97:10 You who love the Lord, hate evil!
He protects 1 the lives of his faithful followers;
he delivers them from the power 2 of the wicked.
15:16 how much less man, who is abominable and corrupt, 3
who drinks in evil like water! 4
5:15 Hate what is wrong, love what is right!
Promote 5 justice at the city gate! 6
Maybe the Lord, the God who commands armies, will have mercy on 7 those who are left from 8 Joseph. 9
12:9 Love must be 13 without hypocrisy. Abhor what is evil, cling to what is good.
1 tn The participle may be verbal, though it might also be understood as substantival and appositional to “the
2 tn Heb “hand.”
3 tn The two descriptions here used are “abominable,” meaning “disgusting” (a Niphal participle with the value of a Latin participle [see GKC 356-57 §116.e]), and “corrupt” (a Niphal participle which occurs only in Pss 14:3 and 53:4), always in a moral sense. On the significance of the first description, see P. Humbert, “Le substantif toáe„ba„ et le verbe táb dans l’Ancien Testament,” ZAW 72 [1960]: 217ff.). On the second word, G. R. Driver suggests from Arabic, “debauched with luxury, corrupt” (“Some Hebrew Words,” JTS 29 [1927/28]: 390-96).
4 sn Man commits evil with the same ease and facility as he drinks in water – freely and in large quantities.
5 tn Heb “set up, establish.” In the ancient Near East it was the responsibility especially of the king to establish justice. Here the prophet extends that demand to local leaders and to the nation as a whole (cf. 5:24).
6 sn Legal disputes were resolved in the city gate (see the note in v. 12). This repetition of this phrase serves to highlight a deliberate contrast to the injustices cited in vv. 11-13.
7 tn Or “will show favor to.”
8 tn Or “the remnant of” (KJV, NAB, NASB, NIV, NRSV); CEV “what’s left of your people.”
9 sn Joseph (= Ephraim and Manasseh), as the most prominent of the Israelite tribes, represents the entire northern kingdom.
10 tn Grk “who, knowing…, not only do them but also approve…” Because of the length and complexity of the Greek sentence, a new sentence was started here in the translation.
11 tn Grk “are worthy of death.”
12 sn “Vice lists” like vv. 28-32 can be found elsewhere in the NT in Matt 15:19; Gal 5:19-21; 1 Tim 1:9-10; and 1 Pet 4:3. An example from the intertestamental period can be found in Wis 14:25-26.
13 tn The verb “must be” is understood in the Greek text.
14 tn Although the first possessive pronoun σου (sou) is connected to τὰ ἔργα (ta erga) and the second σου is connected to ὑπομονήν (Jupomonhn), semantically κόπον (kopon) is also to be understood as belonging to the Ephesian church. The translation reflects this.
15 tn The translation “tolerate” seems to capture the sense of βαστάσαι (bastasai) here. BDAG 171 s.v. βαστάζω 2.b.β says, “bear, endure…κακούς Rv 2:2.…bear patiently, put up with: weaknesses of the weak Ro 15:1; cf. IPol 1:2; evil Rv 2:3.”
16 tn Because of the length and complexity of the Greek sentence, the participle was broken off from the previous sentence and translated as an indicative verb beginning a new sentence here in the translation.