Deuteronomy 29:25

29:25 Then people will say, “Because they abandoned the covenant of the Lord, the God of their ancestors, which he made with them when he brought them out of the land of Egypt.

Deuteronomy 31:20

31:20 For after I have brought them ¹  to the land I promised to their ²  ancestors – one flowing with milk and honey – and they ³  eat their fill ⁴  and become fat, then they ⁵  will turn to other gods and worship them; they will reject me and break my covenant.

Psalms 78:37

78:37 They were not really committed to him, ⁶ 

and they were unfaithful to his covenant.

Isaiah 1:4

1:4 ⁷ The sinful nation is as good as dead, ⁸ 

the people weighed down by evil deeds.

They are offspring who do wrong,

children ⁹  who do wicked things.

They have abandoned the Lord,

and rejected the Holy One of Israel. ¹⁰ 

They are alienated from him. ¹¹ 

Jeremiah 22:9

22:9 The answer will come back, “It is because they broke their covenant with the Lord their God and worshiped and served other gods.”

Daniel 11:30

11:30 The ships of Kittim ¹²  will come against him, leaving him disheartened. ¹³  He will turn back and direct his indignation against the holy covenant. He will return and honor ¹⁴  those who forsake the holy covenant.

Hosea 6:7

Indictments Against the Cities of Israel and Judah

6:7 At Adam ¹⁵  they broke ¹⁶  the covenant;

Oh how ¹⁷  they were unfaithful ¹⁸  to me!

Hebrews 8:9

8:9 “It will not be like the covenant ¹⁹  that I made with their fathers, on the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they did not continue in my covenant and I had no regard for them, says the Lord.

[31:20]  ¹ tn Heb “him.” Smr, LXX, and the Targums read the plural “them.” See note on the first occurrence of “they” in v. 16.

[31:20]  ² tn Heb “his.” Smr, LXX, and the Targums read the plural “their.” See note on the first occurrence of “they” in v. 16.

[31:20]  ³ tn Heb “he.” Smr, LXX, and the Targums read the plural “they.” See note on the first occurrence of “they” in v. 16.

[31:20]  ⁴ tn Heb “and are satisfied.”

[31:20]  ⁵ tn Heb “he.” Smr, LXX, and the Targums read the plural “they.” See note on the first occurrence of “they” in v. 16.

[78:37]  ⁶ tn Heb “and their heart was not firm with him.”

[1:4]  ⁷ sn Having summoned the witnesses and announced the Lord’s accusation against Israel, Isaiah mourns the nation’s impending doom. The third person references to the Lord in the second half of the verse suggest that the quotation from the Lord (cf. vv. 2-3) has concluded.

[1:4]  ⁸ tn Heb “Woe [to the] sinful nation.” The Hebrew term הוֹי, (hoy, “woe, ah”) was used in funeral laments (see 1 Kgs 13:30; Jer 22:18; 34:5) and carries the connotation of death. In highly dramatic fashion the prophet acts out Israel’s funeral in advance, emphasizing that their demise is inevitable if they do not repent soon.

[1:4]  ⁹ tn Or “sons” (NASB). The prophet contrasts four terms of privilege – nation, people, offspring, children – with four terms that depict Israel’s sinful condition in Isaiah’s day – sinful, evil, wrong, wicked (see J. A. Motyer, The Prophecy of Isaiah, 43).

[1:4]  ¹⁰ sn Holy One of Israel is one of Isaiah’s favorite divine titles for God. It pictures the Lord as the sovereign king who rules over his covenant people and exercises moral authority over them.

[1:4]  ¹¹ tn Heb “they are estranged backward.” The LXX omits this statement, which presents syntactical problems and seems to be outside the synonymous parallelistic structure of the verse.

