Genesis 17:14

17:14 Any uncircumcised male ¹  who has not been circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin will be cut off ²  from his people – he has failed to carry out my requirement.” ³ 

Exodus 19:5

19:5 And now, if you will diligently listen to me ⁴  and keep ⁵  my covenant, then you will be my ⁶  special possession ⁷  out of all the nations, for all the earth is mine,

Exodus 24:7

24:7 He took the Book of the Covenant ⁸  and read it aloud ⁹  to the people, and they said, “We are willing to do and obey ¹⁰  all that the Lord has spoken.”

Deuteronomy 31:16

31:16 Then the Lord said to Moses, “You are about to die, ¹¹  and then these people will begin to prostitute themselves with the foreign gods of the land into which they ¹²  are going. They ¹³  will reject ¹⁴  me and break my covenant that I have made with them. ¹⁵ 

Isaiah 24:5

24:5 The earth is defiled by ¹⁶  its inhabitants, ¹⁷ 

for they have violated laws,

disregarded the regulation, ¹⁸ 

and broken the permanent treaty. ¹⁹ 

Jeremiah 11:10

11:10 They have gone back to the evil ways ²⁰  of their ancestors of old who refused to obey what I told them. They, too, have paid allegiance to ²¹  other gods and worshiped them. Both the nation of Israel and the nation of Judah ²²  have violated the covenant I made with their ancestors.

Jeremiah 31:32

31:32 It will not be like the old ²³  covenant that I made with their ancestors ²⁴  when I delivered them ²⁵  from Egypt. For they violated that covenant, even though I was like a faithful husband to them,” ²⁶  says the Lord. ²⁷ 

Ezekiel 16:59

16:59 “‘For this is what the sovereign Lord says: I will deal with you according to what you have done when you despised your oath by breaking your covenant.

Hebrews 8:9

8:9 “It will not be like the covenant ²⁸  that I made with their fathers, on the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they did not continue in my covenant and I had no regard for them, says the Lord.

¹ tn The disjunctive clause calls attention to the “uncircumcised male” and what will happen to him.

² tn Heb “that person will be cut off.” The words “that person” have not been included in the translation for stylistic reasons.

³ tn Heb “he has broken my covenant.” The noun בְּרִית (bÿrit) here refers to the obligation required by God in conjunction with the covenantal agreement. For the range of meaning of the term, see the note on the word “requirement” in v. 9.

⁴ tn Heb “listen to my voice.” The construction uses the imperfect tense in the conditional clause, preceded by the infinitive absolute from the same verb. The idiom “listen to the voice of” implies obedience, not just mental awareness of sound.

⁵ tn The verb is a perfect tense with vav (ו) consecutive; it continues the idea in the protasis of the sentence: “and [if you will] keep.”

⁶ tn The lamed preposition expresses possession here: “to me” means “my.”

⁷ tn The noun is סְגֻלָּה (sÿgullah), which means a special possession. Israel was to be God’s special possession, but the prophets will later narrow it to the faithful remnant. All the nations belong to God, but Israel was to stand in a place of special privilege and enormous responsibility. See Deut 7:6; 14:2; 26:18; Ps 135:4; and Mal 3:17. See M. Greenburg, “Hebrew sÿgulla: Akkadian sikiltu,” JAOS 71 (1951): 172ff.

⁸ tn The noun “book” would be the scroll just written containing the laws of chaps. 20-23. On the basis of this scroll the covenant would be concluded here. The reading of this book would assure the people that it was the same that they had agreed to earlier. But now their statement of willingness to obey would be more binding, because their promise would be confirmed by a covenant of blood.

⁹ tn Heb “read it in the ears of.”

¹⁰ tn A second verb is now added to the people’s response, and it is clearly an imperfect and not a cohortative, lending support for the choice of desiderative imperfect in these commitments – “we want to obey.” This was their compliance with the covenant.

¹¹ tn Heb “lie down with your fathers” (so NASB); NRSV “ancestors.”

¹² tn Heb “he.” Smr, LXX, and the Targums read the plural “they,” which is necessary in any case in the translation because of contemporary English style. The third person singular also occurs in the Hebrew text twice more in this verse, three times in v. 17, once in v. 18, five times in v. 20, and four times in v. 21. Each time it is translated as third person plural for stylistic reasons.

¹³ tn Heb “he.” Smr, LXX, and the Targums read the plural “they.” See note on the first occurrence of “they” in v. 16.

¹⁴ tn Or “abandon” (TEV, NLT).

¹⁵ tn Heb “him.” Smr, LXX, and the Targums read the plural “them.” See note on the first occurrence of “they” in v. 16.

¹⁶ tn Heb “beneath”; cf. KJV, ASV, NRSV “under”; NAB “because of.”

¹⁷ sn Isa 26:21 suggests that the earth’s inhabitants defiled the earth by shedding the blood of their fellow human beings. See also Num 35:33-34, which assumes that bloodshed defiles a land.

¹⁸ tn Heb “moved past [the?] regulation.”

¹⁹ tn Or “everlasting covenant” (KJV, NASB, NIV, NRSV, NLT); NAB “the ancient covenant”; CEV “their agreement that was to last forever.”

²⁰ tn Or “They have repeated the evil actions of….”

²¹ tn Heb “have walked/followed after.” See the translator’s note at 2:5 for the idiom.

²² tn Heb “house of Israel and house of Judah.”

²³ tn The word “old” is not in the text but is implicit in the use of the word “new.” It is supplied in the translation for greater clarity.

²⁴ tn Heb “fathers.”

²⁵ tn Heb “when I took them by the hand and led them out.”

²⁶ tn Or “I was their master.” See the study note on 3:14.

²⁷ tn Heb “Oracle of the Lord.”

²⁸ tn Grk “not like the covenant,” continuing the description of v. 8b.