1 Kings 14:9

14:9 You have sinned more than all who came before you. You went and angered me by making other gods, formed out of metal; you have completely disregarded me. ¹ 

Deuteronomy 4:24

4:24 For the Lord your God is a consuming fire; he is a jealous God. ² 

Deuteronomy 29:28

29:28 So the Lord has uprooted them from their land in anger, wrath, and great rage and has deported them to another land, as is clear today.”

Deuteronomy 32:16-21

32:16 They made him jealous with other gods, ³ 

they enraged him with abhorrent idols. ⁴ 

32:17 They sacrificed to demons, not God,

to gods they had not known;

to new gods who had recently come along,

gods your ancestors ⁵  had not known about.

32:18 You have forgotten ⁶  the Rock who fathered you,

and put out of mind the God who gave you birth.

A Word of Judgment

32:19 But the Lord took note and despised them

because his sons and daughters enraged him.

32:20 He said, “I will reject them, ⁷ 

I will see what will happen to them;

for they are a perverse generation,

children ⁸  who show no loyalty.

32:21 They have made me jealous ⁹  with false gods, ¹⁰ 

enraging me with their worthless gods; ¹¹ 

so I will make them jealous with a people they do not recognize, ¹² 

with a nation slow to learn ¹³  I will enrage them.

Psalms 78:58

78:58 They made him angry with their pagan shrines, ¹⁴ 

and made him jealous with their idols.

Isaiah 65:3-4

65:3 These people continually and blatantly offend me ¹⁵ 

as they sacrifice in their sacred orchards ¹⁶ 

and burn incense on brick altars. ¹⁷ 

65:4 They sit among the tombs ¹⁸ 

and keep watch all night long. ¹⁹ 

They eat pork, ²⁰ 

and broth ²¹  from unclean sacrificial meat is in their pans.

Isaiah 65:1

The Lord Will Distinguish Between Sinners and the Godly

65:1 “I made myself available to those who did not ask for me; ²² 

I appeared to those who did not look for me. ²³ 

I said, ‘Here I am! Here I am!’

to a nation that did not invoke ²⁴  my name.

Colossians 1:22

1:22 but now he has reconciled you ²⁵  by his physical body through death to present you holy, without blemish, and blameless before him –

[14:9]  ¹ tn Heb “you went and you made for yourself other gods, metal [ones], angering me, and you threw me behind your back.”

[4:24]  ² tn The juxtaposition of the Hebrew terms אֵשׁ (’esh, “fire”) and קַנָּא (qanna’, “jealous”) is interesting in light of Deut 6:15 where the Lord is seen as a jealous God whose anger bursts into a destructive fire. For God to be “jealous” means that his holiness and uniqueness cannot tolerate pretended or imaginary rivals. It is not petty envy but response to an act of insubordination that must be severely judged (see H. Peels, NIDOTTE 3:937-40).

[32:16]  ³ tc Heb “with strange (things).” The Vulgate actually supplies diis (“gods”).

[32:16]  ⁴ tn Heb “abhorrent (things)” (cf. NRSV). A number of English versions understand this as referring to “idols” (NAB, NIV, NCV, CEV), while NLT supplies “acts.”

[32:17]  ⁵ tn Heb “your fathers.”

[32:18]  ⁶ tc The Hebrew text is corrupt here; the translation follows the suggestion offered in HALOT 1477 s.v. שׁיה. Cf. NASB, NLT “You neglected”; NIV “You deserted”; NRSV “You were unmindful of.”

[32:20]  ⁷ tn Heb “I will hide my face from them.”

[32:20]  ⁸ tn Heb “sons” (so NAB, NASB); TEV “unfaithful people.”

[32:21]  ⁹ sn They have made me jealous. The “jealousy” of God is not a spirit of pettiness prompted by his insecurity, but righteous indignation caused by the disloyalty of his people to his covenant grace (see note on the word “God” in Deut 4:24). The jealousy of Israel, however (see next line), will be envy because of God’s lavish attention to another nation. This is an ironic wordplay. See H. Peels, NIDOTTE 3:938-39.