[11:30]  ¹² sn The name Kittim has various designations in extra-biblical literature. It can refer to a location on the island of Cyprus, or more generally to the island itself, or it can be an inclusive term to refer to parts of the Mediterranean world that lay west of the Middle East (e.g., Rome). For ships of Kittim the Greek OT (LXX) has “Romans,” an interpretation followed by a few English versions (e.g., TEV). A number of times in the Dead Sea Scrolls the word is used in reference to the Romans. Other English versions are more generic: “[ships] of the western coastlands” (NIV, NLT); “from the west” (NCV, CEV).

[11:30]  ¹³ sn This is apparently a reference to the Roman forces, led by Gaius Popilius Laenas, which confronted Antiochus when he came to Egypt and demanded that he withdraw or face the wrath of Rome. Antiochus wisely withdrew from Egypt, albeit in a state of bitter frustration.

[11:30]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “show regard for.”

[6:7]  ¹⁵ tn Or “Like Adam”; or “Like [sinful] men.” The MT reads כְּאָדָם (kÿ’adam, “like Adam” or “as [sinful] men”); however, the editors of BHS suggest this reflects an orthographic confusion of בְּאָדָם (bÿ’adam, “at Adam”), as suggested by the locative adverb שָׁם (sham, “there”) in the following line. However, שָׁם sometimes functions in a nonlocative sense similar to the deictic particle הִנֵּה (hinneh, “Behold!”). The singular noun אָדָם (’adam) has been taken in several different ways: (1) proper name: “like Adam” (כְּאָדָם), (2) collective singular: “like [sinful] men” (כְּאָדָם), (3) proper location: “at Adam,” referring to a city in the Jordan Valley (Josh 3:16), emending comparative כְּ (kaf) to locative בְּ (bet, “at”): “at Adam” (בְּאָדָם). BDB 9 s.v. אָדָם 2 suggests the collective sense, referring to sinful men (Num 5:6; 1 Kgs 8:46; 2 Chr 6:36; Jer 10:14; Job 31:33; Hos 6:7). The English versions are divided: KJV margin, ASV, RSV margin, NASB, NIV, TEV margin, NLT “like Adam”; RSV, NRSV, TEV “at Adam”; KJV “like men.”

[6:7]  ¹⁶ tn The verb עָבַר (’avar) refers here to breaking a covenant and carries the nuance “to overstep, transgress” (BDB 717 s.v. עָבַר 1.i). Cf. NAB “violated”; NRSV “transgressed.”

[6:7]  ¹⁷ tn The adverb שָׁם (sham) normally functions in a locative sense meaning “there” (BDB 1027 s.v. שָׁם). This is how it is translated by many English versions (e.g., KJV, NAB, NASB, NIV, NRSV). However, in poetry שָׁם sometimes functions in a nonlocative sense to introduce expressions of astonishment or when a scene is vividly visualized in the writer’s imagination (see BDB 1027 s.v. 1.a.β), or somewhat similar to the deictic particle הִנֵּה (hinneh, “Behold!”): “See [שָׁם] how the evildoers lie fallen!” (Ps 36:13); “Listen! The cry on the day of the Lord will be bitter! See [שָׁם]! The shouting of the warrior!” (Zeph 1:14); “They saw [רָאוּ, ra’u] her and were astonished…See [שָׁם] how trembling seized them!” (Ps 48:7). In some cases, it introduces emphatic statements in a manner similar to הִנֵּה (“Behold!”): “Come and see [לְכוּ וּרְאוּ, lÿkhu urÿ’u] what God has done…Behold [שָׁם], let us rejoice in him!” (Ps 66:5); “See/Behold [שָׁם]! I will make a horn grow for David” (Ps 132:17). The present translation’s use of “Oh how!” in Hos 6:7 is less visual than the Hebrew idiom שָׁם (“See! See how!”), but it more closely approximates the parallel English idiom of astonishment.

[6:7]  ¹⁸ tn The verb בָּגַד (bagad, “to act treacherously”) is often used in reference to faithlessness in covenant relationships (BDB 93 s.v. בָּגַד).

[8:9]  ¹⁹ tn Grk “not like the covenant,” continuing the description of v. 8b.