Deuteronomy 29:20

29:20 The Lord will be unwilling to forgive him, and his intense anger ¹  will rage ²  against that man; all the curses ³  written in this scroll will fall upon him ⁴  and the Lord will obliterate his name from memory. ⁵ 

Deuteronomy 32:21-22

32:21 They have made me jealous ⁶  with false gods, ⁷ 

enraging me with their worthless gods; ⁸ 

so I will make them jealous with a people they do not recognize, ⁹ 

with a nation slow to learn ¹⁰  I will enrage them.

32:22 For a fire has been kindled by my anger,

and it burns to lowest Sheol; ¹¹ 

it consumes the earth and its produce,

and ignites the foundations of the mountains.

Jude 1:14-15

1:14 Now Enoch, the seventh in descent beginning with Adam, ¹²  even prophesied of them, ¹³  saying, “Look! The Lord is coming ¹⁴  with thousands and thousands ¹⁵  of his holy ones, 1:15 to execute judgment on ¹⁶  all, and to convict every person ¹⁷  of all their thoroughly ungodly deeds ¹⁸  that they have committed, ¹⁹  and of all the harsh words that ungodly sinners have spoken against him.” ²⁰ 

Psalms 2:12

2:12 Give sincere homage! ²¹ 

Otherwise he ²²  will be angry, ²³ 

and you will die because of your behavior, ²⁴ 

when his anger quickly ignites. ²⁵ 

How blessed ²⁶  are all who take shelter in him! ²⁷ 

Psalms 90:11

90:11 Who can really fathom the intensity of your anger? ²⁸ 

Your raging fury causes people to fear you. ²⁹ 

[29:20]  ¹ tn Heb “the wrath of the Lord and his zeal.” The expression is a hendiadys, a figure in which the second noun becomes adjectival to the first.

[29:20]  ² tn Heb “smoke,” or “smolder.”

[29:20]  ³ tn Heb “the entire oath.”

[29:20]  ⁴ tn Or “will lie in wait against him.”

[29:20]  ⁵ tn Heb “blot out his name from under the sky.”

[32:21]  ⁶ sn They have made me jealous. The “jealousy” of God is not a spirit of pettiness prompted by his insecurity, but righteous indignation caused by the disloyalty of his people to his covenant grace (see note on the word “God” in Deut 4:24). The jealousy of Israel, however (see next line), will be envy because of God’s lavish attention to another nation. This is an ironic wordplay. See H. Peels, NIDOTTE 3:938-39.

[32:21]  ⁷ tn Heb “what is not a god,” or a “nondeity.”

[32:21]  ⁸ tn Heb “their empty (things).” The Hebrew term used here to refer pejoratively to the false gods is הֶבֶל (hevel, “futile” or “futility”), used frequently in Ecclesiastes (e.g., Eccl 1:1, “Futile! Futile!” laments the Teacher, “Absolutely futile! Everything is futile!”).

[32:21]  ⁹ tn Heb “what is not a people,” or a “nonpeople.” The “nonpeople” (לֹא־עָם, lo’-’am) referred to here are Gentiles who someday would become God’s people in the fullest sense (cf. Hos 1:9; 2:23).

[32:21]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “a foolish nation” (so KJV, NAB, NRSV); NIV “a nation that has no understanding”; NLT “I will provoke their fury by blessing the foolish Gentiles.”

[32:22]  ¹¹ tn Or “to the lowest depths of the earth”; cf. NAB “to the depths of the nether world”; NIV “to the realm of death below”; NLT “to the depths of the grave.”

[1:14]  ¹² tn Grk “the seventh from Adam.”

[1:14]  ¹³ tn Grk “against them.” The dative τούτοις (toutois) is a dativus incommodi (dative of disadvantage).

[1:14]  ¹⁴ tn Grk “has come,” a proleptic aorist.

[1:14]  ¹⁵ tn Grk “ten thousands.” The word μυριάς (muria"), from which the English myriad is derived, means “ten thousand.” In the plural it means “ten thousands.” This would mean, minimally, 20,000 (a multiple of ten thousand). At the same time, the term was often used in apocalyptic literature to represent simply a rather large number, without any attempt to be specific.

[1:15]  ¹⁶ tn Grk “against” (κατά [kata] + genitive). English usage is satisfied with “on” at this point, but the parallel is lost in the translation to some degree, for the end of v. 15 says that this judgment is meted out on these sinners because they spoke against him (κατά + genitive).

[1:15]  ¹⁷ tn Or “soul.”

[1:15]  ¹⁸ tn Grk “of all their works of ungodliness.” The adverb “thoroughly” is part of the following verb “have committed.” See note on verb “committed” later in this verse.

