Job 42:6

42:6 Therefore I despise myself, ¹ 

and I repent in dust and ashes!

Isaiah 6:5

6:5 I said, “Too bad for me! I am destroyed, ²  for my lips are contaminated by sin, ³  and I live among people whose lips are contaminated by sin. ⁴  My eyes have seen the king, the Lord who commands armies.” ⁵ 

Isaiah 64:6

64:6 We are all like one who is unclean,

all our so-called righteous acts are like a menstrual rag in your sight. ⁶ 

We all wither like a leaf;

our sins carry us away like the wind.

Zechariah 12:10-11

12:10 “I will pour out on the kingship ⁷  of David and the population of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and supplication so that they will look to me, ⁸  the one they have pierced. They will lament for him as one laments for an only son, and there will be a bitter cry for him like the bitter cry for a firstborn. ⁹  12:11 On that day the lamentation in Jerusalem will be as great as the lamentation at Hadad-Rimmon ¹⁰  in the plain of Megiddo. ¹¹ 

Luke 18:13

18:13 The tax collector, however, stood ¹²  far off and would not even look up ¹³  to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, be merciful ¹⁴  to me, sinner that I am!’ ¹⁵ 

Romans 6:21

6:21 So what benefit ¹⁶  did you then reap ¹⁷  from those things that you are now ashamed of? For the end of those things is death.

Romans 6:2

6:2 Absolutely not! How can we who died to sin still live in it?

Colossians 1:10-11

1:10 so that you may live ¹⁸  worthily of the Lord and please him in all respects ¹⁹  – bearing fruit in every good deed, growing in the knowledge of God, 1:11 being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might for the display of ²⁰  all patience and steadfastness, joyfully

¹ tn Or “despise what I said.” There is no object on the verb; Job could be despising himself or the things he said (see L. J. Kuyper, “Repentance of Job,” VT 9 [1959]: 91-94).

² tn Isaiah uses the suffixed (perfect) form of the verb for rhetorical purposes. In this way his destruction is described as occurring or as already completed. Rather than understanding the verb as derived from דָּמַה (damah, “be destroyed”), some take it from a proposed homonymic root דמה, which would mean “be silent.” In this case, one might translate, “I must be silent.”

³ tn Heb “a man unclean of lips am I.” Isaiah is not qualified to praise the king. His lips (the instruments of praise) are “unclean” because he has been contaminated by sin.

⁴ tn Heb “and among a nation unclean of lips I live.”

⁵ tn Perhaps in this context, the title has a less militaristic connotation and pictures the Lord as the ruler of the heavenly assembly. See the note at 1:9.

⁶ tn Heb “and like a garment of menstruation [are] all our righteous acts”; KJV, NIV “filthy rags”; ASV “a polluted garment.”

⁷ tn Or “dynasty”; Heb “house.”

⁸ tc Because of the difficulty of the concept of the mortal piercing of God, the subject of this clause, and the shift of pronoun from “me” to “him” in the next, many mss read אַלֵי אֵת אֲשֶׁר (’ale ’et ’asher, “to the one whom,” a reading followed by NAB, NRSV) rather than the MT’s אֵלַי אֵת אֲשֶׁר (’ela ’et ’asher, “to me whom”). The reasons for such alternatives, however, are clear – they are motivated by scribes who found such statements theologically objectionable – and they should be rejected in favor of the more difficult reading (lectio difficilior) of the MT.

⁹ tn The Hebrew term בְּכוֹר (bÿkhor, “firstborn”), translated usually in the LXX by πρωτότοκος (prwtotokos), has unmistakable messianic overtones as the use of the Greek term in the NT to describe Jesus makes clear (cf. Col 1:15, 18). Thus, the idea of God being pierced sets the stage for the fatal wounding of Jesus, the Messiah and the Son of God (cf. John 19:37; Rev 1:7). Note that some English translations supply “son” from the context (e.g., NIV, TEV, NLT).

¹⁰ tn “Hadad-Rimmon” is a compound of the names of two Canaanite deities, the gods of storm and thunder respectively. The grammar (a subjective genitive) allows, and the problem of comparing Israel’s grief at God’s “wounding” with pagan mourning seems to demand, that this be viewed as a place name, perhaps where Judah lamented the death of good king Josiah (cf. 2 Chr 35:25). However, some translations render this as “for” (NRSV, NCV, TEV, CEV), suggesting a person, while others translate as “of” (KJV, NAB, NASB, NIV, NLT) which is ambiguous.

¹¹ map For location see Map1-D4; Map2-C1; Map4-C2; Map5-F2; Map7-B1.

¹² tn Grk “standing”; the Greek participle has been translated as a finite verb.

¹³ tn Grk “even lift up his eyes” (an idiom).

¹⁴ tn The prayer is a humble call for forgiveness. The term for mercy (ἱλάσκομαι, Jilaskomai) is associated with the concept of a request for atonement (BDAG 473-74 s.v. 1; Ps 51:1, 3; 25:11; 34:6, 18).

¹⁵ tn Grk “the sinner.” The tax collector views himself not just as any sinner but as the worst of all sinners. See ExSyn 222-23.

¹⁶ tn Grk “fruit.”

¹⁷ tn Grk “have,” in a tense emphasizing their customary condition in the past.

¹⁸ tn The infinitive περιπατῆσαι (peripathsai, “to walk, to live, to live one’s life”) is best taken as an infinitive of purpose related to “praying” (προσευχόμενοι, proseucomenoi) and “asking” (αἰτούμενοι, aitoumenoi) in v. 9 and is thus translated as “that you may live.”

¹⁹ tn BDAG 129 s.v. ἀρεσκεία states that ἀρεσκείαν (areskeian) refers to a “desire to please εἰς πᾶσαν ἀ. to please (the Lord) in all respects Col 1:10.”

²⁰ tn The expression “for the display of” is an attempt to convey in English the force of the Greek preposition εἰς (eis) in this context.