Deuteronomy 7:7-8

The Basis of Israel’s Election

7:7 It is not because you were more numerous than all the other peoples that the Lord favored and chose you – for in fact you were the least numerous of all peoples. 7:8 Rather it is because of his ¹  love ²  for you and his faithfulness to the promise ³  he solemnly vowed ⁴  to your ancestors ⁵  that the Lord brought you out with great power, ⁶  redeeming ⁷  you from the place of slavery, from the power ⁸  of Pharaoh king of Egypt.

Deuteronomy 7:1

The Dispossession of Nonvassals

7:1 When the Lord your God brings you to the land that you are going to occupy and forces out many nations before you – Hittites, ⁹  Girgashites, ¹⁰  Amorites, ¹¹  Canaanites, ¹²  Perizzites, ¹³  Hivites, ¹⁴  and Jebusites, ¹⁵  seven ¹⁶  nations more numerous and powerful than you –

Deuteronomy 12:22

12:22 Like you eat the gazelle or ibex, so you may eat these; the ritually impure and pure alike may eat them.

Deuteronomy 12:1

The Central Sanctuary

12:1 These are the statutes and ordinances you must be careful to obey as long as you live in the land the Lord, the God of your ancestors, ¹⁷  has given you to possess. ¹⁸ 

Deuteronomy 28:4-5

28:4 Your children ¹⁹  will be blessed, as well as the produce of your soil, the offspring of your livestock, the calves of your herds, and the lambs of your flocks. 28:5 Your basket and your mixing bowl will be blessed.

Matthew 11:26

11:26 Yes, Father, for this was your gracious will. ²⁰ 

Luke 10:21

10:21 On that same occasion ²¹  Jesus ²²  rejoiced ²³  in the Holy Spirit and said, “I praise ²⁴  you, Father, Lord ²⁵  of heaven and earth, because ²⁶  you have hidden these things from the wise ²⁷  and intelligent, and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for this was your gracious will. ²⁸ 

Luke 10:1

The Mission of the Seventy-Two

10:1 After this ²⁹  the Lord appointed seventy-two ³⁰  others and sent them on ahead of him two by two into every town ³¹  and place where he himself was about to go.

Colossians 1:1

Salutation

1:1 From Paul, ³²  an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and Timothy our brother,

Ephesians 1:5

1:5 He did this by predestining ³³  us to adoption as his ³⁴  sons ³⁵  through Jesus Christ, according to the pleasure ³⁶  of his will –

Ephesians 1:9

1:9 He did this when he revealed ³⁷  to us the secret ³⁸  of his will, according to his good pleasure that he set forth ³⁹  in Christ, ⁴⁰ 

Ephesians 3:11

3:11 This was according to ⁴¹  the eternal purpose that he accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord,

[7:8]  ¹ tn Heb “the Lord’s.” See note on “He” in 7:6.

[7:8]  ² tn For the verb אָהַב (’ahav, “to love”) as a term of choice or election, see note on the word “loved” in Deut 4:37.

[7:8]  ³ tn Heb “oath.” This is a reference to the promises of the so-called “Abrahamic Covenant” (cf. Gen 15:13-16).

[7:8]  ⁴ tn Heb “swore on oath.”

[7:8]  ⁵ tn Heb “fathers” (also in vv. 12, 13).

[7:8]  ⁶ tn Heb “by a strong hand” (NAB similar); NLT “with such amazing power.”

[7:8]  ⁷ sn Redeeming you from the place of slavery. The Hebrew verb translated “redeeming” (from the root פָּדָה, padah) has the idea of redemption by the payment of a ransom. The initial symbol of this was the Passover lamb, offered by Israel to the Lord as ransom in exchange for deliverance from bondage and death (Exod 12:1-14). Later, the firstborn sons of Israel, represented by the Levites, became the ransom (Num 3:11-13). These were all types of the redemption effected by the death of Christ who described his atoning work as “a ransom for many” (Matt 20:28; cf. 1 Pet 1:18).

[7:8]  ⁸ tn Heb “hand” (so KJV, NRSV), a metaphor for power or domination.

[7:1]  ⁹ sn Hittites. The center of Hittite power was in Anatolia (central modern Turkey). In the Late Bronze Age (1550-1200 b.c.) they were at their zenith, establishing outposts and colonies near and far. Some elements were obviously in Canaan at the time of the Conquest (1400-1350 b.c.).

[7:1]  ¹⁰ sn Girgashites. These cannot be ethnically identified and are unknown outside the OT. They usually appear in such lists only when the intention is to have seven groups in all (see also the note on the word “seven” later in this verse).

[7:1]  ¹¹ sn Amorites. Originally from the upper Euphrates region (Amurru), the Amorites appear to have migrated into Canaan beginning in 2200 b.c. or thereabouts.

[7:1]  ¹² sn Canaanites. These were the indigenous peoples of the land, going back to the beginning of recorded history (ca. 3000 b.c.). The OT identifies them as descendants of Ham (Gen 10:6), the only Hamites to have settled north and east of Egypt.

[7:1]  ¹³ sn Perizzites. This is probably a subgroup of Canaanites (Gen 13:7; 34:30).

[7:1]  ¹⁴ sn Hivites. These are usually thought to be the same as the Hurrians, a people well-known in ancient Near Eastern texts. They are likely identical to the Horites (see note on the term “Horites” in Deut 2:12).

