Leviticus 17:10

Prohibition against Eating Blood

17:10 “‘Any man ¹  from the house of Israel or from the foreigners who reside ²  in their ³  midst who eats any blood, I will set my face against that person who eats the blood, and I will cut him off from the midst of his people, ⁴ 

Deuteronomy 28:63

28:63 This is what will happen: Just as the Lord delighted to do good for you and make you numerous, he ⁵  will take delight in destroying and decimating you. You will be uprooted from the land you are about to possess.

Deuteronomy 28:2

28:2 All these blessings will come to you in abundance ⁶  if you obey the Lord your God:

Deuteronomy 16:9

The Festival of Weeks

16:9 You must count seven weeks; you must begin to count them ⁷  from the time you begin to harvest the standing grain.

Psalms 34:15-16

34:15 The Lord pays attention to the godly

and hears their cry for help. ⁸ 

34:16 But the Lord opposes evildoers

and wipes out all memory of them from the earth. ⁹ 

Jeremiah 24:6

24:6 I will look after their welfare ¹⁰  and will restore them to this land. There I will build them up and will not tear them down. I will plant them firmly in the land ¹¹  and will not uproot them. ¹² 

Jeremiah 44:11

44:11 “Because of this, the Lord God of Israel who rules over all says, ‘I am determined to bring disaster on you, ¹³  even to the point of destroying all the Judeans here. ¹⁴ 

¹ tn Heb “And man, man.” The repetition of the word “man” is distributive, meaning “any (or every) man” (GKC 395-96 §123.c; cf. Lev 15:2).

² tn Heb “from the sojourner who sojourns.”

³ tc The LXX, Syriac, and Vulgate have “your” (plural) rather than “their.”

⁴ tn Heb “I will give my faces against [literally “in”] the soul/person/life [נֶפֶשׁ, nefesh, feminine] who eats the blood and I will cut it [i.e., that נֶפֶשׁ, nefesh] off from the midst of its people.” The uses of נֶפֶשׁ in this and the following verse are most significant for the use of animal blood in Israel’s sacrificial system. Unfortunately, it is a most difficult word to translate accurately and consistently, and this presents a major problem for the rendering of these verses (see, e.g., G. J. Wenham, Leviticus [NICOT], 244-45). No matter which translation of נֶפֶשׁ one uses here, it is important to see that both man and animal have נֶפֶשׁ and that this נֶפֶשׁ is identified with the blood. See the further remarks on v. 11 below. On the “cutting off” penalty see the note on v. 4 above. In this instance, God takes it on himself to “cut off” the person (i.e., extirpation).

⁵ tn Heb “the Lord.” See note on “he” in 28:8.

⁶ tn Heb “come upon you and overtake you” (so NASB, NRSV); NIV “come upon you and accompany you.”

⁷ tn Heb “the seven weeks.” The translation uses a pronoun to avoid redundancy in English.

⁸ tn Heb “the eyes of the Lord [are] toward the godly, and his ears [are] toward their cry for help.”

⁹ tn Heb “the face of the Lord [is] against the doers of evil to cut off from the earth memory of them.”

¹⁰ tn Heb “I will set my eyes upon them for good.” For the nuance of “good” see Jer 21:10; Amos 9:4 (in these cases the opposite of harm; see BDB 375 s.v. טוֹבָה 1).

¹¹ tn The words “There” and “firmly in the land” are not in the text but are implicit from the connection and the metaphor. They are supplied in the translation for clarity.

¹² sn For these terms see Jer 1:10.

¹³ tn Heb “Behold I am setting my face against you for evil/disaster.” For the meaning of the idiom “to set the face to/against” see the translator’s note on 42:15 and compare the references listed there.

¹⁴ tn Heb “and to destroy all Judah.” However, this statement must be understood within the rhetoric of the passage (see vv. 7-8 and the study note on v. 8) and within the broader context of the Lord’s promises to restore the remnant who are in Babylon and those scattered in other lands (23:3; 24:5-6; 29:14; 30:3; 32:27). In this context “all Judah” must refer to all the Judeans living in Egypt whom Jeremiah is now addressing. This involves the figure of synecdoche where all does not extend to all individuals but to all that are further specified or implied (see E. W. Bullinger, Figures of Speech, 616-18, and the comments in H. Freedman, Jeremiah [SoBB], 285). The “and” in front of “to destroy” is to be understood as an example of the epexegetical use of the conjunction ו (vav; see BDB 252 s.v. וַ 1.b and compare the translation of J. Bright, Jeremiah [AB], 260).