25:13 Like the cold of snow in the time of harvest, 21
so is a faithful messenger to those who send him,
for he refreshes the heart 22 of his masters.
1 tn Heb “mouth.”
2 tn Heb “read it in undertones,” or “recite it quietly” (see HALOT 1:237).
3 tn Heb “be careful to do.”
4 tn Heb “you will make your way prosperous.”
5 tn Heb “and be wise,” but the word can mean “be successful” by metonymy.
6 tn Heb “gave them rest all around.”
7 tn Heb “according to all he swore to their fathers.”
8 tn Heb “not a man stood from before them from all their enemies.”
9 tn Heb “the house of Israel.” Cf. NCV “the Israelites”; TEV “the people of Israel”; CEV, NLT “Israel.”
10 tn Heb “not a word from all the good word which the
11 tn The form is a perfect tense with vav consecutive.
12 tn In the Hebrew Bible “the River” usually refers to the Euphrates (cf. NASB, NCV, NRSV, TEV, CEV, NLT). There is some thought that it refers to a river Nahr el Kebir between Lebanon and Syria. See further W. C. Kaiser, Jr., “Exodus,” EBC 2:447; and G. W. Buchanan, The Consequences of the Covenant (NovTSup), 91-100.
13 tn Or “an evil report,” i.e., one that was a defamation of the grace of God.
14 tn Heb “which we passed over in it”; the pronoun on the preposition serves as a resumptive pronoun for the relative, and need not be translated literally.
15 tn The verb is the feminine singular participle from אָכַל (’akhal); it modifies the land as a “devouring land,” a bold figure for the difficulty of living in the place.
16 sn The expression has been interpreted in a number of ways by commentators, such as that the land was infertile, that the Canaanites were cannibals, that it was a land filled with warlike dissensions, or that it denotes a land geared for battle. It may be that they intended the land to seem infertile and insecure.
17 tn Heb “in its midst.”
18 tc The Greek version uses gigantes (“giants”) to translate “the Nephilim,” but it does not retain the clause “the sons of Anak are from the Nephilim.”
19 tn Heb “in our eyes.”
20 tn Heb “in their eyes.”
21 sn The emblem in the parallelism of this verse is the simile of the first line. Because snow at the time of harvest would be rare, and probably unwelcome, various commentators have sought to explain this expression. R. N. Whybray suggests it may refer to snow brought down from the mountains and kept cool in an ice hole (Proverbs [CBC], 148); this seems rather forced. J. H. Greenstone following Rashi, a Jewish scholar who lived
22 tn Heb “he restores the life [or, soul] of his masters.” The idea suggests that someone who sends the messenger either entrusts his life to him or relies on the messenger to resolve some concern. A faithful messenger restores his master’s spirit and so is “refreshing.”