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 23:5-6

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. 23:6 You must not seek peace and prosperity for them through all the ages to come.

Deuteronomy 23:11

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

Jeremiah 8:2

8:2 They will be spread out and exposed to the sun, the moon and the stars. ¹⁴  These are things they ¹⁵  adored and served, things to which they paid allegiance, ¹⁶  from which they sought guidance, and worshiped. The bones of these people ¹⁷  will never be regathered and reburied. They will be like manure used to fertilize the ground. ¹⁸ 

Jeremiah 19:13

19:13 The houses in Jerusalem and the houses of the kings of Judah will be defiled by dead bodies ¹⁹  just like this place, Topheth. For they offered sacrifice to the stars ²⁰  and poured out drink offerings to other gods on the roofs of those houses.’”

Zephaniah 1:5

1:5 I will remove ²¹  those who worship the stars in the sky from their rooftops, ²² 

those who swear allegiance to the Lord ²³  while taking oaths in the name of ²⁴  their ‘king,’ ²⁵ 

Acts 7:42

7:42 But God turned away from them and gave them over ²⁶  to worship the host ²⁷  of heaven, as it is written in the book of the prophets: ‘It was not to me that you offered slain animals and sacrifices ²⁸  forty years in the wilderness, was it, ²⁹  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.”

[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.

[8:2]  ¹⁴ 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]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “the sun, moon, and host of heaven which they…”

[8:2]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “followed after.” See the translator’s note at 2:5 for the idiom.

[8:2]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “they will not” but the referent is far enough removed that it might be ambiguous.

[8:2]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “like dung/manure on the surface of the ground.”

[19:13]  ¹⁹ tn The words “by dead bodies” is not in the text but is implicit from the context. They are supplied in the translation for clarity.

[19:13]  ²⁰ tn Heb “the host of heaven.”

[1:5]  ²¹ tn The words “I will remove” are repeated from v. 4b for stylistic reasons. In the Hebrew text vv. 4b-6 contain a long list of objects for the verb “I will remove” in v. 4b. In the present translation a new sentence was begun at the beginning of v. 5 in keeping with the tendency of contemporary English to use shorter sentences.

[1:5]  ²² tn Heb “those who worship on their roofs the host of heaven.” The “host of heaven” included the sun, moon, planets, and stars, all of which were deified in the ancient Near East.

[1:5]  ²³ tc The MT reads, “those who worship, those who swear allegiance to the Lord.” The original form of the LXX omits the phrase “those who worship”; it may have been accidentally repeated from the preceding line. J. J. M. Roberts prefers to delete as secondary the phrase “those who swear allegiance” (J. J. M. Roberts, Nahum, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah [OTL], 168).

[1:5]  ²⁴ tn Heb “those who swear by.”

[1:5]  ²⁵ tn The referent of “their king” is unclear. It may refer sarcastically to a pagan god (perhaps Baal) worshiped by the people. Some English versions (cf. NEB, NASB, NRSV) prefer to emend the text to “Milcom,” the name of an Ammonite god (following some LXX mss, Syriac, and Vulgate) or “Molech,” a god to whom the Israelites offered their children (cf. NIV, NLT). For a discussion of the options, see Adele Berlin, Zephaniah (AB 25A), 75-77.

[7:42]  ²⁶ 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]  ²⁷ tn Or “stars.”

[7:42]  ²⁸ tn The two terms for sacrifices “semantically reinforce one another and are here combined essentially for emphasis” (L&N 53.20).

[7:42]  ²⁹ tn The Greek construction anticipates a negative reply which is indicated in the translation by the ‘tag’ question, “was it?”