23:4 “‘These are the Lord’s appointed times, holy assemblies, which you must proclaim at their appointed time.
65:9 You visit the earth and give it rain; 5
you make it rich and fertile 6
with overflowing streams full of water. 7
You provide grain for them, 8
for you prepare the earth to yield its crops. 9
65:10 You saturate 10 its furrows,
and soak 11 its plowed ground. 12
With rain showers you soften its soil, 13
and make its crops grow. 14
65:11 You crown the year with your good blessings, 15
and you leave abundance in your wake. 16
65:12 The pastures in the wilderness glisten with moisture, 17
and the hills are clothed with joy. 18
65:13 The meadows are clothed with sheep,
and the valleys are covered with grain.
They shout joyfully, yes, they sing.
74:16 You established the cycle of day and night; 19
you put the moon 20 and sun in place. 21
84:11 For the Lord God is our sovereign protector. 22
The Lord bestows favor 23 and honor;
he withholds no good thing from those who have integrity. 24
14:1 The same thing happened in Iconium 33 when Paul and Barnabas 34 went into the Jewish synagogue 35 and spoke in such a way that a large group 36 of both Jews and Greeks believed.
6:1 Now in those 37 days, when the disciples were growing in number, 38 a complaint arose on the part of the Greek-speaking Jews 39 against the native Hebraic Jews, 40 because their widows 41 were being overlooked 42 in the daily distribution of food. 43
1 tn Heb “the
2 tn Heb “and.” The Hebrew conjunction ו (vav, “and”) can be considered to have resultative force here.
3 tn Heb “the tree of the field will give its fruit.” As a collective singular this has been translated as plural.
4 tn Heb “and my sanctuary you shall fear.” Cf. NCV “respect”; CEV “honor.”
5 tn The verb form is a Polel from שׁוּק (shuq, “be abundant”), a verb which appears only here and in Joel 2:24 and 3:13, where it is used in the Hiphil stem and means “overflow.”
6 tn Heb “you greatly enrich it.”
7 tn Heb “[with] a channel of God full of water.” The divine name is probably used here in a superlative sense to depict a very deep stream (“a stream fit for God,” as it were).
8 tn The pronoun apparently refers to the people of the earth, mentioned in v. 8.
9 tn Heb “for thus [referring to the provision of rain described in the first half of the verse] you prepare it.” The third feminine singular pronominal suffix attached to the verb “prepare” refers back to the “earth,” which is a feminine noun with regard to grammatical form.
10 tn Heb “saturating” [the form is an infinitive absolute].
11 tn Heb “flatten, cause to sink.”
12 tn Heb “trenches,” or “furrows.”
13 tn Heb “soften it,” that is, the earth.
14 tn Heb “its vegetation you bless.” Divine “blessing” often involves endowing an object with special power or capacity.
15 tn Heb “your good,” which refers here to agricultural blessings.
16 tn Heb “and your paths drip with abundance.”
17 tn Heb “drip.”
18 tn That is, with rich vegetation that brings joy to those who see it.
19 tn Heb “To you [is] day, also to you [is] night.”
20 tn Heb “[the] light.” Following the reference to “day and night” and in combination with “sun,” it is likely that the Hebrew term מָאוֹר (ma’or, “light”) refers here to the moon.
21 tn Heb “you established [the] light and [the] sun.”
22 tn Heb “[is] a sun and a shield.” The epithet “sun,” though rarely used of Israel’s God in the OT, was a well-attested royal title in the ancient Near East. For several examples from Ugaritic texts, the Amarna letters, and Assyrian royal inscriptions, see R. B. Chisholm, “An Exegetical and Theological Study of Psalm 18/2 Samuel 22” (Th.D. diss., Dallas Theological Seminary, 1983), 131, n. 2.
23 tn Or “grace.”
24 tn Heb “he does not withhold good to those walking in integrity.”
25 tn Here the Hebrew word צְדָקָה (tsÿdaqah), usually translated “righteousness” (so KJV, NIV, NRSV, NLT; cf. NAB “justice”), has been rendered as “vindication” because it is the vindication of God’s people that is in view in the context. Cf. BDB 842 s.v. צְדָקָה 6; “righteousness as vindicated, justification, salvation, etc.”
26 sn The point of the metaphor of healing wings is unclear. The sun seems to be compared to a bird. Perhaps the sun’s “wings” are its warm rays. “Healing” may refer to a reversal of the injury done by evildoers (see Mal 3:5).
27 tn Heb “you will go out and skip about.”
28 tn Grk “be sons of your Father in heaven.” Here, however, the focus is not on attaining a relationship (becoming a child of God) but rather on being the kind of person who shares the characteristics of God himself (a frequent meaning of the Semitic idiom “son of”). See L&N 58.26.
29 tn The participle ἀγαθουργῶν (agaqourgwn) is regarded as indicating means here, parallel to the following participles διδούς (didou") and ἐμπιπλῶν (empiplwn). This is the easiest way to understand the Greek structure. Semantically, the first participle is a general statement, followed by two participles giving specific examples of doing good.
30 tn Or “from the sky” (the same Greek word means both “heaven” and “sky”).
31 tn Grk “satisfying [filling] your hearts with food and joy.” This is an idiomatic expression; it strikes the English reader as strange to speak of “filling one’s heart with food.” Thus the additional direct object “you” has been supplied, separating the two expressions somewhat: “satisfying you with food and your hearts with joy.”
32 sn God’s general sovereignty and gracious care in the creation are the way Paul introduces the theme of the goodness of God. He was trying to establish monotheism here. It is an OT theme (Gen 8:22; Ps 4:7; 145:15-16; 147:8-9; Isa 25:6; Jer 5:24) which also appears in the NT (Luke 12:22-34).
33 sn Iconium. See the note in 13:51.
34 tn Grk “they”; the referents (Paul and Barnabas) have been specified in the translation for clarity.
35 sn See the note on synagogue in 6:9.
36 tn Or “that a large crowd.”
37 tn Grk “these.” The translation uses “those” for stylistic reasons.
38 tn Grk “were multiplying.”
39 tn Grk “the Hellenists,” but this descriptive term is largely unknown to the modern English reader. The translation “Greek-speaking Jews” attempts to convey something of who these were, but it was more than a matter of language spoken; it involved a degree of adoption of Greek culture as well.
40 tn Grk “against the Hebrews,” but as with “Hellenists” this needs further explanation for the modern reader.
41 sn The care of widows is a major biblical theme: Deut 10:18; 16:11, 14; 24:17, 19-21; 26:12-13; 27:19; Isa 1:17-23; Jer 7:6; Mal 3:5.
42 tn Or “neglected.”
43 tn Grk “in the daily serving.”