Deuteronomy 28:8

28:8 The Lord will decree blessing for you with respect to your barns and in everything you do – yes, he will bless you in the land he ¹  is giving you.

Leviticus 26:4

26:4 I will give you your rains in their time so that ²  the land will give its yield and the trees of the field will produce their fruit. ³ 

Leviticus 26:2

26:2 You must keep my Sabbaths and reverence ⁴  my sanctuary. I am the Lord.

Leviticus 23:4

The Festival of Passover and Unleavened Bread

23:4 “‘These are the Lord’s appointed times, holy assemblies, which you must proclaim at their appointed time.

Psalms 65:9-13

65:9 You visit the earth and give it rain; ⁵ 

you make it rich and fertile ⁶ 

with overflowing streams full of water. ⁷ 

You provide grain for them, ⁸ 

for you prepare the earth to yield its crops. ⁹ 

65:10 You saturate ¹⁰  its furrows,

and soak ¹¹  its plowed ground. ¹² 

With rain showers you soften its soil, ¹³ 

and make its crops grow. ¹⁴ 

65:11 You crown the year with your good blessings, ¹⁵ 

and you leave abundance in your wake. ¹⁶ 

65:12 The pastures in the wilderness glisten with moisture, ¹⁷ 

and the hills are clothed with joy. ¹⁸ 

65:13 The meadows are clothed with sheep,

and the valleys are covered with grain.

They shout joyfully, yes, they sing.

Psalms 74:16

74:16 You established the cycle of day and night; ¹⁹ 

you put the moon ²⁰  and sun in place. ²¹ 

Psalms 84:11

84:11 For the Lord God is our sovereign protector. ²² 

The Lord bestows favor ²³  and honor;

he withholds no good thing from those who have integrity. ²⁴ 

Malachi 4:2

4:2 But for you who respect my name, the sun of vindication ²⁵  will rise with healing wings, ²⁶  and you will skip about ²⁷  like calves released from the stall.

Matthew 5:45

5:45 so that you may be like ²⁸  your Father in heaven, since he causes the sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.

Acts 14:17

14:17 yet he did not leave himself without a witness by doing good, ²⁹  by giving you rain from heaven ³⁰  and fruitful seasons, satisfying you ³¹  with food and your hearts with joy.” ³² 

Acts 14:1

Paul and Barnabas at Iconium

14:1 The same thing happened in Iconium ³³  when Paul and Barnabas ³⁴  went into the Jewish synagogue ³⁵  and spoke in such a way that a large group ³⁶  of both Jews and Greeks believed.

Acts 6:1

The Appointment of the First Seven Deacons

6:1 Now in those ³⁷  days, when the disciples were growing in number, ³⁸  a complaint arose on the part of the Greek-speaking Jews ³⁹  against the native Hebraic Jews, ⁴⁰  because their widows ⁴¹  were being overlooked ⁴²  in the daily distribution of food. ⁴³ 

[28:8]  ¹ tn Heb “the Lord your God.” Because English would not typically reintroduce the proper name following a relative pronoun (“he will bless…the Lord your God is giving”), the pronoun (“he”) has been employed here in the translation.

[26:4]  ² tn Heb “and.” The Hebrew conjunction ו (vav, “and”) can be considered to have resultative force here.

[26:4]  ³ tn Heb “the tree of the field will give its fruit.” As a collective singular this has been translated as plural.

[26:2]  ⁴ tn Heb “and my sanctuary you shall fear.” Cf. NCV “respect”; CEV “honor.”

[65:9]  ⁵ tn The verb form is a Polel from שׁוּק (shuq, “be abundant”), a verb which appears only here and in Joel 2:24 and 3:13, where it is used in the Hiphil stem and means “overflow.”

[65:9]  ⁶ tn Heb “you greatly enrich it.”

[65:9]  ⁷ tn Heb “[with] a channel of God full of water.” The divine name is probably used here in a superlative sense to depict a very deep stream (“a stream fit for God,” as it were).

[65:9]  ⁸ tn The pronoun apparently refers to the people of the earth, mentioned in v. 8.

[65:9]  ⁹ tn Heb “for thus [referring to the provision of rain described in the first half of the verse] you prepare it.” The third feminine singular pronominal suffix attached to the verb “prepare” refers back to the “earth,” which is a feminine noun with regard to grammatical form.

[65:10]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “saturating” [the form is an infinitive absolute].

[65:10]  ¹¹ tn Heb “flatten, cause to sink.”

[65:10]  ¹² tn Heb “trenches,” or “furrows.”

[65:10]  ¹³ tn Heb “soften it,” that is, the earth.

