“and there is no other god besides me.

I kill and give life,

I smash and I heal,

and none can resist ²  my power.

Deuteronomy 32:2

32:2 My teaching will drop like the rain,

my sayings will drip like the dew, ³ 

as rain drops upon the grass,

and showers upon new growth.

1 Chronicles 7:14

Manasseh’s Descendants

7:14 The sons of Manasseh:

Asriel, who was born to Manasseh’s Aramean concubine. ⁴  She also gave birth to Makir the father of Gilead.

Psalms 107:20

107:20 He sent them an assuring word ⁵  and healed them;

he rescued them from the pits where they were trapped. ⁶ 

Isaiah 1:5

1:5 ⁷ Why do you insist on being battered?

Why do you continue to rebel? ⁸ 

Your head has a massive wound, ⁹ 

your whole body is weak. ¹⁰ 

Jeremiah 3:22

3:22 Come back to me, you wayward people.

I want to cure your waywardness. ¹¹ 

Say, ¹²  ‘Here we are. We come to you

because you are the Lord our God.

[32:39]  ¹ tn Verses 39-42 appear to be a quotation of the Lord and so the introductory phrase “says the Lord” is supplied in the translation for clarity.

[32:39]  ² tn Heb “deliver from” (so NRSV, NLT).

[32:2]  ³ tn Or “mist,” “light drizzle.” In some contexts the term appears to refer to light rain, rather than dew.

[7:14]  ⁵ sn See the note on the word “concubine” in 1:32.

[107:20]  ⁷ tn Heb “he sent his word.” This probably refers to an oracle of assurance which announced his intention to intervene (see L. C. Allen, Psalms 101-150 [WBC], 59).

[107:20]  ⁸ tn Heb “he rescued from their traps.” The Hebrew word שְׁחִית (shekhit, “trap”) occurs only here and in Lam 4:20, where it refers to a trap or pit in which one is captured. Because of the rarity of the term and the absence of an object with the verb “rescued,” some prefer to emend the text of Ps 107:20, reading מִשַׁחַת חַיָּתָם (mishakhat khayyatam, “[he rescued] their lives from the pit”). Note also NIV “from the grave,” which interprets the “pit” as Sheol or the grave.

[1:5]  ⁹ sn In vv. 5-9 Isaiah addresses the battered nation (5-8) and speaks as their representative (9).

[1:5]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “Why are you still beaten? [Why] do you continue rebellion?” The rhetorical questions express the prophet’s disbelief over Israel’s apparent masochism and obsession with sin. The interrogative construction in the first line does double duty in the parallelism. H. Wildberger (Isaiah, 1:18) offers another alternative by translating the two statements with one question: “Why do you still wish to be struck that you persist in revolt?”

[1:5]  ¹¹ tn Heb “all the head is ill”; NRSV “the whole head is sick”; CEV “Your head is badly bruised.”

[1:5]  ¹² tn Heb “and all the heart is faint.” The “heart” here stands for bodily strength and energy, as suggested by the context and usage elsewhere (see Jer 8:18; Lam 1:22).

[3:22]  ¹¹ tn Or “I will forgive your apostasies.” Heb “I will [or want to] heal your apostasies.” For the use of the verb “heal” (רָפָא, rafa’) to refer to spiritual healing and forgiveness see Hos 14:4.

[3:22]  ¹² tn Or “They say.” There is an obvious ellipsis of a verb of saying here since the preceding words are those of the Lord and the following are those of the people. However, there is debate about whether these are the response of the people to the Lord’s invitation, a response which is said to be inadequate according to the continuation in 4:1-4, or whether these are the Lord’s model for Israel’s confession of repentance to which he adds further instructions about the proper heart attitude that should accompany it in 4:1-4. The former implies a dialogue with an unmarked twofold shift in speaker between 3:22b-25 and 4:1-4:4 while the latter assumes the same main speaker throughout with an unmarked instruction only in 3:22b-25. This disrupts the flow of the passage less and appears more likely.