Jeremiah 12:2

12:2 You plant them like trees and they put down their roots. ¹ 

They grow prosperous and are very fruitful. ² 

They always talk about you,

but they really care nothing about you. ³ 

Isaiah 29:13

29:13 The sovereign master ⁴  says,

“These people say they are loyal to me; ⁵ 

they say wonderful things about me, ⁶ 

but they are not really loyal to me. ⁷ 

Their worship consists of

nothing but man-made ritual. ⁸ 

Ezekiel 11:15

11:15 “Son of man, your brothers, ⁹  your relatives, ¹⁰  and the whole house of Israel, all of them are those to whom the inhabitants of Jerusalem ¹¹  have said, ‘They have gone ¹²  far away from the Lord; to us this land has been given as a possession.’

Matthew 15:8

15:8 ‘This people honors me with their lips,

but their heart ¹³  is far from me,

¹ tn Heb “You planted them and they took root.”

² tn Heb “they grow and produce fruit.” For the nuance “grow” for the verb which normally means “go, walk,” see BDB 232 s.v. חָלַךְ Qal.I.3 and compare Hos 14:7.

³ tn Heb “You are near in their mouths, but far from their kidneys.” The figure of substitution is being used here, “mouth” for “words” and “kidneys” for passions and affections. A contemporary equivalent might be, “your name is always on their lips, but their hearts are far from you.”

⁴ tn The Hebrew term translated “sovereign master” here is אֲדֹנָי (’adonai).

⁵ tn Heb “Because these people draw near to me with their mouth.”

⁶ tn Heb “and with their lips they honor me.”

⁷ tn Heb “but their heart is far from me.” The heart is viewed here as the seat of the will, from which genuine loyalty derives.

⁸ tn Heb “their fear of me is a commandment of men that has been taught.”

⁹ tc The MT reads “your brothers, your brothers” either for empahsis (D. I. Block, Ezekiel [NICOT], 1:341, n. 1; 346) or as a result of dittography.

¹⁰ tc The MT reads גְאֻלָּתֶךָ (gÿ’ullatekha, “your redemption-men”), referring to the relatives responsible for deliverance in times of hardship (see Lev 25:25-55). The LXX and Syriac read “your fellow exiles,” assuming an underlying Hebrew text of גָלוּתֶךָ (galutekha) or having read the א (aleph) as an internal mater lectionis for holem.

¹¹ map For location see Map5-B1; Map6-F3; Map7-E2; Map8-F2; Map10-B3; JP1-F4; JP2-F4; JP3-F4; JP4-F4.

¹² tc The MT has an imperative form (“go far!”), but it may be read with different vowels as a perfect verb (“they have gone far”).

¹³ tn The term “heart” is a collective singular in the Greek text.