9:7 Remember – don’t ever forget 1 – how you provoked the Lord your God in the desert; from the time you left the land of Egypt until you came to this place you were constantly rebelling against him. 2 9:8 At Horeb you provoked him and he was angry enough with you to destroy you. 9:9 When I went up the mountain to receive the stone tablets, the tablets of the covenant that the Lord made with you, I remained there 3 forty days and nights, eating and drinking nothing. 9:10 The Lord gave me the two stone tablets, written by the very finger 4 of God, and on them was everything 5 he 6 said to you at the mountain from the midst of the fire at the time of that assembly. 9:11 Now at the end of the forty days and nights the Lord presented me with the two stone tablets, the tablets of the covenant. 9:12 And he said to me, “Get up, go down at once from here because your people whom you brought out of Egypt have sinned! They have quickly turned from the way I commanded them and have made for themselves a cast metal image.” 7 9:13 Moreover, he said to me, “I have taken note of these people; they are a stubborn 8 lot! 9:14 Stand aside 9 and I will destroy them, obliterating their very name from memory, 10 and I will make you into a stronger and more numerous nation than they are.”
9:15 So I turned and went down the mountain while it 11 was blazing with fire; the two tablets of the covenant were in my hands. 9:16 When I looked, you had indeed sinned against the Lord your God and had cast for yourselves a metal calf; 12 you had quickly turned aside from the way he 13 had commanded you! 9:17 I grabbed the two tablets, threw them down, 14 and shattered them before your very eyes. 9:18 Then I again fell down before the Lord for forty days and nights; I ate and drank nothing because of all the sin you had committed, doing such evil before the Lord as to enrage him. 9:19 For I was terrified at the Lord’s intense anger 15 that threatened to destroy you. But he 16 listened to me this time as well. 9:20 The Lord was also angry enough at Aaron to kill him, but at that time I prayed for him 17 too. 9:21 As for your sinful thing 18 that you had made, the calf, I took it, melted it down, 19 ground it up until it was as fine as dust, and tossed the dust into the stream that flows down the mountain. 9:22 Moreover, you continued to provoke the Lord at Taberah, 20 Massah, 21 and Kibroth-Hattaavah. 22 9:23 And when he 23 sent you from Kadesh-Barnea and told you, “Go up and possess the land I have given you,” you rebelled against the Lord your God 24 and would neither believe nor obey him. 9:24 You have been rebelling against him 25 from the very first day I knew you!
51:5 Look, I was guilty of sin from birth,
a sinner the moment my mother conceived me. 26
58:3 The wicked turn aside from birth; 27
liars go astray as soon as they are born. 28
1 tn By juxtaposing the positive זְכֹר (zekhor, “remember”) with the negative אַל־תִּשְׁכַּח (’al-tishÿkakh, “do not forget”), Moses makes a most emphatic plea.
2 tn Heb “the
3 tn Heb “in the mountain.” The demonstrative pronoun has been used in the translation for stylistic reasons.
4 sn The very finger of God. This is a double figure of speech (1) in which God is ascribed human features (anthropomorphism) and (2) in which a part stands for the whole (synecdoche). That is, God, as Spirit, has no literal finger nor, if he had, would he write with his finger. Rather, the sense is that God himself – not Moses in any way – was responsible for the composition of the Ten Commandments (cf. Exod 31:18; 32:16; 34:1).
5 tn Heb “according to all the words.”
6 tn Heb “the
7 tc Heb “a casting.” The MT reads מַסֵּכָה (massekhah, “a cast thing”) but some
8 tn Heb “stiff-necked.” See note on the word “stubborn” in 9:6.
9 tn Heb “leave me alone.”
10 tn Heb “from under heaven.”
11 tn Heb “the mountain.” The translation uses a pronoun for stylistic reasons to avoid redundancy.
12 tn On the phrase “metal calf,” see note on the term “metal image” in v. 12.
13 tn Heb “the
14 tn The Hebrew text includes “from upon my two hands,” but as this seems somewhat obvious and redundant, it has been left untranslated for stylistic reasons.
15 tn Heb “the anger and the wrath.” Although many English versions translate as two terms, this construction is a hendiadys which serves to intensify the emotion (cf. NAB, TEV “fierce anger”).
16 tn Heb “the
17 tn Heb “Aaron.” The pronoun is used in the translation to avoid redundancy.
18 tn Heb “your sin.” This is a metonymy in which the effect (sin) stands for the cause (the metal calf).
19 tn Heb “burned it with fire.”
20 sn Taberah. By popular etymology this derives from the Hebrew verb בָעַר (ba’ar, “to burn”), thus, here, “burning.” The reference is to the
21 sn Massah. See note on this term in Deut 6:16.
22 sn Kibroth-Hattaavah. This place name means in Hebrew “burial places of appetite,” that is, graves that resulted from overindulgence. The reference is to the Israelites stuffing themselves with the quail God had provided and doing so with thanklessness (Num 11:31-35).
23 tn Heb “the
24 tn Heb “the mouth of the Lord your God,” that is, against the commandment that he had spoken.
25 tn Heb “the
26 tn Heb “Look, in wrongdoing I was brought forth, and in sin my mother conceived me.” The prefixed verbal form in the second line is probably a preterite (without vav [ו] consecutive), stating a simple historical fact. The psalmist is not suggesting that he was conceived through an inappropriate sexual relationship (although the verse has sometimes been understood to mean that, or even that all sexual relationships are sinful). The psalmist’s point is that he has been a sinner from the very moment his personal existence began. By going back beyond the time of birth to the moment of conception, the psalmist makes his point more emphatically in the second line than in the first.
27 tn Heb “from the womb.”
28 tn Heb “speakers of a lie go astray from the womb.”
29 tn Heb “in water you were not washed for cleansing” or “with water you were not washed smooth” (see D. I. Block, Ezekiel [NICOT], 1:473, n. 57, for a discussion of possible meanings of this hapax legomenon).
30 sn Arab midwives still cut the umbilical cords of infants and then proceed to apply salt and oil to their bodies.
31 sn These verbs, “pity” and “spare,” echo the judgment oracles in 5:11; 7:4, 9; 8:18; 9:5, 10.
32 sn A similar concept is found in Deut 32:10.
33 sn Among whom. The relative pronoun phrase that begins v. 3 is identical, except for gender, to the one that begins v. 2 (ἐν αἵς [en Jais], ἐν οἵς [en Jois]). By the structure, the author is building an argument for our hopeless condition: We lived in sin and we lived among sinful people. Our doom looked to be sealed as well in v. 2: Both the external environment (kingdom of the air) and our internal motivation and attitude (the spirit that is now energizing) were under the devil’s thumb (cf. 2 Cor 4:4).
34 tn Grk “we all.”
35 tn Or “even.”
36 sn Children of wrath is a Semitic idiom which may mean either “people characterized by wrath” or “people destined for wrath.”
37 sn Eph 2:1-3. The translation of vv. 1-3 is very literal, even to the point of retaining the awkward syntax of the original. See note on the word dead in 2:1.