Deuteronomy 4:19

4:19 When you look up ¹  to the sky ²  and see the sun, moon, and stars – the whole heavenly creation ³  – you must not be seduced to worship and serve them, ⁴  for the Lord your God has assigned ⁵  them to all the people ⁶  of the world. ⁷ 

Deuteronomy 17:3

17:3 by serving other gods and worshiping them – the sun, ⁸  moon, or any other heavenly bodies which I have not permitted you to worship. ⁹ 

Deuteronomy 17:2

17:2 Suppose a man or woman is discovered among you – in one of your villages ¹⁰  that the Lord your God is giving you – who sins before the Lord your God ¹¹  and breaks his covenant

Deuteronomy 21:3-5

21:3 Then the elders of the city nearest to the corpse ¹²  must take from the herd a heifer that has not been worked – that has never pulled with the yoke – 21:4 and bring the heifer down to a wadi with flowing water, ¹³  to a valley that is neither plowed nor sown. ¹⁴  There at the wadi they are to break the heifer’s neck. 21:5 Then the Levitical priests ¹⁵  will approach (for the Lord your God has chosen them to serve him and to pronounce blessings in his name, ¹⁶  and to decide ¹⁷  every judicial verdict ¹⁸ )

Psalms 33:6

33:6 By the Lord’s decree ¹⁹  the heavens were made;

by a mere word from his mouth all the stars in the sky were created. ²⁰ 

Psalms 33:9

33:9 For he spoke, and it ²¹  came into existence,

he issued the decree, ²²  and it stood firm.

Isaiah 34:4

34:4 All the stars in the sky will fade away, ²³ 

the sky will roll up like a scroll;

all its stars will wither,

like a leaf withers and falls from a vine

or a fig withers and falls from a tree. ²⁴ 

Isaiah 40:26-28

40:26 Look up at the sky! ²⁵ 

Who created all these heavenly lights? ²⁶ 

He is the one who leads out their ranks; ²⁷ 

he calls them all by name.

Because of his absolute power and awesome strength,

not one of them is missing.

40:27 Why do you say, Jacob,

Why do you say, Israel,

“The Lord is not aware of what is happening to me, ²⁸ 

My God is not concerned with my vindication”? ²⁹ 

40:28 Do you not know?

Have you not heard?

The Lord is an eternal God,

the creator of the whole earth. ³⁰ 

He does not get tired or weary;

there is no limit to his wisdom. ³¹ 

Isaiah 45:12

45:12 I made the earth,

I created the people who live ³²  on it.

It was me – my hands ³³  stretched out the sky, ³⁴ 

I give orders to all the heavenly lights. ³⁵ 

Jeremiah 8:2

8:2 They will be spread out and exposed to the sun, the moon and the stars. ³⁶  These are things they ³⁷  adored and served, things to which they paid allegiance, ³⁸  from which they sought guidance, and worshiped. The bones of these people ³⁹  will never be regathered and reburied. They will be like manure used to fertilize the ground. ⁴⁰ 

Luke 2:13

2:13 Suddenly ⁴¹  a vast, heavenly army ⁴²  appeared with the angel, praising God and saying,

Acts 7:42

7:42 But God turned away from them and gave them over ⁴³  to worship the host ⁴⁴  of heaven, as it is written in the book of the prophets: ‘It was not to me that you offered slain animals and sacrifices ⁴⁵  forty years in the wilderness, was it, ⁴⁶  house of Israel?

[4:19]  ¹ tn Heb “lest you lift up your eyes.” In the Hebrew text vv. 16-19 are subordinated to “Be careful” in v. 15, but this makes for an unduly long sentence in English.

[4:19]  ² tn Or “heavens.” The Hebrew term שָׁמַיִם (shamayim) may be translated “heaven(s)” or “sky” depending on the context.

[4:19]  ³ tn Heb “all the host of heaven.”

[4:19]  ⁴ tn In the Hebrew text the verbal sequence in v. 19 is “lest you look up…and see…and be seduced…and worship them…and serve them.” However, the first two actions are not prohibited in and of themselves. The prohibition pertains to the final three actions. The first two verbs describe actions that are logically subordinate to the following actions and can be treated as temporal or circumstantial: “lest, looking up…and seeing…, you are seduced.” See Joüon 2:635 §168.h.

[4:19]  ⁵ tn Or “allotted.”

[4:19]  ⁶ tn Or “nations.”

[4:19]  ⁷ tn Heb “under all the heaven.”

[17:3]  ⁸ tc The MT reads “and to the sun,” thus including the sun, the moon, and other heavenly spheres among the gods. However, Theodotion and Lucian read “or to the sun,” suggesting perhaps that the sun and the other heavenly bodies are not in the category of actual deities.

[17:3]  ⁹ tn Heb “which I have not commanded you.” The words “to worship” are supplied in the translation for clarification.

[17:2]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “gates.”

[17:2]  ¹¹ tn Heb “does the evil in the eyes of the Lord your God.”

[21:3]  ¹² tn Heb “slain [one].”

