Genesis 18:14

18:14 Is anything impossible ¹  for the Lord? I will return to you when the season comes round again and Sarah will have a son.” ² 

Psalms 51:15

51:15 O Lord, give me the words! ³ 

Then my mouth will praise you. ⁴ 

Psalms 94:9

94:9 Does the one who makes the human ear not hear?

Does the one who forms the human eye not see? ⁵ 

Psalms 146:8

146:8 The Lord gives sight to the blind.

The Lord lifts up all who are bent over. ⁶ 

The Lord loves the godly.

Isaiah 6:7

6:7 He touched my mouth with it and said, “Look, this coal has touched your lips. Your evil is removed; your sin is forgiven.” ⁷ 

Isaiah 35:5-6

35:5 Then blind eyes will open,

deaf ears will hear.

35:6 Then the lame will leap like a deer,

the mute tongue will shout for joy;

for water will flow ⁸  in the desert,

streams in the wilderness. ⁹ 

Isaiah 42:7

42:7 to open blind eyes, ¹⁰ 

to release prisoners ¹¹  from dungeons,

those who live in darkness from prisons.

Jeremiah 1:6

1:6 I answered, “Oh, Lord God, ¹²  I really ¹³  do not know how to speak well enough for that, ¹⁴  for I am too young.” ¹⁵ 

Jeremiah 1:9

1:9 Then the Lord reached out his hand and touched my mouth and said to me, “I will most assuredly give you the words you are to speak for me. ¹⁶ 

Ezekiel 3:26-27

3:26 I will make your tongue stick to the roof of your mouth so that you will be silent and unable to reprove ¹⁷  them, for they are a rebellious house. 3:27 But when I speak with you, I will loosen your tongue ¹⁸  and you must say to them, ‘This is what the sovereign Lord says.’ Those who listen will listen, but the indifferent will refuse, ¹⁹  for they are a rebellious house.

Ezekiel 33:22

33:22 Now the hand of the Lord had been on me ²⁰  the evening before the refugee reached me, but the Lord ²¹  opened my mouth by the time the refugee arrived ²²  in the morning; he opened my mouth and I was no longer unable to speak. ²³ 

Amos 3:6

3:6 If an alarm sounds ²⁴  in a city, do people not fear? ²⁵ 

If disaster overtakes a ²⁶  city, is the Lord not responsible? ²⁷ 

¹ tn The Hebrew verb פָּלָא (pala’) means “to be wonderful, to be extraordinary, to be surpassing, to be amazing.”

² sn Sarah will have a son. The passage brings God’s promise into clear focus. As long as it was a promise for the future, it really could be believed without much involvement. But now, when it seemed so impossible from the human standpoint, when the Lord fixed an exact date for the birth of the child, the promise became rather overwhelming to Abraham and Sarah. But then this was the Lord of creation, the one they had come to trust. The point of these narratives is that the creation of Abraham’s offspring, which eventually became Israel, is no less a miraculous work of creation than the creation of the world itself.

³ tn Heb “open my lips.” The imperfect verbal form is used here to express the psalmist’s wish or request.

⁴ tn Heb “and my mouth will declare your praise.”

⁵ tn Heb “The one who plants an ear, does he not hear? The one who forms an eye, does he not see?”

⁷ tn Perhaps “discouraged” (see Ps 57:6).

⁹ tn Or “ritually cleansed,” or “atoned for” (NIV).

¹¹ tn Heb “burst forth” (so NAB); KJV “break out.”

¹² tn Or “Arabah” (NASB); KJV, NIV, NRSV, NLT “desert.”

¹³ sn This does not refer to literal physical healing of the blind. As the next two lines suggest, this refers metonymically to freeing captives from their dark prisons where their eyes have grown unaccustomed to light.

¹⁴ sn This does not refer to hardened, dangerous criminals, who would have been executed for their crimes in ancient Near Eastern society. This verse refers to political prisoners or victims of social injustice.

¹⁵ tn Heb “Lord Yahweh.”

¹⁶ tn Heb “Behold, I do not know how to speak.” The particle הִנֵּה (hinneh, commonly rendered “behold”) often introduces a speech and calls special attention to a specific word or the statement as a whole (see IBHS 675-78 §40.2.1).

¹⁷ tn The words “well enough for that” are implicit and are supplied in the translation for clarity. Jeremiah is not claiming an absolute inability to speak.

¹⁸ tn Heb “I am a boy/youth.” The Hebrew word can refer to an infant (Exod 2:6), a young boy (1 Sam 2:11), a teenager (Gen 21:12), or a young man (2 Sam 18:5). The translation is deliberately ambiguous since it is unclear how old Jeremiah was when he was called to begin prophesying.

¹⁷ tn Heb “Behold, I have put my words in your mouth.” This is an example of the Hebrew “scheduling” perfect or the “prophetic” perfect where a future event is viewed as so certain it is spoken of as past. The Hebrew particle rendered here “assuredly” (Heb הִנֵּה, hinneh) underlines the certitude of the promise for the future. See the translator’s note on v. 6.

¹⁹ tn Heb “you will not be to them a reprover.” In Isa 29:21 and Amos 5:10 “a reprover” issued rebuke at the city gate.

²¹ tn Heb “open your mouth.”

²² tn Heb “the listener will listen, the refuser will refuse.” Because the word for listening can also mean obeying, the nuance may be that the obedient will listen, or that the one who listens will obey. Also, although the verbs are not jussive as pointed in the MT, some translate them with a volitive sense: “the one who listens – let that one listen, the one who refuses – let that one refuse.”

²³ tn The other occurrences of the phrase “the hand of the Lord” in Ezekiel are in the context of prophetic visions.

²⁴ tn Heb “he”; the referent has been specified in the translation for clarity.

²⁵ tn Heb “by the time of the arrival to me.” For clarity the translation specifies the refugee as the one who arrived.

²⁶ sn Ezekiel’s God-imposed muteness was lifted (see 3:26).

²⁵ tn Heb “If the ram’s horn is blown.”

²⁶ tn Or “tremble” (NASB, NIV, NCV); or “shake.”

²⁷ tn Heb “is in”; NIV, NCV, NLT “comes to.”

²⁸ tn Heb “has the Lord not acted?”