2 Chronicles 32:20-21

32:20 King Hezekiah and the prophet Isaiah son of Amoz prayed about this and cried out to heaven. 32:21 The Lord sent a messenger ¹  and he wiped out all the soldiers, princes, and officers in the army of the king of Assyria. So Sennacherib ²  returned home humiliated. ³  When he entered the temple of his god, some of his own sons ⁴  struck him down with the sword.

Psalms 112:1-3

Psalm 112 ⁵ 

112:1 Praise the Lord!

How blessed is the one ⁶  who obeys ⁷  the Lord,

who takes great delight in keeping his commands. ⁸ 

112:2 His descendants ⁹  will be powerful on the earth;

the godly ¹⁰  will be blessed.

112:3 His house contains wealth and riches;

his integrity endures. ¹¹ 

Proverbs 15:16

15:16 Better ¹²  is little with the fear of the Lord

than great wealth and turmoil ¹³  with it. ¹⁴ 

Proverbs 19:23

19:23 Fearing the Lord ¹⁵  leads ¹⁶  to life, ¹⁷ 

and one who does so will live ¹⁸  satisfied; he will not be afflicted ¹⁹  by calamity.

Matthew 6:33

6:33 But above all pursue his kingdom ²⁰  and righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.

Matthew 6:2

6:2 Thus whenever you do charitable giving, ²¹  do not blow a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in synagogues ²²  and on streets so that people will praise them. I tell you the truth, ²³  they have their reward.

Colossians 1:10

1:10 so that you may live ²⁴  worthily of the Lord and please him in all respects ²⁵  – bearing fruit in every good deed, growing in the knowledge of God,

Colossians 1:1

Salutation

1:1 From Paul, ²⁶  an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and Timothy our brother,

Colossians 4:8

4:8 I sent him to you for this very purpose, that you may know how we are doing ²⁷  and that he may encourage your hearts.

Colossians 1:6

1:6 that has come to you. Just as in the entire world this gospel ²⁸  is bearing fruit and growing, so it has also been bearing fruit and growing ²⁹  among you from the first day you heard it and understood the grace of God in truth.

¹ tn Or “an angel.”

² tn Heb “he”; the referent (Sennacherib) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

³ tn Heb “and he returned with shame of face to his land.”

⁴ tn Heb “and some from those who went out from him, from his inward parts.”

⁵ sn Psalm 112. This wisdom psalm lists some of the benefits of living a godly life. The psalm is an acrostic. After the introductory call to praise, every poetic line (twenty-two in all) begins with a successive letter of the Hebrew alphabet.

⁶ tn Heb “[Oh] the happiness [of] the man.” Hebrew wisdom literature often assumes and reflects the male-oriented perspective of ancient Israelite society. The individual is representative of a larger group, called the “godly” in vv. 3-4. The principle of the psalm is certainly applicable to all people, regardless of their gender. To facilitate modern application, we translate the gender specific “man” with the more neutral “one.” The generic masculine pronoun is used in the following verses.

⁷ tn Heb “fears.”

⁸ tn Heb “in his commands he delights very much.” The words “in keeping” are supplied in the translation for clarification. Taking delight in the law is metonymic here for obeying God’s moral will. See Ps 1:2.

⁹ tn Or “offspring”; Heb “seed.”

¹⁰ tn Heb “His seed will be mighty on the earth, the generation of the godly.” The Hebrew term דוֹר (dor, “generation”) could be taken as parallel to “offspring” and translated “posterity,” but the singular more likely refers to the godly as a class. See BDB 189-90 s.v. for other examples where “generation” refers to a class of people.

¹¹ tn Heb “stands forever.”

¹² sn One of the frequent characteristics of wisdom literature is the “better” saying; it is a comparison of different but similar things to determine which is to be preferred. These two verses focus on spiritual things being better than troubled material things.

