14:1 You are children 2 of the Lord your God. Do not cut yourselves or shave your forehead bald 3 for the sake of the dead.
22:30 (23:1) 4 A man may not marry 5 his father’s former 6 wife and in this way dishonor his father. 7
23:17 There must never be a sacred prostitute 8 among the young women 9 of Israel nor a sacred male prostitute 10 among the young men 11 of Israel.
24:17 You must not pervert justice due a resident foreigner or an orphan, or take a widow’s garment as security for a loan.
1 tn Heb “the mouth of the
2 tn Heb “sons” (so NASB); TEV, NLT “people.”
3 sn Do not cut yourselves or shave your forehead bald. These were pagan practices associated with mourning the dead; they were not be imitated by God’s people (though they frequently were; cf. 1 Kgs 18:28; Jer 16:6; 41:5; 47:5; Hos 7:14 [LXX]; Mic 5:1). For other warnings against such practices see Lev 21:5; Jer 16:5.
3 sn Beginning with 22:30, the verse numbers through 23:25 in the English Bible differ from the verse numbers in the Hebrew text (BHS), with 22:30 ET = 23:1 HT, 23:1 ET = 23:2 HT, 23:2 ET = 23:3 HT, etc., through 23:25 ET = 23:26 HT. With 24:1 the verse numbers in the ET and HT are again the same.
4 tn Heb “take.” In context this refers to marriage, as in the older English expression “take a wife.”
5 sn This presupposes either the death of the father or their divorce since it would be impossible for one to marry his stepmother while his father was still married to her.
6 tn Heb “uncover his father’s skirt” (so ASV, NASB). This appears to be a circumlocution for describing the dishonor that would come to a father by having his own son share his wife’s sexuality (cf. NAB, NIV “dishonor his father’s bed”).
4 tn The Hebrew term translated “sacred prostitute” here (קְדֵשָׁה [qÿdeshah], from קַדֵשׁ [qadesh, “holy”]; cf. NIV “shrine prostitute”; NASB “cult prostitute”; NRSV, TEV, NLT “temple prostitute”) refers to the pagan fertility cults that employed female and male prostitutes in various rituals designed to evoke agricultural and even human fecundity (cf. Gen 38:21-22; 1 Kgs 14:24; 15:12; 22:47; 2 Kgs 23:7; Hos 4:14). The Hebrew term for a regular, noncultic (i.e., “secular”) female prostitute is זוֹנָה (zonah).
5 tn Heb “daughters.”
6 tn The male cultic prostitute was called קָדֵשׁ (qadesh; see note on the phrase “sacred prostitute” earlier in this verse). The colloquial Hebrew term for a “secular” male prostitute (i.e., a sodomite) is the disparaging epithet כֶּלֶב (kelev, “dog”) which occurs in the following verse (cf. KJV, ASV, NAB, NASB).
7 tn Heb “sons.”
5 tn Heb “you will not be confident in your life.” The phrase “from one day to the next” is implied by the following verse.
6 tn Heb “your heart,” as a metonymy for the person.
7 tn Or “dimmed.” The term could refer to dull appearance or to dimness caused by some loss of visual acuity.
8 tn Heb “sap.” That is, he was still in possession of his faculties or liveliness.
8 sn See Num 12:8; Deut 18:15-18.