Deuteronomy 5:2-3

5:2 The Lord our God made a covenant with us at Horeb. 5:3 He ¹  did not make this covenant with our ancestors ²  but with us, we who are here today, all of us living now.

Exodus 19:5-6

19:5 And now, if you will diligently listen to me ³  and keep ⁴  my covenant, then you will be my ⁵  special possession ⁶  out of all the nations, for all the earth is mine, 19:6 and you will be to me ⁷  a kingdom of priests ⁸  and a holy nation.’ ⁹  These are the words that you will speak to the Israelites.”

Joshua 24:25

24:25 That day Joshua drew up an agreement ¹⁰  for the people, and he established rules and regulations ¹¹  for them in Shechem.

Joshua 24:2

24:2 Joshua told all the people, “Here is what the Lord God of Israel says: ‘In the distant past your ancestors ¹²  lived beyond the Euphrates River, ¹³  including Terah the father of Abraham and Nahor. They worshiped ¹⁴  other gods,

Joshua 11:17

11:17 from Mount Halak on up to Seir, as far as Baal Gad in the Lebanon Valley below Mount Hermon. He captured all their kings and executed them. ¹⁵ 

Joshua 11:2

11:2 and the northern kings who ruled in ¹⁶  the hill country, the Arabah south of Kinnereth, ¹⁷  the lowlands, and the heights of Dor to the west.

Joshua 15:12-15

15:12 The western border was the Mediterranean Sea. ¹⁸  These were the borders of the tribe of Judah and its clans. ¹⁹ 

15:13 Caleb son of Jephunneh was assigned Kiriath Arba (that is Hebron) within the tribe of Judah, according to the Lord’s instructions to Joshua. (Arba was the father of Anak.) ²⁰  15:14 Caleb drove out ²¹  from there three Anakites – Sheshai, Ahiman, and Talmai, descendants of Anak. 15:15 From there he attacked the people of Debir. ²²  (Debir used to be called Kiriath Sepher.)

[5:3]  ¹ tn Heb “the Lord.” The pronoun has been used in the translation for stylistic reasons to avoid redundancy.

[5:3]  ² tn Heb “fathers.”

[19:5]  ³ tn Heb “listen to my voice.” The construction uses the imperfect tense in the conditional clause, preceded by the infinitive absolute from the same verb. The idiom “listen to the voice of” implies obedience, not just mental awareness of sound.

[19:5]  ⁴ tn The verb is a perfect tense with vav (ו) consecutive; it continues the idea in the protasis of the sentence: “and [if you will] keep.”

[19:5]  ⁵ tn The lamed preposition expresses possession here: “to me” means “my.”

[19:5]  ⁶ tn The noun is סְגֻלָּה (sÿgullah), which means a special possession. Israel was to be God’s special possession, but the prophets will later narrow it to the faithful remnant. All the nations belong to God, but Israel was to stand in a place of special privilege and enormous responsibility. See Deut 7:6; 14:2; 26:18; Ps 135:4; and Mal 3:17. See M. Greenburg, “Hebrew sÿgulla: Akkadian sikiltu,” JAOS 71 (1951): 172ff.

[19:6]  ⁷ tn Or “for me” (NIV, NRSV), or, if the lamed (ל) preposition has a possessive use, “my kingdom” (so NCV).

[19:6]  ⁸ tn The construction “a kingdom of priests” means that the kingdom is made up of priests. W. C. Kaiser (“Exodus,” EBC 2:417) offers four possible renderings of the expression: 1) apposition, viz., “kings, that is, priests; 2) as a construct with a genitive of specification, “royal priesthood”; 3) as a construct with the genitive being the attribute, “priestly kingdom”; and 4) reading with an unexpressed “and” – “kings and priests.” He takes the latter view that they were to be kings and priests. (Other references are R. B. Y. Scott, “A Kingdom of Priests (Exodus xix. 6),” OTS 8 [1950]: 213-19; William L. Moran, “A Kingdom of Priests,” The Bible in Current Catholic Thought, 7-20). However, due to the parallelism of the next description which uses an adjective, this is probably a construct relationship. This kingdom of God will be composed of a priestly people. All the Israelites would be living wholly in God’s service and enjoying the right of access to him. And, as priests, they would have the duty of representing God to the nations, following what they perceived to be the duties of priests – proclaiming God’s word, interceding for people, and making provision for people to find God through atonement (see Deut 33:9,10).

[19:6]  ⁹ tn They are also to be “a holy nation.” They are to be a nation separate and distinct from the rest of the nations. Here is another aspect of their duty. It was one thing to be God’s special possession, but to be that they had to be priestly and holy. The duties of the covenant will specify what it would mean to be a holy nation. In short, they had to keep themselves free from everything that characterized pagan people (S. R. Driver, Exodus, 171). So it is a bilateral covenant: they received special privileges but they must provide special services by the special discipline. See also H. Kruse, “Exodus 19:5 and the Mission of Israel,” North East Asian Journal of Theology 24/25 (1980): 239-42.

[24:25]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “cut a covenant.”

[24:25]  ¹¹ tn Heb “a statute and a judgment.”

[24:2]  ¹² tn Heb “your fathers.”

[24:2]  ¹³ tn Heb “the river,” referring to the Euphrates. This has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[24:2]  ¹⁴ tn Or “served.”

[11:17]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “and struck them down and killed them.”

[11:2]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “and to the kings who [are] from the north in.”

[11:2]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “Chinneroth,” a city and plain located in the territory of Naphtali in Galilee (BDB 490 s.v. כִּנֶּרֶת, כִּנֲרוֹת).

[15:12]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “the Great Sea,” the typical designation for the Mediterranean Sea.

[15:12]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “this was the border of the sons of Judah round about, by their clans.”

[15:13]  ²⁰ tn Heb “To Caleb son of Jephunneh he gave a portion in the midst of the sons of Judah according to the mouth [i.e., command] of the Lord to Joshua, Kiriath Arba (the father of Anak), it is Hebron.”

[15:14]  ²¹ tn Or “dispossessed.”

[15:15]  ²² tn Heb “he went up against the inhabitants of Debir.”