Deuteronomy 4:10

4:10 You ¹  stood before the Lord your God at Horeb and he ²  said to me, “Assemble the people before me so that I can tell them my commands. ³  Then they will learn to revere me all the days they live in the land, and they will instruct their children.”

Deuteronomy 10:12-13

An Exhortation to Love Both God and People

10:12 Now, Israel, what does the Lord your God require of you except to revere him, ⁴  to obey all his commandments, ⁵  to love him, to serve him ⁶  with all your mind and being, ⁷  10:13 and to keep the Lord’s commandments and statutes that I am giving ⁸  you today for your own good?

Deuteronomy 10:20

10:20 Revere the Lord your God, serve him, be loyal to him and take oaths only in his name.

Deuteronomy 13:4

13:4 You must follow the Lord your God and revere only him; and you must observe his commandments, obey him, serve him, and remain loyal to him.

Genesis 22:12

22:12 “Do not harm the boy!” ⁹  the angel said. ¹⁰  “Do not do anything to him, for now I know ¹¹  that you fear ¹²  God because you did not withhold your son, your only son, from me.”

Exodus 20:20

20:20 Moses said to the people, “Do not fear, for God has come to test you, ¹³  that the fear of him ¹⁴  may be before you so that you do not ¹⁵  sin.”

Job 28:28

28:28 And he said to mankind,

‘The fear of the Lord ¹⁶  – that is wisdom,

and to turn away from evil is understanding.’” ¹⁷ 

Psalms 111:10

111:10 To obey the Lord is the fundamental principle for wise living; ¹⁸ 

all who carry out his precepts acquire good moral insight. ¹⁹ 

He will receive praise forever. ²⁰ 

Psalms 128:1

Psalm 128 ²¹ 

A song of ascents. ²² 

128:1 How blessed is every one of the Lord’s loyal followers, ²³ 

each one who keeps his commands! ²⁴ 

Proverbs 16:6

16:6 Through loyal love and truth ²⁵  iniquity is appeased; ²⁶ 

through fearing the Lord ²⁷  one avoids ²⁸  evil. ²⁹ 

Ecclesiastes 12:13

12:13 Having heard everything, I have reached this conclusion: ³⁰ 

Fear God and keep his commandments,

because this is the whole duty ³¹  of man.

Luke 12:5

12:5 But I will warn ³²  you whom you should fear: Fear the one who, after the killing, ³³  has authority to throw you ³⁴  into hell. ³⁵  Yes, I tell you, fear him!

Luke 12:1

Fear God, Not People

12:1 Meanwhile, ³⁶  when many thousands of the crowd had gathered so that they were trampling on one another, Jesus ³⁷  began to speak first to his disciples, “Be on your guard against ³⁸  the yeast of the Pharisees, ³⁹  which is hypocrisy. ⁴⁰ 

Luke 1:17

1:17 And he will go as forerunner before the Lord ⁴¹  in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers back to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, ⁴²  to make ready for the Lord a people prepared for him.”

[4:10]  ¹ tn The text begins with “(the) day (in) which.” In the Hebrew text v. 10 is subordinate to v. 11, but for stylistic reasons the translation treats v. 10 as an independent clause, necessitating the omission of the subordinating temporal phrase at the beginning of the verse.

[4:10]  ² tn Heb “the Lord.” See note on “he” in 4:3.

[4:10]  ³ tn Heb “my words.” See v. 13; in Hebrew the “ten commandments” are the “ten words.”

[10:12]  ⁴ tn Heb “the Lord your God.” See note on “he” in 10:4.

[10:12]  ⁵ tn Heb “to walk in all his ways” (so KJV, NIV, NRSV); NAB “follow his ways exactly”; NLT “to live according to his will.”

[10:12]  ⁶ tn Heb “the Lord your God.” See note on “he” in 10:4.

[10:12]  ⁷ tn Heb “heart and soul” or “heart and being”; NCV “with your whole being.” See note on the word “being” in Deut 6:5.

[10:13]  ⁸ tn Heb “commanding” (so NASB, NRSV). For stylistic reasons, to avoid redundancy, “giving” has been used in the translation.