[65:10]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “its vegetation you bless.” Divine “blessing” often involves endowing an object with special power or capacity.

[65:11]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “your good,” which refers here to agricultural blessings.

[65:11]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “and your paths drip with abundance.”

[65:12]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “drip.”

[65:12]  ¹⁸ tn That is, with rich vegetation that brings joy to those who see it.

[74:16]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “To you [is] day, also to you [is] night.”

[74:16]  ²⁰ tn Heb “[the] light.” Following the reference to “day and night” and in combination with “sun,” it is likely that the Hebrew term מָאוֹר (ma’or, “light”) refers here to the moon.

[74:16]  ²¹ tn Heb “you established [the] light and [the] sun.”

[84:11]  ²² tn Heb “[is] a sun and a shield.” The epithet “sun,” though rarely used of Israel’s God in the OT, was a well-attested royal title in the ancient Near East. For several examples from Ugaritic texts, the Amarna letters, and Assyrian royal inscriptions, see R. B. Chisholm, “An Exegetical and Theological Study of Psalm 18/2 Samuel 22” (Th.D. diss., Dallas Theological Seminary, 1983), 131, n. 2.

[84:11]  ²³ tn Or “grace.”

[84:11]  ²⁴ tn Heb “he does not withhold good to those walking in integrity.”

[4:2]  ²⁵ tn Here the Hebrew word צְדָקָה (tsÿdaqah), usually translated “righteousness” (so KJV, NIV, NRSV, NLT; cf. NAB “justice”), has been rendered as “vindication” because it is the vindication of God’s people that is in view in the context. Cf. BDB 842 s.v. צְדָקָה 6; “righteousness as vindicated, justification, salvation, etc.”

[4:2]  ²⁶ sn The point of the metaphor of healing wings is unclear. The sun seems to be compared to a bird. Perhaps the sun’s “wings” are its warm rays. “Healing” may refer to a reversal of the injury done by evildoers (see Mal 3:5).

[4:2]  ²⁷ tn Heb “you will go out and skip about.”

[5:45]  ²⁸ tn Grk “be sons of your Father in heaven.” Here, however, the focus is not on attaining a relationship (becoming a child of God) but rather on being the kind of person who shares the characteristics of God himself (a frequent meaning of the Semitic idiom “son of”). See L&N 58.26.

[14:17]  ²⁹ tn The participle ἀγαθουργῶν (agaqourgwn) is regarded as indicating means here, parallel to the following participles διδούς (didou") and ἐμπιπλῶν (empiplwn). This is the easiest way to understand the Greek structure. Semantically, the first participle is a general statement, followed by two participles giving specific examples of doing good.

[14:17]  ³⁰ tn Or “from the sky” (the same Greek word means both “heaven” and “sky”).

[14:17]  ³¹ tn Grk “satisfying [filling] your hearts with food and joy.” This is an idiomatic expression; it strikes the English reader as strange to speak of “filling one’s heart with food.” Thus the additional direct object “you” has been supplied, separating the two expressions somewhat: “satisfying you with food and your hearts with joy.”

[14:17]  ³² sn God’s general sovereignty and gracious care in the creation are the way Paul introduces the theme of the goodness of God. He was trying to establish monotheism here. It is an OT theme (Gen 8:22; Ps 4:7; 145:15-16; 147:8-9; Isa 25:6; Jer 5:24) which also appears in the NT (Luke 12:22-34).

[14:1]  ³³ sn Iconium. See the note in 13:51.

[14:1]  ³⁴ tn Grk “they”; the referents (Paul and Barnabas) have been specified in the translation for clarity.

[14:1]  ³⁵ sn See the note on synagogue in 6:9.

[14:1]  ³⁶ tn Or “that a large crowd.”

[6:1]  ³⁷ tn Grk “these.” The translation uses “those” for stylistic reasons.

[6:1]  ³⁸ tn Grk “were multiplying.”

[6:1]  ³⁹ tn Grk “the Hellenists,” but this descriptive term is largely unknown to the modern English reader. The translation “Greek-speaking Jews” attempts to convey something of who these were, but it was more than a matter of language spoken; it involved a degree of adoption of Greek culture as well.

[6:1]  ⁴⁰ tn Grk “against the Hebrews,” but as with “Hellenists” this needs further explanation for the modern reader.

[6:1]  ⁴¹ sn The care of widows is a major biblical theme: Deut 10:18; 16:11, 14; 24:17, 19-21; 26:12-13; 27:19; Isa 1:17-23; Jer 7:6; Mal 3:5.

[6:1]  ⁴² tn Or “neglected.”

[6:1]  ⁴³ tn Grk “in the daily serving.”