119:48 I will lift my hands to 1 your commands,
which I love,
and I will meditate on your statutes.
119:115 Turn away from me, you evil men,
so that I can observe 2 the commands of my God. 3
23:23 Acquire 4 truth and do not sell it –
wisdom, and discipline, and understanding.
8:31 Then Jesus said to those Judeans 5 who had believed him, “If you continue to follow my teaching, 6 you are really 7 my disciples
1 tn Lifting the hands is often associated with prayer (Pss 28:2; 63:4; Lam 2:19). (1) Because praying to God’s law borders on the extreme, some prefer to emend the text to “I lift up my hands to you,” eliminating “your commands, which I love” as dittographic. In this view these words were accidentally repeated from the previous verse. (2) However, it is possible that the psalmist closely associates the law with God himself because he views the law as the expression of the divine will. (3) Another option is that “lifting the hands” does not refer to prayer here, but to the psalmist’s desire to receive and appropriate the law. (4) Still others understand this to be an action praising God’s commands (so NCV; cf. TEV, CEV, NLT).
2 tn The cohortative verbal form with vav (ו) conjunctive indicates purpose/result after the preceding imperative.
3 tn The psalmist has already declared that he observes God’s commands despite persecution, so here the idea must be “so that I might observe the commands of my God unhindered by threats.”
4 tn Heb “buy” (so KJV, NASB, NIV, NLT); CEV “Invest in truth.”
5 tn Grk “to the Jews.” In NT usage the term ᾿Ιουδαῖοι (Ioudaioi) may refer to the entire Jewish people, the residents of Jerusalem and surrounding territory (i.e., “Judeans”), the authorities in Jerusalem, or merely those who were hostile to Jesus. (For further information see R. G. Bratcher, “‘The Jews’ in the Gospel of John,” BT 26 [1975]: 401-9; also BDAG 479 s.v. ᾿Ιουδαῖος 2.e.) Here the phrase refers to the Jewish people in Jerusalem who had been listening to Jesus’ teaching in the temple and had believed his claim to be the Messiah, hence, “those Judeans who had believed him.” The term “Judeans” is preferred here to the more general “people” because the debate concerns descent from Abraham (v. 33).
6 tn Grk “If you continue in my word.”
7 tn Or “truly.”
8 tn Grk “Antioch, who when.” The relative pronoun was omitted and a new sentence was begun in the translation at this point to improve the English style, due to the length of the sentence in Greek.
9 tn BDAG 883 s.v. προσμένω 1.a.β has “remain true to the Lord” for προσμένειν (prosmenein) in this verse.
10 tn Grk “with purpose of heart”; BDAG 869 s.v. πρόθεσις 2.a translates this phrase “purpose of heart, i.e. devotion” here.