Ezra 9:2

9:2 Indeed, they have taken some of their daughters as wives for themselves and for their sons, so that the holy race ¹  has become intermingled with the local residents. Worse still, the leaders and the officials have been at the forefront of all of this!”

Isaiah 52:1

52:1 Wake up! Wake up!

Clothe yourself with strength, O Zion!

Put on your beautiful clothes,

O Jerusalem, ²  holy city!

For uncircumcised and unclean pagans

will no longer invade you.

Malachi 2:15-16

2:15 No one who has even a small portion of the Spirit in him does this. ³  What did our ancestor ⁴  do when seeking a child from God? Be attentive, then, to your own spirit, for one should not be disloyal to the wife he took in his youth. ⁵  2:16 “I hate divorce,” ⁶  says the Lord God of Israel, “and the one who is guilty of violence,” ⁷  says the Lord who rules over all. “Pay attention to your conscience, and do not be unfaithful.”

Acts 10:23

10:23 So Peter ⁸  invited them in and entertained them as guests.

On the next day he got up and set out ⁹  with them, and some of the brothers from Joppa ¹⁰  accompanied him.

Romans 11:16

11:16 If the first portion ¹¹  of the dough offered is holy, then the whole batch is holy, and if the root is holy, so too are the branches. ¹² 

¹ tn Heb “the holy seed,” referring to the Israelites as God’s holy people.

² map For location see Map5-B1; Map6-F3; Map7-E2; Map8-F2; Map10-B3; JP1-F4; JP2-F4; JP3-F4; JP4-F4.

³ tn Heb “and not one has done, and a remnant of the spirit to him.” The very elliptical nature of the statement suggests it is proverbial. The present translation represents an attempt to clarify the meaning of the statement (cf. NASB).

⁴ tn Heb “the one.” This is an oblique reference to Abraham who sought to obtain God’s blessing by circumventing God’s own plan for him by taking Hagar as wife (Gen 16:1-6). The result of this kind of intermarriage was, of course, disastrous (Gen 16:11-12).

⁵ sn The wife he took in his youth probably refers to the first wife one married (cf. NCV “the wife you married when you were young”).

⁶ tc The verb שָׂנֵא (sane’) appears to be a third person form, “he hates,” which makes little sense in the context, unless one emends the following word to a third person verb as well. Then one might translate, “he [who] hates [his wife] [and] divorces her…is guilty of violence.” A similar translation is advocated by M. A. Shields, “Syncretism and Divorce in Malachi 2,10-16,” ZAW 111 (1999): 81-85. However, it is possible that the first person pronoun אָנֹכִי (’anokhi, “I”) has accidentally dropped from the text after כִּי (ki). If one restores the pronoun, the form שָׂנֵא can be taken as a participle and the text translated, “for I hate” (so NAB, NASB, NRSV, NLT).

⁷ tn Heb “him who covers his garment with violence” (similar ASV, NRSV). Here “garment” is a metaphor for appearance and “violence” a metonymy of effect for cause. God views divorce as an act of violence against the victim.

⁸ tn Grk “he”; the referent (Peter) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

⁹ tn Or “went forth.”

¹⁰ sn Some of the brothers from Joppa. As v. 45 makes clear, there were Jewish Christians in this group of witnesses.

¹¹ tn Grk “firstfruits,” a term for the first part of something that has been set aside and offered to God before the remainder can be used.

¹² sn Most interpreters see Paul as making use of a long-standing metaphor of the olive tree (the root…the branches) as a symbol for Israel. See, in this regard, Jer 11:16, 19. A. T. Hanson, Studies in Paul’s Technique and Theology, 121-24, cites rabbinic use of the figure of the olive tree, and goes so far as to argue that Rom 11:17-24 is a midrash on Jer 11:16-19.