[32:21]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “what is not a god,” or a “nondeity.”

[32:21]  ¹¹ tn Heb “their empty (things).” The Hebrew term used here to refer pejoratively to the false gods is הֶבֶל (hevel, “futile” or “futility”), used frequently in Ecclesiastes (e.g., Eccl 1:1, “Futile! Futile!” laments the Teacher, “Absolutely futile! Everything is futile!”).

[32:21]  ¹² tn Heb “what is not a people,” or a “nonpeople.” The “nonpeople” (לֹא־עָם, lo’-’am) referred to here are Gentiles who someday would become God’s people in the fullest sense (cf. Hos 1:9; 2:23).

[32:21]  ¹³ tn Heb “a foolish nation” (so KJV, NAB, NRSV); NIV “a nation that has no understanding”; NLT “I will provoke their fury by blessing the foolish Gentiles.”

[78:58]  ¹⁴ tn Traditionally, “high places.”

[65:3]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “the people who provoke me to anger to my face continually.”

[65:3]  ¹⁶ tn Or “gardens” (KJV, NASB, NIV, NRSV, NLT).

[65:3]  ¹⁷ tn Or perhaps, “on tiles.”

[65:4]  ¹⁸ sn Perhaps the worship of underworld deities or dead spirits is in view.

[65:4]  ¹⁹ tn The Hebrew text reads literally, “and in the watches they spend the night.” Some understand נְּצוּרִים (nÿtsurim) as referring to “secret places” or “caves,” while others emend the text to וּבֵין צוּרִים (uven tsurim, “between the rocky cliffs”).

[65:4]  ²⁰ tn Heb “the flesh of the pig”; KJV, NAB, NASB “swine’s flesh.”

[65:4]  ²¹ tc The marginal reading (Qere), supported by the Qumran scroll 1QIsa^a, reads מְרַק (mÿraq, “broth”), while the consonantal text (Kethib) has פְרַק (feraq, “fragment”).

[65:1]  ²² tn Heb “I allowed myself to be sought by those who did not ask.”

[65:1]  ²³ tn Heb “I allowed myself to be found by those who did not seek.”

[65:1]  ²⁴ tn Heb “call out in”; NASB, NIV, NRSV “call on.”

[1:22]  ²⁵ tc Some of the better representatives of the Alexandrian and Western texts have a passive verb here instead of the active ἀποκατήλλαξεν (apokathllaxen, “he has reconciled”): ἀποκατηλλάγητε (apokathllaghte) in (Ì⁴⁶) B, ἀποκατήλλακται [sic] (apokathllaktai) in 33, and ἀποκαταλλαγέντες (apokatallagente") in D* F G. Yet the active verb is strongly supported by א A C D² Ψ 048 075 [0278] 1739 1881 Ï lat sy. Internally, the passive creates an anacoluthon in that it looks back to the accusative ὑμᾶς (Juma", “you”) of v. 21 and leaves the following παραστῆσαι (parasthsai) dangling (“you were reconciled…to present you”). The passive reading is certainly the harder reading. As such, it may well explain the rise of the other readings. At the same time, it is possible that the passive was produced by scribes who wanted some symmetry between the ποτε (pote, “at one time”) of v. 21 and the νυνὶ δέ (nuni de, “but now”) of v. 22: Since a passive periphrastic participle is used in v. 21, there may have a temptation to produce a corresponding passive form in v. 22, handling the ὑμᾶς of v. 21 by way of constructio ad sensum. Since παραστῆσαι occurs ten words later, it may not have been considered in this scribal modification. Further, the Western reading (ἀποκαταλλαγέντες) hardly seems to have arisen from ἀποκατηλλάγητε (contra TCGNT 555). As difficult as this decision is, the preferred reading is the active form because it is superior externally and seems to explain the rise of all forms of the passive readings.