Leviticus 23:10

23:10 “Speak to the Israelites and tell them, ‘When you enter the land that I am about to give to you and you gather in its harvest, ¹  then you must bring the sheaf of the first portion of your harvest ²  to the priest,

Exodus 22:29

22:29 “Do not hold back offerings from your granaries or your vats. ³  You must give me the firstborn of your sons.

Exodus 23:16

23:16 “You are also to observe ⁴  the Feast of Harvest, the firstfruits of your labors that you have sown in the field, and the Feast of Ingathering at the end of the year ⁵  when you have gathered in ⁶  your harvest ⁷  out of the field.

Exodus 23:19

23:19 The first of the firstfruits of your soil you must bring to the house of the Lord your God.

“You must not cook a young goat in its mother’s milk. ⁸ 

Exodus 34:22

34:22 “You must observe ⁹  the Feast of Weeks – the firstfruits of the harvest of wheat – and the Feast of Ingathering at the end ¹⁰  of the year.

Exodus 34:26

34:26 “The first of the firstfruits of your soil you must bring to the house of the Lord your God.

You must not cook a young goat in its mother’s milk.” ¹¹ 

Numbers 15:17

Rules for First Fruits

15:17 The Lord spoke to Moses:

Numbers 15:19-21

15:19 and you eat ¹²  some of the food of the land, you must offer up a raised offering ¹³  to the Lord. 15:20 You must offer up a cake of the first of your finely ground flour ¹⁴  as a raised offering; as you offer the raised offering of the threshing floor, so you must offer it up. 15:21 You must give to the Lord some of the first of your finely ground flour as a raised offering in your future generations.

Deuteronomy 26:1-2

Presentation of the First Fruits

26:1 When ¹⁵  you enter the land that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, and you occupy it and live in it, 26:2 you must take the first of all the ground’s produce you harvest from the land the Lord your God is giving you, place it in a basket, and go to the place where he ¹⁶  chooses to locate his name. ¹⁷ 

Proverbs 3:9-10

3:9 Honor ¹⁸  the Lord from your wealth

and from the first fruits of all your crops; ¹⁹ 

3:10 then your barns will be filled completely, ²⁰ 

and your vats ²¹  will overflow ²²  with new wine.

Romans 8:23

8:23 Not only this, but we ourselves also, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, ²³  groan inwardly as we eagerly await our adoption, ²⁴  the redemption of our bodies. ²⁵ 

Romans 8:1

The Believer’s Relationship to the Holy Spirit

8:1 There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. ²⁶ 

Colossians 1:20

1:20 and through him to reconcile all things to himself by making peace through the blood of his cross – through him, ²⁷  whether things on earth or things in heaven.

James 1:18

1:18 By his sovereign plan he gave us birth ²⁸  through the message of truth, that we would be a kind of firstfruits of all he created.

Revelation 14:4

14:4 These are the ones who have not defiled themselves ²⁹  with women, for they are virgins. These are the ones who follow the Lamb wherever he goes. These were redeemed from humanity as firstfruits to God and to the Lamb,

[23:10]  ¹ tn Heb “and you harvest its harvest.”

[23:10]  ² tn Heb “the sheaf of the first of your harvest.”

[22:29]  ³ tn The expressions are unusual. U. Cassuto renders them: “from the fullness of your harvest and from the outflow of your presses” (Exodus, 294). He adds the Hittite parallel material to show that the people were to bring the offerings on time and not let them overlap, because the firstfruits had to be eaten first by the priest.

[23:16]  ⁴ tn The words “you are also to observe” are not in the Hebrew text, but are supplied in the translation for stylistic reasons.

[23:16]  ⁵ tn An infinitive construct with a preposition and a pronominal suffix is used to make a temporal clause: “in the going in of the year.” The word “year” is the subjective genitive, the subject of the clause.

[23:16]  ⁶ tn An infinitive construct with a preposition and a pronominal suffix is used to make a temporal clause: “in the ingathering of you.”

[23:16]  ⁷ tn Heb “gathered in your labors.” This is a metonymy of cause put for the effect. “Labors” are not gathered in, but what the labors produced – the harvest.

[23:19]  ⁸ sn On this verse, see C. M. Carmichael, “On Separating Life and Death: An Explanation of Some Biblical Laws,” HTR 69 (1976): 1-7; J. Milgrom, “You Shall Not Boil a Kid in Its Mother’s Milk,” BRev 1 (1985): 48-55; R. J. Ratner and B. Zuckerman, “In Rereading the ‘Kid in Milk’ Inscriptions,” BRev 1 (1985): 56-58; and M. Haran, “Seething a Kid in Its Mother’s Milk,” JJS 30 (1979): 23-35. Here and at 34:26, where this command is repeated, it ends a series of instructions about procedures for worship.

[34:22]  ⁹ tn The imperfect tense means “you will do”; it is followed by the preposition with a suffix to express the ethical dative to stress the subject.

[34:22]  ¹⁰ tn The expression is “the turn of the year,” which is parallel to “the going out of the year,” and means the end of the agricultural season.

[34:26]  ¹¹ sn See the note on this same command in 23:19.

[15:19]  ¹² tn The verse has a temporal clause that actually continues or supplements the temporal clause of the preceding verse. It is made up of the temporal indicator, the infinitive construct with the preposition, and the suffixed subjective genitive: “and it shall be when you eat.” Here it is translated simply “and eat” since the temporal element was introduced in the last verse.

