Yosua 1:7

1:7 Make sure you are ¹  very strong and brave! Carefully obey ²  all the law my servant Moses charged you to keep! ³  Do not swerve from it to the right or to the left, so that you may be successful ⁴  in all you do. ⁵ 

Yeremia 11:8

11:8 But they did not listen to me or pay any attention to me! Each one of them followed the stubborn inclinations of his own wicked heart. So I brought on them all the punishments threatened in the covenant because they did not carry out its terms as I commanded them to do.’” ⁶ 

Matius 5:17-20

Fulfillment of the Law and Prophets

5:17 “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have not come to abolish these things but to fulfill them. ⁷  5:18 I ⁸  tell you the truth, ⁹  until heaven and earth pass away not the smallest letter or stroke of a letter ¹⁰  will pass from the law until everything takes place. 5:19 So anyone who breaks one of the least of these commands and teaches others ¹¹  to do so will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever obeys them and teaches others to do so will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. 5:20 For I tell you, unless your righteousness goes beyond that of the experts in the law ¹²  and the Pharisees, ¹³  you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

Galatia 3:19

3:19 Why then was the law given? ¹⁴  It was added ¹⁵  because of transgressions, ¹⁶  until the arrival of the descendant ¹⁷  to whom the promise had been made. It was administered ¹⁸  through angels by an intermediary. ¹⁹ 

Galatia 3:1

Justification by Law or by Faith?

3:1 You ²⁰  foolish Galatians! Who has cast a spell ²¹  on you? Before your eyes Jesus Christ was vividly portrayed ²²  as crucified!

Yohanes 3:4

3:4 Nicodemus said to him, “How can a man be born when he is old? He cannot enter his mother’s womb and be born a second time, can he?” ²³ 

[1:7]  ¹ tn Or “Only be.”

[1:7]  ² tn Heb “so you can be careful to do.” The use of the infinitive לִשְׁמֹר (lishmor, “to keep”) after the imperatives suggests that strength and bravery will be necessary for obedience. Another option is to take the form לִשְׁמֹר as a vocative lamed (ל) with imperative (see Isa 38:20 for an example of this construction), which could be translated, “Indeed, be careful!”

[1:7]  ³ tn Heb “commanded you.”

[1:7]  ⁴ tn Heb “be wise,” but the word can mean “be successful” by metonymy.

[1:7]  ⁵ tn Heb “in all which you go.”

[11:8]  ⁶ tn Heb “So I brought on them all the terms of this covenant which I commanded to do and they did not do.” There is an interesting polarity that is being exploited by two different nuances implicit in the use of the word “terms” (דִּבְרֵי [divre], literally “words”), i.e., what the Lord “brings on” them, namely, the curses that are the penalty for disobedience and the stipulations that they are “to do,” that is, to carry out. The sentence is broken up this way in keeping with contemporary English style to avoid the long and complicated style of the original.

[5:17]  ⁷ tn Grk “not come to abolish but to fulfill.” Direct objects (“these things,” “them”) were frequently omitted in Greek when clear from the context, but have been supplied here to conform to contemporary English style.

[5:18]  ⁸ tn Grk “For I tell.” Here an explanatory γάρ (gar) has not been translated.

[5:18]  ⁹ tn Grk “Truly (ἀμήν, amhn), I say to you.”

[5:18]  ¹⁰ tn Grk “Not one iota or one serif.”

[5:18]  sn The smallest letter refers to the smallest Hebrew letter (yod) and the stroke of a letter to a serif (a hook or projection on a Hebrew letter).

[5:19]  ¹¹ tn Grk “teaches men” ( in a generic sense, people).

[5:20]  ¹² tn Or “that of the scribes.” See the note on the phrase “experts in the law” in 2:4.

[5:20]  ¹³ sn See the note on Pharisees in 3:7.

[3:19]  ¹⁴ tn Grk “Why then the law?”

[3:19]  ¹⁵ tc For προσετέθη (proseteqh) several Western mss have ἐτέθη (eteqh, “it was established”; so D* F G it Ir^lat Ambst Spec). The net effect of this reading, in conjunction with the largely Western reading of πράξεων (praxewn) for παραβάσεων (parabasewn), seems to be a very positive assessment of the law. But there are compelling reasons for rejecting this reading: (1) externally, it is provincial and relatively late; (2) internally: (a) transcriptionally, there seems to be a much higher transcriptional probability that a scribe would try to smooth over Paul’s harsh saying here about the law than vice versa; (b) intrinsically: [1] Paul has already argued that the law came after the promise (vv. 15-18), indicating, more than likely, its temporary nature; [2] the verb “was added” in v. 19 (προσετέθη) is different from the verb in v. 15 (ἐπιδιατάσσεται, epidiatassetai); virtually all exegetes recognize this as an intentional linguistic shift on Paul’s part in order not to contradict his statement in v. 15; [3] the temper of 3:1–4:7 is decidedly against a positive statement about the Torah’s role in Heilsgeschichte.

[3:19]  ¹⁶ tc παραδόσεων (paradosewn; “traditions, commandments”) is read by D*, while the vast majority of witnesses read παραβάσεων (parabasewn, “transgressions”). D’s reading makes little sense in this context. πράξεων (praxewn, “of deeds”) replaces παραβάσεων in Ì⁴⁶ F G it Ir^lat Ambst Spec. The wording is best taken as going with νόμος (nomo"; “Why then the law of deeds?”), as is evident by the consistent punctuation in the later witnesses. But such an expression is unpauline and superfluous; it was almost certainly added by some early scribe(s) to soften the blow of Paul’s statement.

[3:19]  ¹⁷ tn Grk “the seed.” See the note on the first occurrence of the word “descendant” in 3:16.

[3:19]  ¹⁸ tn Or “was ordered.” L&N 31.22 has “was put into effect” here.

[3:19]  ¹⁹ tn Many modern translations (NASB, NIV, NRSV) render this word (μεσίτης, mesith"; here and in v. 20) as “mediator,” but this conveys a wrong impression in contemporary English. If this is referring to Moses, he certainly did not “mediate” between God and Israel but was an intermediary on God’s behalf. Moses was not a mediator, for example, who worked for compromise between opposing parties. He instead was God’s representative to his people who enabled them to have a relationship, but entirely on God’s terms.

[3:1]  ²⁰ tn Grk “O” (an interjection used both in address and emotion). In context the following section is highly charged emotionally.

[3:1]  ²¹ tn Or “deceived”; the verb βασκαίνω (baskainw) can be understood literally here in the sense of bewitching by black magic, but could also be understood figuratively to refer to an act of deception (see L&N 53.98 and 88.159).

[3:1]  ²² tn Or “publicly placarded,” “set forth in a public proclamation” (BDAG 867 s.v. προγράφω 2).

[3:4]  ²³ tn The grammatical structure of the question in Greek presupposes a negative reply.