[1:15]  ¹⁹ tn The verb in Greek does not simply mean “have committed,” but “have committed in an ungodly way.” The verb ἀσεβέω (asebew) is cognate to the noun ἀσέβεια (asebeia, “ungodliness”). There is no easy way to express this in English, since English does not have a single word that means the same thing. Nevertheless, the tenor of v. 15 is plainly seen, regardless of the translation.

[1:15]  ²⁰ sn An apparent quotation from 1 En. 1:9. There is some doubt as to whether Jude is actually quoting from the text of 1 Enoch; the text here in Jude differs in some respects from the extant text of this pseudepigraphic book. It is sometimes suggested that Jude may instead have been quoting from oral tradition which had roots older than the written text.

[2:12]  ²¹ tn Traditionally, “kiss the son” (KJV). But בַּר (bar) is the Aramaic word for “son,” not the Hebrew. For this reason many regard the reading as suspect. Some propose emendations of vv. 11b-12a. One of the more popular proposals is to read בִּרְעָדָה נַשְּׁקוּ לְרַגְלָיו (bir’adah nashÿqu lÿraslayv, “in trembling kiss his feet”). It makes better sense to understand בַּר (bar) as an adjective meaning “pure” (see Pss 24:4; 73:1 and BDB 141 s.v. בַּר 3) functioning here in an adverbial sense. If read this way, then the syntactical structure of exhortation (imperative followed by adverbial modifier) corresponds to the two preceding lines (see v. 11). The verb נָשַׁק (nashaq, “kiss”) refers metonymically to showing homage (see 1 Sam 10:1; Hos 13:2). The exhortation in v. 12a advocates a genuine expression of allegiance and warns against insincerity. When swearing allegiance, vassal kings would sometimes do so insincerely, with the intent of rebelling when the time was right. The so-called “Vassal Treaties of Esarhaddon” also warn against such an attitude. In this treaty the vassal is told: “If you, as you stand on the soil where this oath [is sworn], swear the oath with your words and lips [only], do not swear with your entire heart, do not transmit it to your sons who will live after this treaty, if you take this curse upon yourselves but do not plan to keep the treaty of Esarhaddon…may your sons and grandsons because of this fear in the future” (see J. B. Pritchard, ed., The Ancient Near East, 2:62).

[2:12]  ²² tn Throughout the translation of this verse the third person masculine pronouns refer to the Lord (cf. v. 11).

[2:12]  ²³ tn The implied subject of the verb is the Lord, mentioned in v. 11. Elsewhere the subject of this verb is consistently the Lord, suggesting it may be a technical term for divine anger. Anger is here used metonymically for judgment, as the following statement makes clear. A Moabite cognate occurs in the Mesha inscription, where it is used of the Moabite god Chemosh’s anger at his people (see J. B. Pritchard, ed., The Ancient Near East, 1:209).

[2:12]  ²⁴ tn Heb “and you will perish [in the] way.” The Hebrew word דֶּרֶךְ (derekh, “way”) here refers to their rebellious behavior (not to a pathway, as often understood). It functions syntactically as an adverbial accusative in relation to the verb “perish.”

[2:12]  ²⁵ tn Or “burns.” The Lord’s anger is compared here to fire, the most destructive force known in ancient Israel.

[2:12]  ²⁶ tn The Hebrew noun is an abstract plural. The word often refers metonymically to the happiness that God-given security and prosperity produce (see Pss 1:1; 34:9; 41:1; 65:4; 84:12; 89:15; 106:3; 112:1; 127:5; 128:1; 144:15).

[2:12]  ²⁷ sn Who take shelter in him. “Taking shelter” in the Lord is an idiom for seeking his protection. Seeking his protection presupposes and even demonstrates the subject’s loyalty to the Lord. In the psalms those who “take shelter” in the Lord are contrasted with the wicked and equated with those who love, fear, and serve the Lord (Pss 5:11-12; 31:17-20; 34:21-22).

[90:11]  ²⁸ tn Heb “Who knows the strength of your anger?”

[90:11]  ²⁹ tn Heb “and like your fear [is] your raging fury.” Perhaps one should emend וּכְיִרְאָתְךְ (ukhyir’otekh, “and like your fear”) to יִרְאָתְךְ (yir’otkh, “your fear”), understanding a virtual dittography (אַפֶּךָ וּכְיִרְאָתְךְ, ’apekha ukhyir’otekh) to have occurred. In this case the psalmist asserts “your fear [is] your raging fury,” that is, your raging fury is what causes others to fear you. The suffix on “fear” is understood as objective.