[15:19]  ¹³ tn This is the תְּרוּמָה (tÿrumah), the “raised offering” or “heave offering” (cf. KJV, ASV). It may simply be called a “contribution” (so NAB). The verb of the sentence is from the same root: “you shall lift up/raise up.” It was to be an offering separated from the rest and raised up to the Lord in the sight of all. It was designed to remind the Israelites that the produce and the land belonged to God.

[15:20]  ¹⁴ tn Or “the first of your dough.” The phrase is not very clear. N. H. Snaith thinks it means a batch of loaves from the kneading trough – the first batch of the baking (Leviticus and Numbers [NCB], 251).

[26:1]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “and it will come to pass that.”

[26:2]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “the Lord your God.” The pronoun has been used in the translation for stylistic reasons to avoid redundancy.

[26:2]  ¹⁷ sn The place where he chooses to locate his name. This is a circumlocution for the central sanctuary, first the tabernacle and later the Jerusalem temple. See Deut 12:1-14 and especially the note on the word “you” in v. 14.

[3:9]  ¹⁸ tn The imperative כַּבֵּד (kabbed, “honor”) functions as a command, instruction, counsel or exhortation. To honor God means to give him the rightful place of authority by rendering to him gifts of tribute. One way to acknowledge God in one’s ways (v. 6) is to honor him with one’s wealth (v. 9).

[3:9]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “produce.” The noun תְּבוּאָה (tÿvu’ah) has a two-fold range of meaning: (1) “product; yield” of the earth (= crops; harvest) and (2) “income; revenue” in general (BDB 100 s.v.). The imagery in vv. 9-10 is agricultural; however, all Israelites – not just farmers – were expected to give the best portion (= first fruits) of their income to Lord.

[3:10]  ²⁰ tn Heb “with plenty” (so KJV, NASB, NRSV); NIV “to overflowing.” The noun שָׂבָע (sava’, “plenty; satiety”) functions as an adverbial accusative of manner or contents: “completely.”

[3:10]  ²¹ sn This pictures the process of pressing grapes in which the upper receptacle is filled with grapes and the lower one catches the juice. The harvest of grapes will be so plentiful that the lower vat will overflow with grape juice. The pictures in v. 10 are metonymies of effect for cause (= the great harvest that God will provide when they honor him).

[3:10]  ²² tn Heb “burst open.” The verb פָּרַץ (parats, “to burst open”) functions as hyperbole here to emphasize the fullness of the wine vats (BDB 829 s.v. 9).

[8:23]  ²³ tn Or “who have the Spirit as firstfruits.” The genitive πνεύματος (pneumatos) can be understood here as possessive (“the firstfruits belonging to the Spirit”) although it is much more likely that this is a genitive of apposition (“the firstfruits, namely, the Spirit”); cf. TEV, NLT.

[8:23]  ²⁴ tn See the note on “adoption” in v. 15.

[8:23]  ²⁵ tn Grk “body.”

[8:1]  ²⁶ tc The earliest and best witnesses of the Alexandrian and Western texts, as well as a few others (א* B D* F G 6 1506 1739 1881 pc co), have no additional words for v. 1. Later scribes (A D¹ Ψ 81 365 629 pc vg) added the words μὴ κατὰ σάρκα περιπατοῦσιν (mh kata sarka peripatousin, “who do not walk according to the flesh”), while even later ones (א² D² 33^vid Ï) added ἀλλὰ κατὰ πνεῦμα (alla kata pneuma, “but [who do walk] according to the Spirit”). Both the external evidence and the internal evidence are compelling for the shortest reading. The scribes were evidently motivated to add such qualifications (interpolated from v. 4) to insulate Paul’s gospel from charges that it was characterized too much by grace. The KJV follows the longest reading found in Ï.

[1:20]  ²⁷ tc The presence or absence of the second occurrence of the phrase δι᾿ αὐτοῦ (di’ autou, “through him”) is a difficult textual problem to solve. External evidence is fairly evenly divided. Many ancient and excellent witnesses lack the phrase (B D* F G I 0278 81 1175 1739 1881 2464 al latt sa), but equally important witnesses have it (Ì⁴⁶ א A C D¹ Ψ 048^vid 33 Ï). Both readings have strong Alexandrian support, which makes the problem difficult to decide on external evidence alone. Internal evidence points to the inclusion of the phrase as original. The word immediately preceding the phrase is the masculine pronoun αὐτοῦ (autou); thus the possibility of omission through homoioteleuton in various witnesses is likely. Scribes might have deleted the phrase because of perceived redundancy or awkwardness in the sense: The shorter reading is smoother and more elegant, so scribes would be prone to correct the text in that direction. As far as style is concerned, repetition of key words and phrases for emphasis is not foreign to the corpus Paulinum (see, e.g., Rom 8:23, Eph 1:13, 2 Cor 12:7). In short, it is easier to account for the shorter reading arising from the longer reading than vice versa, so the longer reading is more likely original.

[1:18]  ²⁸ tn Grk “Having willed, he gave us birth.”

[14:4]  ²⁹ tn The aorist passive verb is rendered as a reflexive (“defiled themselves”) by BDAG 657 s.v. μολύνω 2.