[7:1]  ¹⁵ sn Jebusites. These inhabited the hill country, particularly in and about Jerusalem (cf. Num 13:29; Josh 15:8; 2 Sam 5:6; 24:16).

[7:1]  ¹⁶ sn Seven. This is an ideal number in the OT, one symbolizing fullness or completeness. Therefore, the intent of the text here is not to be precise and list all of Israel’s enemies but simply to state that Israel will have a full complement of foes to deal with. For other lists of Canaanites, some with fewer than seven peoples, see Exod 3:8; 13:5; 23:23, 28; 33:2; 34:11; Deut 20:17; Josh 3:10; 9:1; 24:11. Moreover, the “Table of Nations” (Gen 10:15-19) suggests that all of these (possibly excepting the Perizzites) were offspring of Canaan and therefore Canaanites.

[12:1]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “fathers.”

[12:1]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “you must be careful to obey in the land the Lord, the God of your fathers, has given you to possess all the days which you live in the land.” This adverbial statement modifies “to obey,” not “to possess,” so the order in the translation has been rearranged to make this clear.

[28:4]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “the fruit of your womb” (so NAB, NIV, NRSV).

[11:26]  ²⁰ tn Grk “for (to do) thus was well-pleasing before you,” BDAG 325 s.v. ἔμπροσθεν 1.b.δ; speaking of something taking place “before” God is a reverential way of avoiding direct connection of the action to him.

[10:21]  ²¹ tn Grk “In that same hour” (L&N 67.1).

[10:21]  ²² tn Grk “he”; the referent (Jesus) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[10:21]  ²³ sn Jesus rejoiced. The account of the mission in 10:1-24 ends with several remarks about joy.

[10:21]  ²⁴ tn Or “thank.”

[10:21]  ²⁵ sn The title Lord is an important name for God, showing his sovereignty, but it is interesting that it comes next to a reference to the Father, a term indicative of God’s care. The two concepts are often related in the NT; see Eph 1:3-6.

[10:21]  ²⁶ tn Or “that.”

[10:21]  ²⁷ sn See 1 Cor 1:26-31.

[10:21]  ²⁸ tn Grk “for (to do) thus was well pleasing before you,” BDAG 325 s.v. ἔμπροσθεν 1.δ; speaking of something taking place “before” God is a reverential way of avoiding direct connection of the action to him.

[10:1]  ²⁹ tn Grk “And after these things.” Here δέ (de) has not been translated.

[10:1]  ³⁰ tc There is a difficult textual problem here and in v. 17, where the number is either “seventy” (א A C L W Θ Ξ Ψ Ë^1,13 Ï and several church fathers and early versions) or “seventy-two” (Ì⁷⁵ B D 0181 pc lat as well as other versions and fathers). The more difficult reading is “seventy-two,” since scribes would be prone to assimilate this passage to several OT passages that refer to groups of seventy people (Num 11:13-17; Deut 10:22; Judg 8:30; 2 Kgs 10:1 et al.); this reading also has slightly better ms support. “Seventy” could be the preferred reading if scribes drew from the tradition of the number of translators of the LXX, which the Letter of Aristeas puts at seventy-two (TCGNT 127), although this is far less likely. All things considered, “seventy-two” is a much more difficult reading and accounts for the rise of the other. Only Luke notes a second larger mission like the one in 9:1-6.

[10:1]  ³¹ tn Or “city.”

[1:1]  ³² tn Grk “Paul.” The word “from” is not in the Greek text, but has been supplied to indicate the sender of the letter.

[1:5]  ³³ tn Grk “by predestining.” Verse 5 begins with an aorist participle dependent on the main verb in v. 4 (“chose”).

[1:5]  ³⁴ tn Grk “to himself” after “through Jesus Christ.”

[1:5]  ³⁵ tn The Greek term υἱοθεσία (Juioqesia) was originally a legal technical term for adoption as a son with full rights of inheritance. BDAG 1024 s.v. notes, “a legal t.t. of ‘adoption’ of children, in our lit., i.e. in Paul, only in a transferred sense of a transcendent filial relationship between God and humans (with the legal aspect, not gender specificity, as major semantic component).” Although some modern translations remove the filial sense completely and render the term merely “adoption” (cf. NAB, ESV), the retention of this component of meaning was accomplished in the present translation by the phrase “as…sons.”

[1:5]  ³⁶ tn Or “good pleasure.”

[1:9]  ³⁷ tn Or “He did this by revealing”; Grk “making known, revealing.” Verse 9 begins with a participle dependent on “lavished” in v. 8; the adverbial participle could be understood as temporal (“when he revealed”), which would be contemporaneous to the action of the finite verb “lavished,” or as means (“by revealing”). The participle has been translated here with the temporal nuance to allow for means to also be a possible interpretation. If the translation focused instead upon means, the temporal nuance would be lost as the time frame for the action of the participle would become indistinct.

[1:9]  ³⁸ tn Or “mystery.” In the NT μυστήριον (musthrion) refers to a divine secret previously undisclosed.

[1:9]  ³⁹ tn Or “purposed,” “publicly displayed.” Cf. Rom 3:25.

[1:9]  ⁴⁰ tn Grk “in him”; the referent (Christ) has been specified in the translation for the sake of clarity.

[3:11]  ⁴¹ tn Grk “according to.” The verse is a prepositional phrase subordinate to v. 10.