1 Samuel 8:7

8:7 The Lord said to Samuel, “Do everything the people request of you. ¹  For it is not you that they have rejected, but it is me that they have rejected as their king.

1 Samuel 10:19

10:19 But today you have rejected your God who saves you from all your trouble and distress. You have said, “No! ²  Appoint a king over us.” Now take your positions before the Lord by your tribes and by your clans.’”

Genesis 17:7

17:7 I will confirm ³  my covenant as a perpetual ⁴  covenant between me and you. It will extend to your descendants after you throughout their generations. I will be your God and the God of your descendants after you. ⁵ 

Exodus 19:5-6

19:5 And now, if you will diligently listen to me ⁶  and keep ⁷  my covenant, then you will be my ⁸  special possession ⁹  out of all the nations, for all the earth is mine, 19:6 and you will be to me ¹⁰  a kingdom of priests ¹¹  and a holy nation.’ ¹²  These are the words that you will speak to the Israelites.”

Numbers 23:21

23:21 He ¹³  has not looked on iniquity in Jacob, ¹⁴ 

nor has he seen trouble ¹⁵  in Israel.

The Lord their God is with them;

his acclamation ¹⁶  as king is among them.

Jude 1:23

1:23 save ¹⁷  others by snatching them out of the fire; have mercy ¹⁸  on others, coupled with a fear of God, ¹⁹  hating even the clothes stained ²⁰  by the flesh. ²¹ 

Psalms 74:12

74:12 But God has been my ²²  king from ancient times,

performing acts of deliverance on the earth. ²³ 

Isaiah 33:22

33:22 For the Lord, our ruler,

the Lord, our commander,

the Lord, our king –

he will deliver us.

Hosea 13:10

13:10 Where ²⁴  then is your king,

that he may save you in all your cities?

Where are ²⁵  your rulers for whom you asked, saying,

“Give me a king and princes”?

[8:7]  ¹ tn Heb “Listen to the voice of the people, to all which they say to you.”

[10:19]  ² tc The translation follows many medieval Hebrew mss, the LXX, the Syriac Peshitta, and Vulgate in reading לֹא (lo’, “not”) rather than the MT לוֹ (lo; “to him”). Some witnesses combine the variants, resulting in a conflated text. For example, a few medieval Hebrew mss have לֹא לוֹ (lo lo’; “to him, ‘No.’”). A few others have לֹא לִי (li lo’; “to me, ‘No.’”).

[17:7]  ³ tn The verb קוּם (qum, “to arise, to stand up”) in the Hiphil verbal stem means “to confirm, to give effect to, to carry out” (i.e., a covenant or oath; see BDB 878-79 s.v. קוּם).

[17:7]  ⁴ tn Or “as an eternal.”

[17:7]  ⁵ tn Heb “to be to you for God and to your descendants after you.”

[19:5]  ⁶ 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.

[19:5]  ⁷ 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.”

[19:5]  ⁸ tn The lamed preposition expresses possession here: “to me” means “my.”

[19:5]  ⁹ 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.

[19:6]  ¹⁰ tn Or “for me” (NIV, NRSV), or, if the lamed (ל) preposition has a possessive use, “my kingdom” (so NCV).

[19:6]  ¹¹ tn The construction “a kingdom of priests” means that the kingdom is made up of priests. W. C. Kaiser (“Exodus,” EBC 2:417) offers four possible renderings of the expression: 1) apposition, viz., “kings, that is, priests; 2) as a construct with a genitive of specification, “royal priesthood”; 3) as a construct with the genitive being the attribute, “priestly kingdom”; and 4) reading with an unexpressed “and” – “kings and priests.” He takes the latter view that they were to be kings and priests. (Other references are R. B. Y. Scott, “A Kingdom of Priests (Exodus xix. 6),” OTS 8 [1950]: 213-19; William L. Moran, “A Kingdom of Priests,” The Bible in Current Catholic Thought, 7-20). However, due to the parallelism of the next description which uses an adjective, this is probably a construct relationship. This kingdom of God will be composed of a priestly people. All the Israelites would be living wholly in God’s service and enjoying the right of access to him. And, as priests, they would have the duty of representing God to the nations, following what they perceived to be the duties of priests – proclaiming God’s word, interceding for people, and making provision for people to find God through atonement (see Deut 33:9,10).

