Deuteronomy 4:19

4:19 When you look up ¹  to the sky ²  and see the sun, moon, and stars – the whole heavenly creation ³  – you must not be seduced to worship and serve them, ⁴  for the Lord your God has assigned ⁵  them to all the people ⁶  of the world. ⁷ 

Deuteronomy 4:2

4:2 Do not add a thing to what I command you nor subtract from it, so that you may keep the commandments of the Lord your God that I am delivering to ⁸  you.

Deuteronomy 21:3

21:3 Then the elders of the city nearest to the corpse ⁹  must take from the herd a heifer that has not been worked – that has never pulled with the yoke –

Job 31:26-27

31:26 if I looked at the sun ¹⁰  when it was shining,

and the moon advancing as a precious thing,

31:27 so that my heart was secretly enticed,

and my hand threw them a kiss from my mouth, ¹¹ 

Jeremiah 8:2

8:2 They will be spread out and exposed to the sun, the moon and the stars. ¹²  These are things they ¹³  adored and served, things to which they paid allegiance, ¹⁴  from which they sought guidance, and worshiped. The bones of these people ¹⁵  will never be regathered and reburied. They will be like manure used to fertilize the ground. ¹⁶ 

Ezekiel 8:16

8:16 Then he brought me to the inner court of the Lord’s house. Right there ¹⁷  at the entrance to the Lord’s temple, between the porch and the altar, ¹⁸  were about twenty-five ¹⁹  men with their backs to the Lord’s temple, ²⁰  facing east – they were worshiping the sun ²¹  toward the east!

¹ tn Heb “lest you lift up your eyes.” In the Hebrew text vv. 16-19 are subordinated to “Be careful” in v. 15, but this makes for an unduly long sentence in English.

² tn Or “heavens.” The Hebrew term שָׁמַיִם (shamayim) may be translated “heaven(s)” or “sky” depending on the context.

³ tn Heb “all the host of heaven.”

⁴ tn In the Hebrew text the verbal sequence in v. 19 is “lest you look up…and see…and be seduced…and worship them…and serve them.” However, the first two actions are not prohibited in and of themselves. The prohibition pertains to the final three actions. The first two verbs describe actions that are logically subordinate to the following actions and can be treated as temporal or circumstantial: “lest, looking up…and seeing…, you are seduced.” See Joüon 2:635 §168.h.

⁵ tn Or “allotted.”

⁶ tn Or “nations.”

⁷ tn Heb “under all the heaven.”

⁸ tn Heb “commanding.”

⁹ tn Heb “slain [one].”

¹⁰ tn Heb “light”; but parallel to the moon it is the sun. This section speaks of false worship of the sun and the moon.

¹¹ tn Heb “and my hand kissed my mouth.” The idea should be that of “my mouth kissed my hand.” H. H. Rowley suggests that the hand was important in waving or throwing the kisses of homage to the sun and the moon, and so it receives the focus. This is the only place in the OT that refers to such a custom. Outside the Bible it was known, however.

¹² tc MT, 4QJer^a and LXX read “the sun and the moon and all the host of heaven,” but 4QJer^c reads “the sun and all the stars.”

¹³ tn Heb “the sun, moon, and host of heaven which they…”

¹⁴ tn Heb “followed after.” See the translator’s note at 2:5 for the idiom.

¹⁵ tn Heb “they will not” but the referent is far enough removed that it might be ambiguous.

¹⁶ tn Heb “like dung/manure on the surface of the ground.”

¹⁷ tn The word הִנֵּה (hinneh, traditionally “behold”) indicates becoming aware of something.

¹⁸ sn The priests prayed to God between the porch and the altar on fast days (Joel 2:17). This is the location where Zechariah was murdered (Matt 23:35).

¹⁹ tc The LXX reads “twenty” instead of twenty-five, perhaps because of the association of the number twenty with the Mesopotamian sun god Shamash.

²⁰ sn The temple faced east.

²¹ tn Or “the sun god.”