¹³ sn Turmoil refers to anxiety; the fear of the Lord alleviates anxiety, for it brings with it contentment and confidence.

¹⁴ sn Not all wealth has turmoil with it. But the proverb is focusing on the comparison of two things – fear of the Lord with little and wealth with turmoil. Between these two, the former is definitely better.

¹⁵ tn Heb “the fear of the Lord.” This expression features an objective genitive: “fearing the Lord.”

¹⁶ tn The term “leads” does not appear in the Hebrew but is supplied in the translation for the sake of clarity and style.

¹⁷ tn Here “life” is probably a metonymy of subject for “blessings and prosperity in life.” The plural form often covers a person’s “lifetime.”

¹⁸ tn The subject of this verb is probably the one who fears the Lord and enjoys life. So the proverb uses synthetic parallelism; the second half tells what this life is like – it is an abiding contentment that is not threatened by calamity (cf. NCV “unbothered by trouble”).

¹⁹ tn Heb “he will not be visited” (so KJV, ASV). The verb פָּקַד (paqad) is often translated “visit.” It describes intervention that will change the destiny. If God “visits” it means he intervenes to bless or to curse. To be “visited by trouble” means that calamity will interfere with the course of life and change the direction or the destiny. Therefore this is not referring to a minor trouble that one might briefly experience. A life in the Lord cannot be disrupted by such major catastrophes that would alter one’s destiny.

²⁰ tc ‡ Most mss (L W Θ 0233 Ë^1,13 33 Ï lat sy mae) read τὴν βασιλείαν τοῦ θεοῦ καὶ τὴν δικαιοσύνην αὐτοῦ (thn basileian tou qeou kai thn dikaiosunhn aujtou, “the kingdom of God and his righteousness”) here, but the words “of God” are lacking in א B pc sa bo Eus. On the one hand, there is the possibility of accidental omission on the part of these Alexandrian witnesses, but it seems unlikely that the scribe’s eye would skip over both words (especially since τοῦ θεοῦ is bracketed by first declension nouns). Intrinsically, the author generally has a genitive modifier with βασιλεία – especially θεοῦ or οὐρανῶν (ouranwn) – but this argument cuts both ways: Although he might be expected to use such an adjunct here, scribes might also be familiar with his practice and would thus naturally insert it if it were missing in their copy of Matthew. Although a decision is difficult, the omission of τοῦ θεοῦ is considered most likely to be original. NA²⁷ includes the words in brackets, indicating doubt as to their authenticity.

²¹ tn Grk “give alms,” but this term is not in common use today. The giving of alms was highly regarded in the ancient world (Deut 15:7-11).

²² sn See the note on synagogues in 4:23.

²³ tn Grk “Truly (ἀμήν, amhn), I say to you.”

²⁴ tn The infinitive περιπατῆσαι (peripathsai, “to walk, to live, to live one’s life”) is best taken as an infinitive of purpose related to “praying” (προσευχόμενοι, proseucomenoi) and “asking” (αἰτούμενοι, aitoumenoi) in v. 9 and is thus translated as “that you may live.”

²⁵ tn BDAG 129 s.v. ἀρεσκεία states that ἀρεσκείαν (areskeian) refers to a “desire to please εἰς πᾶσαν ἀ. to please (the Lord) in all respects Col 1:10.”

²⁶ tn Grk “Paul.” The word “from” is not in the Greek text, but has been supplied to indicate the sender of the letter.

²⁷ tn Grk “the things concerning us.”

²⁸ tn Grk “just as in the entire world it is bearing fruit.” The antecedent (“the gospel”) of the implied subject (“it”) of ἐστιν (estin) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

²⁹ tn Though the participles are periphrastic with the present tense verb ἐστίν (estin), the presence of the temporal indicator “from the day” in the next clause indicates that this is a present tense that reaches into the past and should be translated as “has been bearing fruit and growing.” For a discussion of this use of the present tense, see ExSyn 519-20.