Numbers 23:19

23:19 God is not a man, that he should lie,

nor a human being, ¹  that he should change his mind.

Has he said, and will he not do it?

Or has he spoken, and will he not make it happen? ² 

Jeremiah 36:32

36:32 Then Jeremiah got another scroll and gave it to the scribe Baruch son of Neriah. As Jeremiah dictated, Baruch wrote on this scroll everything that had been on the scroll that King Jehoiakim of Judah burned in the fire. They also added on this scroll several other messages of the same kind. ³ 

Jeremiah 44:29

44:29 Moreover the Lord says, ⁴  ‘I will make something happen to prove that I will punish you in this place. I will do it so that you will know that my threats to bring disaster on you will prove true. ⁵ 

Zechariah 1:6

1:6 But have my words and statutes, which I commanded my servants the prophets, not outlived your fathers? ⁶  Then they paid attention ⁷  and confessed, ‘The Lord who rules over all has indeed done what he said he would do to us, because of our sinful ways.’”

Matthew 24:35

24:35 Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away. ⁸ 

¹ tn Heb “son of man.”

² tn The verb is the Hiphil of קוּם (qum, “to cause to rise; to make stand”). The meaning here is more of the sense of fulfilling the promises made.

³ tn Heb “And he wrote upon it from the mouth of Jeremiah all the words of the scroll which Jehoiakim king of Judah burned in the fire. And many words like these were added to them besides [or further].” The translation uses the more active form in the last line because of the tendency in contemporary English style to avoid the passive. It also uses the words “everything” for “all the words” and “messages” for “words” because those are legitimate usages of these phrases, and they avoid the mistaken impression that Jeremiah repeated verbatim the words on the former scroll or repeated verbatim the messages that he had delivered during the course of the preceding twenty-three years.

⁴ tn Heb “oracle of the Lord.”

⁵ tn Heb “This will be to you the sign, oracle of the Lord, that I will punish you in this place in order that you may know that my threats against you for evil/disaster/harm will certainly stand [see the translator’s note on the preceding verse for the meaning of this word here].” The word “sign” refers to an event that is a pre-omen or portent of something that will happen later (see BDB 16 s.v. אוֹת 2 and compare usage in 1 Sam 14:10; 2 Kgs 19:29). The best way to carry that idea across in this context seems to be “I will make something happen to prove [or portend].” Another possibility would be “I will give you a pre-omen that,” but many readers would probably not be familiar with “omen/pre-omen.” Again the sentence has been broken in two and restructured to better conform with English style.

⁶ tc BHS suggests אֶתְכֶם (’etkhem, “you”) for the MT אֲבֹתֵיכֶם (’avotekhem, “your fathers”) to harmonize with v. 4. In v. 4 the ancestors would not turn but in v. 6 they appear to have done so. The subject in v. 6, however, is to be construed as Zechariah’s own listeners.

⁷ tn Heb “they turned” (so ASV). Many English versions have “they repented” here; cf. CEV “they turned back to me.”

⁸ sn The words that Jesus predicts here will never pass away. They are more stable and lasting than creation itself. For this kind of image, see Isa 40:8; 55:10-11.