Deuteronomy 30:6

30:6 The Lord your God will also cleanse ¹  your heart and the hearts of your descendants ²  so that you may love him ³  with all your mind and being and so that you may live.

Leviticus 26:41

26:41 (and I myself will walk in hostility against them and bring them into the land of their enemies), and ⁴  then their uncircumcised hearts become humbled and they make up for ⁵  their iniquity,

Jeremiah 4:4

4:4 Just as ritual circumcision cuts away the foreskin

as an external symbol of dedicated covenant commitment,

you must genuinely dedicate yourselves to the Lord

and get rid of everything that hinders your commitment to me, ⁶ 

people of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem.

If you do not, ⁷  my anger will blaze up like a flaming fire against you

that no one will be able to extinguish.

That will happen because of the evil you have done.”

Jeremiah 4:14

4:14 “Oh people of Jerusalem, purify your hearts from evil ⁸ 

so that you may yet be delivered.

How long will you continue to harbor up

wicked schemes within you?

Romans 2:28-29

2:28 For a person is not a Jew who is one outwardly, nor is circumcision something that is outward in the flesh, 2:29 but someone is a Jew who is one inwardly, and circumcision is of the heart ⁹  by the Spirit ¹⁰  and not by the written code. ¹¹  This person’s ¹²  praise is not from people but from God.

Colossians 2:11

2:11 In him you also were circumcised – not, however, ¹³  with a circumcision performed by human hands, but by the removal ¹⁴  of the fleshly body, ¹⁵  that is, ¹⁶  through the circumcision done by Christ.

¹ tn Heb “circumcise” (so KJV, NAB, NIV, NRSV); TEV “will give you and your descendents obedient hearts.” See note on the word “cleanse” in Deut 10:16.

² tn Heb “seed” (so KJV, ASV).

³ tn Heb “the Lord your God.” See note on the second occurrence of the word “he” in v. 3.

⁴ tn Heb “or then,” although the LXX has “then” and the Syriac “and then.”

⁵ tn Heb “and then they make up for.” On the verb “make up for” see the note on v. 34 above.

⁶ tn Heb “Circumcise yourselves to the Lord and remove the foreskin of your heart.” The translation is again an attempt to bring out the meaning of a metaphor. The mention of the “foreskin of the heart” shows that the passage is obviously metaphorical and involves heart attitude, not an external rite.

⁷ tn Heb “lest.”

⁸ tn Heb “Oh, Jerusalem, wash your heart from evil.”

⁹ sn On circumcision is of the heart see Lev 26:41; Deut 10:16; Jer 4:4; Ezek 44:9.

¹⁰ tn Some have taken the phrase ἐν πνεύματι (en pneumati, “by/in [the] S/spirit”) not as a reference to the Holy Spirit, but referring to circumcision as “spiritual and not literal” (RSV).

¹¹ tn Grk “letter.”

¹² tn Grk “whose.” The relative pronoun has been replaced by the phrase “this person’s” and, because of the length and complexity of the Greek sentence, a new sentence was started in the translation.

¹³ tn The terms “however” and “but” in this sentence were supplied in order to emphasize the contrast.

¹⁴ tn The articular noun τῇ ἀπεκδύσει (th apekdusei) is a noun which ends in -σις (-sis) and therefore denotes action, i.e., “removal.” Since the head noun is a verbal noun, the following genitive τοῦ σώματος (tou swmatos) is understood as an objective genitive, receiving the action of the head noun.

¹⁵ tn Grk “in the removal of the body of flesh.” The genitive τῆς σαρκός (th" sarko") has been translated as an attributive genitive, “fleshly body.”

¹⁶ tn The second prepositional phrase beginning with ἐν τῇ περιτομῇ (en th peritomh) is parallel to the prepositional phrase ἐν τῇ ἀπεκδύσει (en th apekdusei) and gives a further explanation of it. The words “that is” were supplied to bring out this force in the translation.