25:10 The Lord always proves faithful and reliable 1
to those who follow the demands of his covenant. 2
132:12 If your sons keep my covenant
and the rules I teach them,
their sons will also sit on your throne forever.”
17:9 Then God said to Abraham, “As for you, you must keep 3 the covenantal requirement 4 I am imposing on you and your descendants after you throughout their generations. 17:10 This is my requirement that you and your descendants after you must keep: 5 Every male among you must be circumcised. 6
34:1 Then Moses ascended from the deserts of Moab to Mount Nebo, to the summit of Pisgah, which is opposite Jericho. 18 The Lord showed him the whole land – Gilead to Dan,
8:7 For if that first covenant had been faultless, no one would have looked for a second one. 24 8:8 But 25 showing its fault, 26 God 27 says to them, 28
“Look, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will complete a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah.
8:9 “It will not be like the covenant 29 that I made with their fathers, on the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they did not continue in my covenant and I had no regard for them, says the Lord.
8:10 “For this is the covenant that I will establish with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord. I will put 30 my laws in their minds 31 and I will inscribe them on their hearts. And I will be their God and they will be my people. 32
8:11 “And there will be no need at all 33 for each one to teach his countryman or each one to teach his brother saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ since they will all know me, from the least to the greatest. 34
8:12 “For I will be merciful toward their evil deeds, and their sins I will remember no longer.” 35
8:13 When he speaks of a new covenant, 36 he makes the first obsolete. Now what is growing obsolete and aging is about to disappear. 37
1 tn Heb “all the paths of the
2 tn Heb “to the ones who keep his covenant and his testimonies.”
3 tn The imperfect tense could be translated “you shall keep” as a binding command; but the obligatory nuance (“must”) captures the binding sense better.
4 tn Heb “my covenant.” The Hebrew word בְּרִית (bÿrit) can refer to (1) the agreement itself between two parties (see v. 7), (2) the promise made by one party to another (see vv. 2-3, 7), (3) an obligation placed by one party on another, or (4) a reminder of the agreement. In vv. 9-10 the word refers to a covenantal obligation which God gives to Abraham and his descendants.
5 tn Heb “This is my covenant that you must keep between me and you and your descendants after you.”
6 sn For a discussion of male circumcision as the sign of the covenant in this passage see M. V. Fox, “The Sign of the Covenant: Circumcision in the Light of the Priestly ‘ot Etiologies,” RB 81 (1974): 557-96.
7 tn Heb “listen to my voice.” The construction uses the imperfect tense in the conditional clause, preceded by the infinitive absolute from the same verb. The idiom “listen to the voice of” implies obedience, not just mental awareness of sound.
8 tn The verb is a perfect tense with vav (ו) consecutive; it continues the idea in the protasis of the sentence: “and [if you will] keep.”
9 tn The lamed preposition expresses possession here: “to me” means “my.”
10 tn The noun is סְגֻלָּה (sÿgullah), which means a special possession. Israel was to be God’s special possession, but the prophets will later narrow it to the faithful remnant. All the nations belong to God, but Israel was to stand in a place of special privilege and enormous responsibility. See Deut 7:6; 14:2; 26:18; Ps 135:4; and Mal 3:17. See M. Greenburg, “Hebrew sÿgulla: Akkadian sikiltu,” JAOS 71 (1951): 172ff.
11 tn Given the size of the congregation, the preposition might be rendered here “toward the people” rather than on them (all).
12 sn The construct relationship “the blood of the covenant” means “the blood by which the covenant is ratified” (S. R. Driver, Exodus, 254). The parallel with the inauguration of the new covenant in the blood of Christ is striking (see, e.g., Matt 26:28, 1 Cor 11:25). When Jesus was inaugurating the new covenant, he was bringing to an end the old.
13 tn Heb “the God.” The article here expresses uniqueness; cf. TEV “is the only God”; NLT “is indeed God.”
14 tn Heb “who keeps covenant and loyalty.” The syndetic construction of בְּרִית (bÿrit) and חֶסֶד (khesed) should be understood not as “covenant” plus “loyalty” but as an adverbial construction in which חֶסֶד (“loyalty”) modifies the verb שָׁמַר (shamar, “keeps”).
15 tn Heb “the
16 tn In the Hebrew text the infinitive absolute before the finite verb emphasizes the statement. The imperfect has an obligatory nuance here. Cf. ASV “shalt (must NRSV) utterly destroy them”; CEV “must destroy them without mercy.”
17 tn Heb “covenant” (so NASB, NRSV); TEV “alliance.”
18 sn For the geography involved, see note on the term “Pisgah” in Deut 3:17.
19 sn The Greek text indicates a contrast between vv. 4-5 and v. 6 that is difficult to render in English: Jesus’ status in the old order of priests (vv. 4-5) versus his superior ministry (v. 6).
20 tn Grk “he”; in the translation the referent (Jesus) has been specified for clarity.
21 tn Grk “to the degree that.”
22 tn Grk “which is enacted.”
23 sn This linkage of the change in priesthood with a change in the law or the covenant goes back to Heb 7:12, 22 and is picked up again in Heb 9:6-15 and 10:1-18.
24 tn Grk “no occasion for a second one would have been sought.”
25 tn Grk “for,” but providing an explanation of the God-intended limitation of the first covenant from v. 7.
26 sn The “fault” or limitation in the first covenant was not in its inherent righteousness, but in its design from God himself. It was never intended to be his final revelation or provision for mankind; it was provisional, always pointing toward the fulfillment to come in Christ.
27 tn Grk “he”; the referent (God) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
28 tc ‡ Several witnesses (א* A D* I K P Ψ 33 81 326 365 1505 2464 al latt co Cyr) have αὐτούς (autous) here, “[in finding fault with] them, [he says],” alluding to Israel’s failings mentioned in v. 9b. (The verb μέμφομαι [memfomai, “to find fault with”] can take an accusative or dative direct object.) The reading behind the text above (αὐτοίς, autoi"), supported by Ì46 א2 B D2 0278 1739 1881 Ï, is perhaps a harder reading theologically, and is more ambiguous in meaning. If αὐτοίς goes with μεμφόμενος (memfomeno", here translated “showing its fault”), the clause could be translated “in finding fault with them” or “in showing [its] faults to them.” If αὐτοίς goes with the following λέγει (legei, “he says”), the clause is best translated, “in finding/showing [its] faults, he says to them.” The accusative pronoun suffers no such ambiguity, for it must be the object of μεμφόμενος rather than λέγει. Although a decision is difficult, the dative form of the pronoun best explains the rise of the other reading and is thus more likely to be original.
29 tn Grk “not like the covenant,” continuing the description of v. 8b.
30 tn Grk “putting…I will inscribe.”
31 tn Grk “mind.”
32 tn Grk “I will be to them for a God and they will be to me for a people,” following the Hebrew constructions of Jer 31.
33 tn Grk “they will not teach, each one his fellow citizen…” The Greek makes this negation emphatic: “they will certainly not teach.”
34 tn Grk “from the small to the great.”
35 sn A quotation from Jer 31:31-34.
36 tn Grk “when he says, ‘new,’” (referring to the covenant).
37 tn Grk “near to disappearing.”