[21:4]  ¹³ tn The combination “a wadi with flowing water” is necessary because a wadi (נַחַל, nakhal) was ordinarily a dry stream or riverbed. For this ritual, however, a perennial stream must be chosen so that there would be fresh, rushing water.

[21:4]  ¹⁴ sn The unworked heifer, fresh stream, and uncultivated valley speak of ritual purity – of freedom from human contamination.

[21:5]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “the priests, the sons of Levi.”

[21:5]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “in the name of the Lord.” See note on Deut 10:8. The pronoun has been used in the translation for stylistic reasons to avoid redundancy.

[21:5]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “by their mouth.”

[21:5]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “every controversy and every blow.”

[33:6]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “word.”

[33:6]  ²⁰ tn Heb “and by the breath of his mouth all their host.” The words “were created” are added in the translation for stylistic reasons; they are understood by ellipsis (note “were made” in the preceding line). The description is consistent with Gen 1:16, which indicates that God spoke the heavenly luminaries into existence.

[33:9]  ²¹ tn That is, “all the earth” in the first line of v. 8. The apparent antecedent of the masculine subject of the verbs in v. 9 (note וַיֶּהִי [vayyehiy] and וַיַּעֲמֹד [vayya’amod]) is “earth” or “world,” both of which are feminine nouns. However, כָּל (kol, “all”) may be the antecedent, or the apparent lack of agreement may be explained by the collective nature of the nouns involved here (see GKC 463 §145.e).

[33:9]  ²² tn Heb “he commanded.”

[34:4]  ²³ tc Heb “and all the host of heaven will rot.” The Qumran scroll 1QIsa^a inserts “and the valleys will be split open,” but this reading may be influenced by Mic 1:4. On the other hand, the statement, if original, could have been omitted by homoioarcton, a scribe’s eye jumping from the conjunction prefixed to “the valleys” to the conjunction prefixed to the verb “rot.”

[34:4]  ²⁴ tn Heb “like the withering of a leaf from a vine, and like the withering from a fig tree.”

[40:26]  ²⁵ tn Heb “Lift on high your eyes and see.”

[40:26]  ²⁶ tn The words “heavenly lights” are supplied in the translation for clarification. See the following lines.

[40:26]  ²⁷ tn Heb “the one who brings out by number their host.” The stars are here likened to a huge army that the Lord leads out. Perhaps the next line pictures God calling roll. If so, the final line may be indicating that none of them dares “go AWOL.” (“AWOL” is a military acronym for “absent without leave.”)

[40:27]  ²⁸ tn Heb “my way is hidden from the Lord” (so NAB, NASB, NIV, NRSV).

[40:27]  ²⁹ tn Heb “and from my God my justice passes away”; NRSV “my right is disregarded by my God.”

[40:28]  ³⁰ tn Heb “the ends of the earth,” but this is a merism, where the earth’s extremities stand for its entirety, i.e., the extremities and everything in between them.

[40:28]  ³¹ sn Exiled Israel’s complaint (v. 27) implies that God might be limited in some way. Perhaps he, like so many of the pagan gods, has died. Or perhaps his jurisdiction is limited to Judah and does not include Babylon. Maybe he is unable to devise an adequate plan to rescue his people, or is unable to execute it. But v. 28 affirms that he is not limited temporally or spatially nor is his power and wisdom restricted in any way. He can and will deliver his people, if they respond in hopeful faith (v. 31a).

[45:12]  ³² tn The words “who live” are supplied in the translation for stylistic reasons.

[45:12]  ³³ tn Heb “I, even my hands”; NASB “I stretched out…with My hands”; NRSV “it was my hands that stretched out.” The same construction occurs at the beginning of v. 13.

[45:12]  ³⁴ tn Or “the heavens.” The Hebrew term שָׁמַיִם (shamayim) may be translated “heavens” or “sky” depending on the context.

[45:12]  ³⁵ tn Heb “and to all their host I commanded.” See the notes at 40:26.

[8:2]  ³⁶ tc MT, 4QJer^a and LXX read “the sun and the moon and all the host of heaven,” but 4QJer^c reads “the sun and all the stars.”

[8:2]  ³⁷ tn Heb “the sun, moon, and host of heaven which they…”

[8:2]  ³⁸ tn Heb “followed after.” See the translator’s note at 2:5 for the idiom.

[8:2]  ³⁹ tn Heb “they will not” but the referent is far enough removed that it might be ambiguous.

[8:2]  ⁴⁰ tn Heb “like dung/manure on the surface of the ground.”

[2:13]  ⁴¹ tn Grk “And suddenly.” Here καί (kai) has not been translated because of differences between Greek and English style.

[2:13]  ⁴² tn Grk “a multitude of the armies of heaven.”

[7:42]  ⁴³ sn The expression and gave them over suggests similarities to the judgment on the nations described by Paul in Rom 1:18-32.

[7:42]  ⁴⁴ tn Or “stars.”

[7:42]  ⁴⁵ tn The two terms for sacrifices “semantically reinforce one another and are here combined essentially for emphasis” (L&N 53.20).

[7:42]  ⁴⁶ tn The Greek construction anticipates a negative reply which is indicated in the translation by the ‘tag’ question, “was it?”