Jeremiah 1:17

1:17 “But you, Jeremiah, ¹  get yourself ready! ²  Go and tell these people everything I instruct you to say. Do not be terrified of them, or I will give you good reason to be terrified of them. ³ 

Jeremiah 42:4

42:4 The prophet Jeremiah answered them, “Agreed! ⁴  I will indeed pray to the Lord your God as you have asked. I will tell you everything the Lord replies in response to you. ⁵  I will not keep anything back from you.”

Isaiah 58:1-2

The Lord Desires Genuine Devotion

58:1 “Shout loudly! Don’t be quiet!

Yell as loud as a trumpet!

Confront my people with their rebellious deeds; ⁶ 

confront Jacob’s family with their sin! ⁷ 

58:2 They seek me day after day;

they want to know my requirements, ⁸ 

like a nation that does what is right

and does not reject the law of their God.

They ask me for just decrees;

they want to be near God.

Ezekiel 3:10

3:10 And he said to me, “Son of man, take all my words that I speak to you to heart and listen carefully.

Ezekiel 3:17-21

3:17 “Son of man, I have appointed you a watchman ⁹  for the house of Israel. Whenever you hear a word from my mouth, you must give them a warning from me. 3:18 When I say to the wicked, “You will certainly die,” ¹⁰  and you do not warn him – you do not speak out to warn the wicked to turn from his wicked deed and wicked lifestyle so that he may live – that wicked person will die for his iniquity, ¹¹  but I will hold you accountable for his death. ¹²  3:19 But as for you, if you warn the wicked and he does not turn from his wicked deed and from his wicked lifestyle, he will die for his iniquity but you will have saved your own life. ¹³ 

3:20 “When a righteous person turns from his righteousness and commits iniquity, and I set an obstacle ¹⁴  before him, he will die. If you have not warned him, he will die for his sin. The righteous deeds he performed will not be considered, but I will hold you accountable for his death. 3:21 However, if you warn the righteous person not to sin, and he ¹⁵  does not sin, he will certainly live because he was warned, and you will have saved your own life.”

Matthew 28:20

28:20 teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And remember, ¹⁶  I am with you ¹⁷  always, to the end of the age.” ¹⁸ 

Acts 20:20

20:20 You know that I did not hold back from proclaiming ¹⁹  to you anything that would be helpful, ²⁰  and from teaching you publicly ²¹  and from house to house,

Acts 20:27

20:27 For I did not hold back from ²²  announcing ²³  to you the whole purpose ²⁴  of God.

¹ tn The name “Jeremiah” is not in the text. The use of the personal pronoun followed by the proper name is an attempt to reflect the correlative emphasis between Jeremiah’s responsibility noted here and the Lord’s promise noted in the next verse. The emphasis in the Hebrew text is marked by the presence of the subject pronouns at the beginning of each of the two verses.

² tn Heb “gird up your loins.” For the literal use of this idiom to refer to preparation for action see 2 Kgs 4:29; 9:1. For the idiomatic use to refer to spiritual and emotional preparation as here, see Job 38:3, 40:7, and 1 Pet 1:13 in the NT.

³ tn Heb “I will make you terrified in front of them.” There is a play on words here involving two different forms of the same Hebrew verb and two different but related prepositional phrases, “from before/of,” a preposition introducing the object of a verb of fearing, and “before, in front of,” a preposition introducing a spatial location.

⁴ tn Heb “I have heard” = “I agree.” For this nuance of the verb see BDB 1034 s.v. שָׁמַע Qal.1.j and compare the usage in Gen 37:27 and Judg 11:17 listed there.

⁵ tn Heb “all the word which the Lord will answer you.

⁶ tn Heb “declare to my people their rebellion.”

⁷ tn Heb “and to the house of Jacob their sin.” The verb “declare” is understood by ellipsis (note the preceding line).

⁸ tn Heb “ways” (so KJV, NAB, NASB, NIV, NRSV, TEV); NLT “my laws.”

⁹ tn The literal role of a watchman is described in 2 Sam 18:24; 2 Kgs 9:17.

¹⁰ sn Even though the infinitive absolute is used to emphasize the warning, the warning is still implicitly conditional, as the following context makes clear.

¹¹ tn Or “in his punishment.” The phrase “in/for [a person’s] iniquity” occurs fourteen times in Ezekiel: here and v. 19; 4:17; 7:13, 16; 18: 17, 18, 19, 20; 24:23; 33:6, 8, 9; 39:23. The Hebrew word for “iniquity” may also mean the “punishment for iniquity.”

¹² tn Heb “his blood I will seek from your hand.” The expression “seek blood from the hand” is equivalent to requiring the death penalty (2 Sam 4:11-12).

¹³ tn Verses 17-19 are repeated in Ezek 33:7-9.

¹⁴ tn Or “stumbling block.” The Hebrew term refers to an obstacle in the road in Lev 19:14.

¹⁵ tn Heb “the righteous man.”

¹⁶ tn The Greek word ἰδού (idou) has been translated here as “remember” (BDAG 468 s.v. 1.c).

¹⁷ sn I am with you. Matthew’s Gospel begins with the prophecy that the Savior’s name would be “Emmanuel, that is, ‘God with us,’” (1:23, in which the author has linked Isa 7:14 and 8:8, 10 together) and it ends with Jesus’ promise to be with his disciples forever. The Gospel of Matthew thus forms an inclusio about Jesus in his relationship to his people that suggests his deity.

¹⁸ tc Most mss (A^c Θ Ë¹³ Ï it sy) have ἀμήν (amhn, “amen”) at the end of v. 20. Such a conclusion is routinely added by scribes to NT books because a few of these books originally had such an ending (cf. Rom 16:27; Gal 6:18; Jude 25). A majority of Greek witnesses have the concluding ἀμήν in every NT book except Acts, James, and 3 John (and even in these books, ἀμήν is found in some witnesses). It is thus a predictable variant. Further, no good reason exists for the omission of the particle in significant and early witnesses such as א A* B D W ˹ 33 al lat sa.

¹⁹ tn Or “declaring.”

²⁰ tn Or “profitable.” BDAG 960 s.v. συμφέρω 2.b.α has “τὰ συμφέροντα what advances your best interests or what is good for you Ac 20:20,” but the broader meaning (s.v. 2, “to be advantageous, help, confer a benefit, be profitable/useful”) is equally possible in this context.

²¹ tn Or “openly.”

²² tn Or “did not avoid.” BDAG 1041 s.v. ὑποστέλλω 2.b has “shrink from, avoid implying fear…οὐ γὰρ ὑπεστειλάμην τοῦ μὴ ἀναγγεῖλαι I did not shrink from proclaiming Ac 20:27”; L&N 13.160 has “to hold oneself back from doing something, with the implication of some fearful concern – ‘to hold back from, to shrink from, to avoid’…‘for I have not held back from announcing to you the whole purpose of God’ Ac 20:27.”

²³ tn Or “proclaiming,” “declaring.”

²⁴ tn Or “plan.”