Deuteronomy 4:30-31

4:30 In your distress when all these things happen to you in the latter days, ¹  if you return to the Lord your God and obey him ²  4:31 (for he ³  is a merciful God), he will not let you down ⁴  or destroy you, for he cannot ⁵  forget the covenant with your ancestors that he confirmed by oath to them.

Jeremiah 8:4-6

Willful Disregard of God Will Lead to Destruction

8:4 The Lord said to me, ⁶ 

“Tell them, ‘The Lord says,

Do people not get back up when they fall down?

Do they not turn around when they go the wrong way? ⁷ 

8:5 Why, then, do these people of Jerusalem ⁸ 

continually turn away from me in apostasy?

They hold fast to their deception. ⁹ 

They refuse to turn back to me. ¹⁰ 

8:6 I have listened to them very carefully, ¹¹ 

but they do not speak honestly.

None of them regrets the evil he has done.

None of them says, “I have done wrong!” ¹² 

All of them persist in their own wayward course ¹³ 

like a horse charging recklessly into battle.

Jeremiah 31:18-19

31:18 I have indeed ¹⁴  heard the people of Israel ¹⁵  say mournfully,

‘We were like a calf untrained to the yoke. ¹⁶ 

You disciplined us and we learned from it. ¹⁷ 

Let us come back to you and we will do so, ¹⁸ 

for you are the Lord our God.

31:19 For after we turned away from you we repented.

After we came to our senses ¹⁹  we beat our breasts in sorrow. ²⁰ 

We are ashamed and humiliated

because of the disgraceful things we did previously.’ ²¹ 

Ezekiel 33:14-16

33:14 Suppose I say to the wicked, ‘You must certainly die,’ but he turns from his sin and does what is just and right. 33:15 He ²²  returns what was taken in pledge, pays back what he has stolen, and follows the statutes that give life, ²³  committing no iniquity. He will certainly live – he will not die. 33:16 None of the sins he has committed will be counted ²⁴  against him. He has done what is just and right; he will certainly live.

Ezekiel 33:19

33:19 When the wicked turns from his sin and does what is just and right, he will live because of it.

Joel 2:13

2:13 Return to the Lord your God,

for he is merciful and compassionate,

slow to anger and boundless in loyal love ²⁵  – often relenting from calamitous punishment. ²⁶ 

Joel 2:2

2:2 It will be ²⁷  a day of dreadful darkness, ²⁸ 

a day of foreboding storm clouds, ²⁹ 

like blackness ³⁰  spread over the mountains.

It is a huge and powerful army ³¹  –

there has never been anything like it ever before,

and there will not be anything like it for many generations to come! ³² 

Colossians 1:21

Paul’s Goal in Ministry

1:21 And you were at one time strangers and enemies in your ³³  minds ³⁴  as expressed through ³⁵  your evil deeds,

[4:30]  ¹ sn The phrase is not used here in a technical sense for the eschaton, but rather refers to a future time when Israel will be punished for its sin and experience exile. See Deut 31:29.

[4:30]  ² tn Heb “hear his voice.” The expression is an idiom meaning “obey,” occurring in Deut 8:20; 9:23; 13:18; 21:18, 20; 26:14, 17; 27:10; 28:1-2, 15, 45, 62; 30:2, 8, 10, 20.

[4:31]  ³ tn Heb “the Lord your God.” See note on “he” in 4:3.

[4:31]  ⁴ tn Heb “he will not drop you,” i.e., “will not abandon you” (cf. NAB, NIV, NRSV, NLT).

[4:31]  ⁵ tn Or “will not.” The translation understands the imperfect verbal form to have an added nuance of capability here.

[8:4]  ⁶ tn The words “the Lord said to me” are not in the text but are implicit from the context. They are supplied in the translation to make clear who is speaking and who is being addressed.

[8:4]  ⁷ sn There is a play on two different nuances of the same Hebrew word that means “turn” and “return,” “turn away” and “turn back.”

[8:5]  ⁸ tc The text is quite commonly emended, changing שׁוֹבְבָה הָעָם (shovÿvah ha’am) to שׁוֹבָב הָעָם (shovav ha’am) and omitting יְרוּשָׁלַםִ (yÿrushalaim); this is due to the anomaly of a feminine singular verb with a masculine singular subject and the fact that the word “Jerusalem” is absent from one Hebrew ms and the LXX. However, it is possible that this is a case where the noun “Jerusalem” is a defining apposition to the word “these people,” an apposition which GKC 425 §131.k calls “permutation.” In this case the verb could be attracted to the appositional noun and there would be no reason to emend the text. The MT is undoubtedly the harder reading and is for that reason to be preferred.

[8:5]  ⁹ tn Or “to their allegiance to false gods,” or “to their false professions of loyalty”; Heb “to deceit.” Either “to their mistaken beliefs” or “to their allegiance to false gods” would fit the preceding context. The former is more comprehensive than the latter and was chosen for that reason.

[8:5]  ¹⁰ sn There is a continuing play on the same root word used in the preceding verse. Here the words “turn away from me,” “apostasy,” and “turn back to me” are all forms from the root that was translated “go the wrong way” and “turn around” in v. 4. The intended effect is to contrast Judah’s recalcitrant apostasy with the usual tendency to try and correct one’s mistakes.

[8:6]  ¹¹ tn Heb “I have paid attention and I have listened.” This is another case of two concepts being joined by “and” where one expresses the main idea and the other acts as an adverbial or adjectival modifier (a figure called hendiadys).