[22:12]  ⁹ tn Heb “Do not extend your hand toward the boy.”

[22:12]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “and he said, ‘Do not extend…’”; the referent (the angel) has been specified in the context for clarity. The order of the introductory clause and the direct discourse has been rearranged in the translation for stylistic reasons.

[22:12]  ¹¹ sn For now I know. The test was designed to see if Abraham would be obedient (see v. 1).

[22:12]  ¹² sn In this context fear refers by metonymy to obedience that grows from faith.

[20:20]  ¹³ tn נַסּוֹת (nassot) is the Piel infinitive construct; it forms the purpose of God’s coming with all the accompanying phenomena. The verb can mean “to try, test, prove.” The sense of “prove” fits this context best because the terrifying phenomena were intended to put the fear of God in their hearts so that they would obey. In other words, God was inspiring them to obey, not simply testing to see if they would.

[20:20]  ¹⁴ tn The suffix on the noun is an objective genitive, referring to the fear that the people would have of God (GKC 439 §135.m).

[20:20]  ¹⁵ tn The negative form לְבִלְתִּי (lÿvilti) is used here with the imperfect tense (see for other examples GKC 483 §152.x). This gives the imperfect the nuance of a final imperfect: that you might not sin. Others: to keep you from sin.

[28:28]  ¹⁶ tc A number of medieval Hebrew manuscripts have YHWH (“Lord”); BHS has אֲדֹנָי (’adonay, “Lord”). As J. E. Hartley (Job [NICOT], 383) points out, this is the only occurrence of אֲדֹנָי (’adonay, “Lord”) in the book of Job, creating doubt for retaining it. Normally, YHWH is avoided in the book. “Fear of” (יִרְאַת, yir’at) is followed by שַׁדַּי (shadday, “Almighty”) in 6:14 – the only other occurrence of this term for “fear” in construct with a divine title.

[28:28]  ¹⁷ tc Many commentators delete this verse because (1) many read the divine name Yahweh (translated “Lord”) here, and (2) it is not consistent with the argument that precedes it. But as H. H. Rowley (Job [NCBC], 185) points out, there is inconsistency in this reasoning, for many of the critics have already said that this chapter is an interpolation. Following that line of thought, then, one would not expect it to conform to the rest of the book in this matter of the divine name. And concerning the second difficulty, the point of this chapter is that wisdom is beyond human comprehension and control. It belongs to God alone. So the conclusion that the fear of the Lord is wisdom is the necessary conclusion. Rowley concludes: “It is a pity to rob the poem of its climax and turn it into the expression of unrelieved agnosticism.”

[111:10]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “the beginning of wisdom [is] the fear of the Lord.”

[111:10]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “good sense [is] to all who do them.” The third masculine plural pronominal suffix must refer back to the “precepts” mentioned in v. 7. In the translation the referent has been specified for clarity. The phrase שֵׂכֶל טוֹב (shekhel tov) also occurs in Prov 3:4; 13:15 and 2 Chr 30:22.

[111:10]  ²⁰ tn Heb “his praise stands forever.”

[128:1]  ²¹ sn Psalm 128. The psalmist observes that the godly individual has genuine happiness because the Lord rewards such a person with prosperity and numerous children.

[128:1]  ²² sn The precise significance of this title, which appears in Pss 120-134, is unclear. Perhaps worshipers recited these psalms when they ascended the road to Jerusalem to celebrate annual religious festivals. For a discussion of their background see L. C. Allen, Psalms 101-150 (WBC), 219-21.

[128:1]  ²³ tn Heb “every fearer of the Lord.”

[128:1]  ²⁴ tn Heb “the one who walks in his ways.”

[16:6]  ²⁵ sn These two words are often found together to form a nominal hendiadys: “faithful loyal love.” The couplet often characterize the Lord, but here in parallel to the fear of the Lord it refers to the faithfulness of the believer. Such faith and faithfulness bring atonement for sin.