[19:6]  ¹² tn They are also to be “a holy nation.” They are to be a nation separate and distinct from the rest of the nations. Here is another aspect of their duty. It was one thing to be God’s special possession, but to be that they had to be priestly and holy. The duties of the covenant will specify what it would mean to be a holy nation. In short, they had to keep themselves free from everything that characterized pagan people (S. R. Driver, Exodus, 171). So it is a bilateral covenant: they received special privileges but they must provide special services by the special discipline. See also H. Kruse, “Exodus 19:5 and the Mission of Israel,” North East Asian Journal of Theology 24/25 (1980): 239-42.

[23:21]  ¹³ tn These could be understood as impersonal and so rendered “no one has discovered.”

[23:21]  ¹⁴ sn The line could mean that God has regarded Israel as the ideal congregation without any blemish or flaw. But it could also mean that God has not looked on their iniquity, meaning, held it against them.

[23:21]  ¹⁵ tn The word means “wrong, misery, trouble.” It can mean the idea of “disaster” as well, for that too is trouble. Here it is parallel to “iniquity” and so has the connotation of something that would give God reason to curse them.

[23:21]  ¹⁶ tn The people are blessed because God is their king. In fact, the shout of acclamation is among them – they are proclaiming the Lord God as their king. The word is used normally for the sound of the trumpet, but also of battle shouts, and then here acclamation. This would represent their conviction that Yahweh is king. On the usage of this Hebrew word see further BDB 929-30 s.v. תְּרוּעָה; HALOT 1790-91 s.v.

[1:23]  ¹⁷ tn Grk “and save.”

[1:23]  ¹⁸ tn Grk “and have mercy.”

[1:23]  ¹⁹ tn Grk “with fear.” But as this contrasts with ἀφόβως (afobw") in v. 12 (without reverence), the posture of the false teachers, it most likely refers to reverence for God.

[1:23]  ²⁰ sn The imagery here suggests that the things close to the sinners are contaminated by them, presumably during the process of sinning.

[1:23]  ²¹ tn Grk “hating even the tunic spotted by the flesh.” The “flesh” in this instance could refer to the body or to the sin nature. It makes little difference in one sense: Jude is thinking primarily of sexual sins, which are borne of the sin nature and manifest themselves in inappropriate deeds done with the body. At the same time, he is not saying that the body is intrinsically bad, a view held by the opponents of Christianity. Hence, it is best to see “flesh” as referring to the sin nature here and the language as metaphorical.

[74:12]  ²² tn The psalmist speaks as Israel’s representative here.

[74:12]  ²³ tn Heb “in the midst of the earth.”

[13:10]  ²⁴ tc The MT reads the enigmatic אֱהִי (’ehi, “I want to be [your king]”; apocopated Qal imperfect 1st person common singular from הָיָה, hayah, “to be”) which makes little sense and conflicts with the 3rd person masculine singular form in the dependent clause: “that he might save you” (וְיוֹשִׁיעֲךָ, vÿyoshi’akha). All the versions (Greek, Syriac, Vulgate) read the interrogative particle אַיֵּה (’ayyeh, “where?”) which the BHS editors endorse. The textual corruption was caused by metathesis of the י (yod) and ה (hey). Few English versions follow the MT: “I will be thy/your king” (KJV, NKJV). Most recent English versions follow the ancient versions in reading “Where is your king?” (ASV, RSV, NAB, NASB, NIV, NJPS, CEV, NLT).

[13:10]  ²⁵ tn The repetition of the phrase “Where are…?” does not appear in the Hebrew text, but is implied by the parallelism in the preceding lines. It is supplied in the translation for the sake of clarity and for stylistic reasons.