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 23:5

23:5 But the Lord your God refused to listen to Balaam and changed ¹²  the curse to a blessing, for the Lord your God loves ¹³  you.

Deuteronomy 23:11

23:11 When evening arrives he must wash himself with water and then at sunset he may reenter the camp.

Job 31:26-28

31:26 if I looked at the sun ¹⁴  when it was shining,

and the moon advancing as a precious thing,

31:27 so that my heart was secretly enticed,

and my hand threw them a kiss from my mouth, ¹⁵ 

31:28 then this ¹⁶  also would be iniquity to be judged, ¹⁷ 

for I would have been false ¹⁸  to God above.

Jeremiah 44:17

44:17 Instead we will do everything we vowed we would do. ¹⁹  We will sacrifice and pour out drink offerings to the goddess called the Queen of Heaven ²⁰  just as we and our ancestors, our kings, and our leaders previously did in the towns of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem. For then we had plenty of food, were well-off, and had no troubles. ²¹ 

Acts 7:42-43

7:42 But God turned away from them and gave them over ²²  to worship the host ²³  of heaven, as it is written in the book of the prophets: ‘It was not to me that you offered slain animals and sacrifices ²⁴  forty years in the wilderness, was it, ²⁵  house of Israel? 7:43 But you took along the tabernacle ²⁶  of Moloch ²⁷  and the star of the ²⁸  god Rephan, ²⁹  the images you made to worship, but I will deport ³⁰  you beyond Babylon.’ ³¹ 

[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.”

[23:5]  ¹² tn Heb “the Lord your God changed.” The phrase “the Lord your God” has not been included in the translation here for stylistic reasons to avoid redundancy. Moreover, use of the pronoun “he” could create confusion regarding the referent (the Lord or Balaam).

[23:5]  ¹³ tn The verb אָהַב (’ahav, “love”) here and commonly elsewhere in the Book of Deuteronomy speaks of God’s elective grace toward Israel. See note on the word “loved” in Deut 4:37.

[31:26]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “light”; but parallel to the moon it is the sun. This section speaks of false worship of the sun and the moon.

[31:27]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “and my hand kissed my mouth.” The idea should be that of “my mouth kissed my hand.” H. H. Rowley suggests that the hand was important in waving or throwing the kisses of homage to the sun and the moon, and so it receives the focus. This is the only place in the OT that refers to such a custom. Outside the Bible it was known, however.

[31:28]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “it.”

[31:28]  ¹⁷ tn See v. 11 for the construction. In Deut 17:2ff. false worship of heavenly bodies is a capital offense. In this passage, Job is talking about just a momentary glance at the sun or moon and the brief lapse into a pagan thought. But it is still sin.

[31:28]  ¹⁸ tn The verb כָּחַשׁ (kakhash) in the Piel means “to deny.” The root meaning is “to deceive; to disappoint; to grow lean.” Here it means that he would have failed or proven unfaithful because his act would have been a denial of God.

[44:17]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “that went out of our mouth.” I.e., everything we said, promised, or vowed.

[44:17]  ²⁰ tn Heb “sacrifice to the Queen of Heaven and pour out drink offerings to her.” The expressions have been combined to simplify and shorten the sentence. The same combination also occurs in vv. 18, 19.

[44:17]  ²¹ tn Heb “saw [or experienced] no disaster/trouble/harm.”

[7:42]  ²² 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]  ²³ tn Or “stars.”

[7:42]  ²⁴ tn The two terms for sacrifices “semantically reinforce one another and are here combined essentially for emphasis” (L&N 53.20).

[7:42]  ²⁵ tn The Greek construction anticipates a negative reply which is indicated in the translation by the ‘tag’ question, “was it?”

[7:43]  ²⁶ tn Or “tent.”

[7:43]  ²⁷ sn Moloch was a Canaanite deity who was believed to be the god of the sky and the sun.

[7:43]  ²⁸ tc ‡ Most mss, including several important ones (Ì⁷⁴ א A C E Ψ 33 1739 Ï h p vg sy^h mae bo Cyr), have ὑμῶν (Jumwn, “your”) here, in conformity with the LXX of Amos 5:26. But other significant and diverse witnesses lack the pronoun: The lack of ὑμῶν in B D 36 453 gig sy^p sa Ir^lat Or is difficult to explain if it is not the original wording here. NA²⁷ has the word in brackets, indicating some doubt as to its authenticity.

[7:43]  ²⁹ sn Rephan (῾Ραιφάν, RJaifan) was a pagan deity. The term was a name for Saturn. It was variously spelled in the mss (BDAG 903 s.v. has Rompha as an alternate spelling). The references cover a range of deities and a history of unfaithfulness.

[7:43]  ³⁰ tn Or “I will make you move.”

[7:43]  ³¹ sn A quotation from Amos 5:25-27. This constituted a prediction of the exile.