2 Kings 24:3-4

24:3 Just as the Lord had announced, he rejected Judah because of all the sins which Manasseh had committed. ¹  24:4 Because he killed innocent people and stained Jerusalem with their blood, the Lord was unwilling to forgive them. ² 

Numbers 35:33

35:33 “You must not pollute the land where you live, for blood defiles the land, and the land cannot be cleansed of the blood that is shed there, except by the blood of the person who shed it.

Deuteronomy 21:8-9

21:8 Do not blame ³  your people Israel whom you redeemed, O Lord, and do not hold them accountable for the bloodshed of an innocent person.” ⁴  Then atonement will be made for the bloodshed. 21:9 In this manner you will purge out the guilt of innocent blood from among you, for you must do what is right before ⁵  the Lord.

Jeremiah 2:34

2:34 Even your clothes are stained with

the lifeblood of the poor who had not done anything wrong;

you did not catch them breaking into your homes. ⁶ 

Yet, in spite of all these things you have done, ⁷ 

Jeremiah 7:6

7:6 Stop oppressing foreigners who live in your land, children who have lost their fathers, and women who have lost their husbands. ⁸  Stop killing innocent people ⁹  in this land. Stop paying allegiance to ¹⁰  other gods. That will only bring about your ruin. ¹¹ 

Jeremiah 15:4

15:4 I will make all the people in all the kingdoms of the world horrified at what has happened to them because of what Hezekiah’s son Manasseh, king of Judah, did in Jerusalem.” ¹² 

Jeremiah 19:4

19:4 I will do so because these people ¹³  have rejected me and have defiled ¹⁴  this place. They have offered sacrifices in it to other gods which neither they nor their ancestors ¹⁵  nor the kings of Judah knew anything about. They have filled it with the blood of innocent children. ¹⁶ 

Matthew 23:30-31

23:30 And you say, ‘If we had lived in the days of our ancestors, ¹⁷  we would not have participated with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.’ 23:31 By saying this you testify against yourselves that you are descendants of those who murdered the prophets.

Matthew 27:6

27:6 The ¹⁸  chief priests took the silver and said, “It is not lawful to put this into the temple treasury, since it is blood money.”

Luke 13:34

13:34 O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, ¹⁹  you who kill the prophets and stone those who are sent to you! ²⁰  How often I have longed ²¹  to gather your children together as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but ²²  you would have none of it! ²³ 

Hebrews 11:37

11:37 They were stoned, sawed apart, ²⁴  murdered with the sword; they went about in sheepskins and goatskins; they were destitute, afflicted, ill-treated

[24:3]  ¹ tn Heb “Certainly according to the word of the Lord this happened against Judah, to remove [them] from his face because of the sins of Manasseh according to all which he did.”

[24:4]  ² tn Heb “and also the blood of the innocent which he shed, and he filled Jerusalem with innocent blood, and the Lord was not willing to forgive.”

[21:8]  ³ tn Heb “Atone for.”

[21:8]  ⁴ tn Heb “and do not place innocent blood in the midst of your people Israel.”

[21:9]  ⁵ tn Heb “in the eyes of” (so ASV, NASB, NIV).

[2:34]  ⁶ tn The words “for example” are implicit and are supplied in the translation for clarification. This is only one example of why their death was not legitimate.

[2:34]  ⁷ tn KJV and ASV read this line with 2:34. The ASV makes little sense and the KJV again erroneously reads the archaic second person feminine singular perfect as first person common singular. All the modern English versions and commentaries take this line with 2:35.

[7:6]  ⁸ tn Heb “Stop oppressing foreigner, orphan, and widow.”

[7:6]  ⁹ tn Heb “Stop shedding innocent blood.”

[7:6]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “going/following after.” See the translator’s note at 2:5 for an explanation of the idiom involved here.

[7:6]  ¹¹ tn Heb “going after other gods to your ruin.”

[15:4]  ¹² tn The length of this sentence runs contrary to the normal policy followed in the translation of breaking up long sentences. However, there does not seem any way to break it up here without losing the connections.

[19:4]  ¹³ tn The text merely has “they.” But since a reference is made later to “they” and “their ancestors,” the referent must be to the people that the leaders of the people and leaders of the priests represent.

[19:4]  ¹⁴ sn Heb “have made this city foreign.” The verb here is one that is built off of the noun and adjective which relate to foreign nations. Comparison may be made to Jer 2:21 where the adjective refers to the strange, wild vine as opposed to the choice vine the Lord planted and to 5:19 and 8:19 where the noun is used of worshiping foreign gods. Israel through its false worship has “denationalized” itself in its relation to God.

[19:4]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “fathers.”

[19:4]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “the blood of innocent ones.” This must be a reference to child sacrifice as explained in the next verse. Some have seen a reference to the sins of social injustice alluded to in 2 Kgs 21:16 and 24:4 but those are connected with the city itself. Hence the word children is supplied in the translation to make the referent explicit.

[23:30]  ¹⁷ tn Grk “fathers” (so also in v. 32).

[27:6]  ¹⁸ tn Here δέ (de) has not been translated.

[13:34]  ¹⁹ sn The double use of the city’s name betrays intense emotion.

[13:34]  ²⁰ tn Although the opening address (“Jerusalem, Jerusalem”) is direct (second person), the remainder of this sentence in the Greek text is third person (“who kills the prophets and stones those sent to her”). The following sentences then revert to second person (“your… you”), so to keep all this consistent in English, the third person pronouns in the present verse were translated as second person (“you who kill… sent to you”).

[13:34]  ²¹ sn How often I have longed to gather your children. Jesus, like a lamenting prophet, speaks for God here, who longed to care tenderly for Israel and protect her.

[13:34]  ²² tn Here καί (kai) has been translated as “but” to indicate the contrast present in this context.

[13:34]  ²³ tn Grk “you were not willing.”

[11:37]  ²⁴ tc The reading ἐπρίσθησαν (ejprisqhsan, “they were sawed apart”) is found in some important witnesses (Ì⁴⁶ [D* twice reads ἐπίρσθησαν, “they were burned”?] pc sy^p sa Or^pt Eus). Other mss have ἐπειράσθησαν (ejpeirasqhsan, “they were tempted”), either before “sawed apart” ([א] L P [048] 33 81 326 1505 pc sy^h), after “sawed apart” (Ì^13vid A D¹ Ψ 1739 1881 Ï lat bo Or^pt), or altogether in place of “sawed apart” (0150 vg^mss Cl). Since the two words ἐπρίσθησαν and ἐπειράσθησαν are so much alike in sight and sound, and since the position of “they were tempted” varies in the mss, it seems best to say that ἐπειράσθησαν is an accidental corruption of ἐπρίσθησαν or an intentional change to a more common word (the root of ἐπρίσθησαν [πρίζω, prizw] occurs only here in the NT, while the root of ἐπειράσθησαν [πειράζω, peirazw] occurs 38 times). The best reading here seems to be “sawed apart” without any addition before or after. (See TCGNT 603-4, for a discussion of emendations that scholars have proposed for this difficult problem.)