Deuteronomy 7:8

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 13:17

13:17 You must not take for yourself anything that has been placed under judgment. ⁹  Then the Lord will relent from his intense anger, show you compassion, have mercy on you, and multiply you as he promised your ancestors.

Deuteronomy 29:12

29:12 so that you may enter by oath into the covenant the Lord your God is making with you today. ¹⁰ 

Exodus 19:5-6

19:5 And now, if you will diligently listen to me ¹¹  and keep ¹²  my covenant, then you will be my ¹³  special possession ¹⁴  out of all the nations, for all the earth is mine, 19:6 and you will be to me ¹⁵  a kingdom of priests ¹⁶  and a holy nation.’ ¹⁷  These are the words that you will speak to the Israelites.”

Jeremiah 11:5

11:5 Then I will keep the promise I swore on oath to your ancestors to give them a land flowing with milk and honey.” ¹⁸  That is the very land that you still live in today.’” ¹⁹  And I responded, “Amen! Let it be so, ²⁰  Lord!”

Hebrews 6:13-18

6:13 Now when God made his promise to Abraham, since he could swear by no one greater, he swore by himself, 6:14 saying, “Surely I will bless you greatly and multiply your descendants abundantly.” ²¹  6:15 And so by persevering, Abraham ²²  inherited the promise. 6:16 For people ²³  swear by something greater than themselves, ²⁴  and the oath serves as a confirmation to end all dispute. ²⁵  6:17 In the same way ²⁶  God wanted to demonstrate more clearly to the heirs of the promise that his purpose was unchangeable, ²⁷  and so he intervened with an oath, 6:18 so that we who have found refuge in him ²⁸  may find strong encouragement to hold fast to the hope set before us through two unchangeable things, since it is impossible for God to lie.

[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.

[13:17]  ⁹ tn Or “anything that has been put under the divine curse”; Heb “anything of the ban” (cf. NASB). See note on the phrase “divine judgment” in Deut 2:34.

[29:12]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “for you to pass on into the covenant of the Lord your God and into his oath, which the Lord your God is cutting with you today.”

[19:5]  ¹¹ 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]  ¹² 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]  ¹³ tn The lamed preposition expresses possession here: “to me” means “my.”

[19:5]  ¹⁴ 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]  ¹⁵ tn Or “for me” (NIV, NRSV), or, if the lamed (ל) preposition has a possessive use, “my kingdom” (so NCV).

[19:6]  ¹⁶ 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]  ¹⁷ 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.

[11:5]  ¹⁸ tn The phrase “a land flowing with milk and honey” is very familiar to readers in the Jewish and Christian traditions as a proverbial description of the agricultural and pastoral abundance of the land of Israel. However, it may not mean too much to readers outside those traditions; an equivalent expression would be “a land of fertile fields and fine pastures.” E. W. Bullinger (Figures of Speech, 626) identifies this as a figure of speech called synecdoche where the species is put for the genus, “a region…abounding with pasture and fruits of all kinds.”

[11:5]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “‘a land flowing with milk and honey,’ as at this day.” However, the literal reading is too elliptical and would lead to confusion.

[11:5]  ²⁰ tn The words “Let it be so” are not in the text; they are an explanation of the significance of the term “Amen” for those who may not be part of the Christian or Jewish tradition.

[6:14]  ²¹ tn Grk “in blessing I will bless you and in multiplying I will multiply you,” the Greek form of a Hebrew idiom showing intensity.

[6:15]  ²² tn Grk “he”; in the translation the referent (Abraham) has been specified for clarity.

[6:16]  ²³ tn The plural Greek term ἄνθρωποι (anqrwpoi) is used here in a generic sense, referring to both men and women, and is thus translated “people.”

[6:16]  ²⁴ tn Grk “by something greater”; the rest of the comparison (“than themselves”) is implied.

[6:16]  ²⁵ tn Grk “the oath for confirmation is an end of all dispute.”

[6:17]  ²⁶ tn Grk “in which.”

[6:17]  ²⁷ tn Or “immutable” (here and in v. 18); Grk “the unchangeableness of his purpose.”

[6:18]  ²⁸ tn Grk “have taken refuge”; the basis of that refuge is implied in the preceding verse.