[8:6]  ¹² tn Heb “What have I done?” The addition of the word “wrong” is implicit in the context and is supplied in the translation for clarity. The rhetorical question does not function as a denial of wrongdoing, but rather as contrite shock at one’s own wrongdoing. It is translated as a declaration for the sake of clarity.

[8:6]  ¹³ tn Heb “each one of them turns aside into their own running course.”

[31:18]  ¹⁴ tn The use of “indeed” is intended to reflect the infinitive absolute which precedes the verb for emphasis (see IBHS 585-86 §35.3.1f).

[31:18]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “Ephraim.” See the study note on 31:9. The more familiar term is used, the term “people” added to it, and plural pronouns used throughout the verse to aid in understanding.

[31:18]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “like an untrained calf.” The metaphor is that of a calf who has never been broken to bear the yoke (cf. Hos 4:16; 10:11).

[31:18]  ¹⁷ tn The verb here is from the same root as the preceding and is probably an example of the “tolerative Niphal,” i.e., “I let myself be disciplined/I responded to it.” See IBHS 389-90 §23.4g and note the translation of some of the examples there, especially Isa 19:22; 65:1.

[31:18]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “Bring me back in order that I may come back.” For the use of the plural pronouns see the marginal note at the beginning of the verse. The verb “bring back” and “come back” are from the same root in two different verbal stems and in the context express the idea of spiritual repentance and restoration of relationship not physical return to the land. (See BDB 999 s.v. שׁוּב Hiph.2.a for the first verb and 997 s.v. Qal.6.c for the second.) For the use of the cohortative to express purpose after the imperative see GKC 320 §108.d or IBHS 575 §34.5.2b.

[31:19]  ¹⁹ tn For this meaning of the verb see HAL 374 s.v. יָדַע Nif 5 or W. L. Holladay, Concise Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon, 129. REB translates “Now that I am submissive” relating the verb to a second root meaning “be submissive.” (See HALOT 375 s.v. II יָדַע and J. Barr, Comparative Philology and the Text of the Old Testament, 19-21, for evidence for this verb. Other passages cited with this nuance are Judg 8:16; Prov 10:9; Job 20:20.)

[31:19]  ²⁰ tn Heb “I struck my thigh.” This was a gesture of grief and anguish (cf. Ezek 21:12 [21:17 HT]). The modern equivalent is “to beat the breast.”

[31:19]  ²¹ tn Heb “because I bear the reproach of my youth.” For the plural referents see the note at the beginning of v. 18.

[33:15]  ²² tn Heb “the wicked one.”

[33:15]  ²³ tn Heb “and in the statutes of life he walks.”

[33:16]  ²⁴ tn Heb “remembered.”

[2:13]  ²⁵ tn Heb “and great of loyal love.”

[2:13]  ²⁶ tn Heb “and he relents from calamity.”

[2:2]  ²⁷ tn The phrase “It will be” does not appear in the Hebrew, but is supplied in the translation for the sake of smoothness and style.

[2:2]  ²⁸ tn Heb “darkness and gloom.” These two terms probably form a hendiadys here. This picture recalls the imagery of the supernatural darkness in Egypt during the judgments of the exodus (Exod 10:22). These terms are also frequently used as figures (metonymy of association) for calamity and divine judgment (Isa 8:22; 59:9; Jer 23:12; Zeph 1:15). Darkness is often a figure (metonymy of association) for death, dread, distress and judgment (BDB 365 s.v. חשֶׁךְ 3).

[2:2]  ²⁹ tn Heb “a day of cloud and darkness.”

[2:2]  ³⁰ tc The present translation here follows the proposed reading שְׁחֹר (shÿkhor, “blackness”) rather than the MT שַׁחַר (shakhar, “morning”). The change affects only the vocalization; the Hebrew consonants remain unchanged. Here the context calls for a word describing darkness. The idea of morning or dawn speaks instead of approaching light, which does not seem to fit here. The other words in the verse (e.g., “darkness,” “gloominess,” “cloud,” “heavy overcast”) all emphasize the negative aspects of the matter at hand and lead the reader to expect a word like “blackness” rather than “dawn.” However, NIrV paraphrases the MT nicely: “A huge army of locusts is coming. They will spread across the mountains like the sun when it rises.”

[2:2]  ³¹ tn Heb “A huge and powerful people”; KJV, ASV “a great people and a strong.” Many interpreters understand Joel 2 to describe an invasion of human armies, either in past history (e.g., the Babylonian invasion of Palestine in the sixth century b.c.) or in an eschatological setting. More probably, however, the language of this chapter referring to “people” and “armies” is a hypocatastic description of the locusts of chapter one. Cf. TEV “The great army of locusts advances like darkness.”

[2:2]  ³² tn Heb “it will not be repeated for years of generation and generation.”

[1:21]  ³³ tn The article τῇ (th) has been translated as a possessive pronoun (ExSyn 215).

[1:21]  ³⁴ tn Although διανοία (dianoia) is singular in Greek, the previous plural noun ἐχθρούς (ecqrous) indicates that all those from Colossae are in view here.

[1:21]  ³⁵ tn The dative ἐν τοῖς ἔργοις τοῖς πονηροῖς (en toi" ergoi" toi" ponhroi") is taken as means, indicating the avenue through which hostility in the mind is revealed and made known.