[16:6]  ²⁶ tn Heb “is atoned”; KJV “is purged”; NAB “is expiated.” The verb is from I כָּפַר (kafar, “to atone; to expiate; to pacify; to appease”; HALOT 493-94 s.v. I כפר). This root should not be confused with the identically spelled Homonym II כָּפַר (kafar, “to cover over”; HALOT 494 s.v. II *כפר). Atonement in the OT expiated sins, it did not merely cover them over (cf. NLT). C. H. Toy explains the meaning by saying it affirms that the divine anger against sin is turned away and man’s relation to God is as though he had not sinned (Proverbs [ICC], 322). Genuine repentance, demonstrated by loyalty and truthfulness, appeases the anger of God against one’s sin.

[16:6]  ²⁷ tn Heb “fear of the Lord.” The term יְהוָה (yÿhvah, “the Lord”) functions as an objective genitive: “fearing the Lord.”

[16:6]  ²⁸ tn Heb “turns away from”; NASB “keeps away from.”

[16:6]  ²⁹ sn The Hebrew word translated “evil” (רַע, ra’) can in some contexts mean “calamity” or “disaster,” but here it seems more likely to mean “evil” in the sense of sin. Faithfulness to the Lord brings freedom from sin. The verse uses synonymous parallelism with a variant: One half speaks of atonement for sin because of the life of faith, and the other of avoidance of sin because of the fear of the Lord.

[12:13]  ³⁰ tn Heb “The end of the matter, everything having been heard.”

[12:13]  ³¹ tn Heb “This is all men”; or “This is the whole of man.” The phrase זֶה כָּל־הָאָדָם (zeh kol-ha’adam, “this is all men”) features rhetorical elision of a key word. The ambiguity over the elided word has led to no less than five basic approaches: (1) “this is the whole duty of man” (KJV, ASV, RSV, NAB, NIV); (2) “this is the duty of all men” (MLB, ASV margin, RSV margin); (3) “this applies to all men” (NASB, NJPS); (4) “this is the whole duty of all men” (NRSV, Moffatt); and (5) “there is no more to man than this” (NEB). The four-fold repetition of כֹּל (kol, “all”) in 12:13-14 suggests that Qoheleth is emphasizing the “bottom line,” that is, the basic duty of man is simply to fear and obey God: After “all” (כֹּל) has been heard in the book, his conclusion is that the “whole” (כֹּל) duty of man is to obey God because God will bring “all” (כֹּל) acts into judgment, including “all” (כֹּל) that is hidden, whether good or bad. See D. Barthélemy, ed., Preliminary and Interim Report on the Hebrew Old Testament Text Project, 3:596.

[12:5]  ³² tn Grk “will show,” but in this reflective context such a demonstration is a warning or exhortation.

[12:5]  ³³ sn The actual performer of the killing is not here specified. It could be understood to be God (so NASB, NRSV) but it could simply emphasize that, after a killing has taken place, it is God who casts the person into hell.

[12:5]  ³⁴ tn The direct object (“you”) is understood.

[12:5]  ³⁵ sn The word translated hell is “Gehenna” (γέεννα, geenna), a Greek transliteration of the Hebrew words ge hinnom (“Valley of Hinnom”). This was the valley along the south side of Jerusalem. In OT times it was used for human sacrifices to the pagan god Molech (cf. Jer 7:31; 19:5-6; 32:35), and it came to be used as a place where human excrement and rubbish were disposed of and burned. In the intertestamental period, it came to be used symbolically as the place of divine punishment (cf. 1 En. 27:2, 90:26; 4 Ezra 7:36).

[12:1]  ³⁶ tn The phrase ἐν οἷς (en Jois) can be translated “meanwhile.”

[12:1]  ³⁷ tn Grk “he”; the referent (Jesus) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[12:1]  ³⁸ tn According to L&N 27.59, “to pay attention to, to keep on the lookout for, to be alert for, to be on your guard against.” This is another Lukan present imperative calling for constant vigilance.

[12:1]  ³⁹ sn See the note on Pharisees in 5:17.

[12:1]  ⁴⁰ sn The pursuit of popularity can lead to hypocrisy, if one is not careful.

[1:17]  ⁴¹ tn Grk “before him”; the referent (the Lord) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[1:17]  ⁴² sn These two lines cover all relationships: Turn the hearts of the fathers back to their children points to horizontal relationships, while (turn) the disobedient to the wisdom of the just shows what God gives from above in a vertical manner.