Exodus 32:8

32:8 They have quickly turned aside ¹  from the way that I commanded them – they have made for themselves a molten calf and have bowed down to it and sacrificed to it and said, ‘These are your gods, O Israel, which brought you up from the land of Egypt.’”

Deuteronomy 29:25

29:25 Then people will say, “Because they abandoned the covenant of the Lord, the God of their ancestors, which he made with them when he brought them out of the land of Egypt.

Deuteronomy 31:16-18

31:16 Then the Lord said to Moses, “You are about to die, ²  and then these people will begin to prostitute themselves with the foreign gods of the land into which they ³  are going. They ⁴  will reject ⁵  me and break my covenant that I have made with them. ⁶  31:17 At that time ⁷  my anger will erupt against them ⁸  and I will abandon them and hide my face from them until they are devoured. Many disasters and distresses will overcome ⁹  them ¹⁰  so that they ¹¹  will say at that time, ‘Have not these disasters ¹²  overcome us ¹³  because our ¹⁴  God is not among us ¹⁵ ?’ 31:18 But I will certainly ¹⁶  hide myself at that time because of all the wickedness they ¹⁷  will have done by turning to other gods.

Joshua 23:15-16

23:15 But in the same way every faithful promise the Lord your God made to you has been realized, ¹⁸  it is just as certain, if you disobey, that the Lord will bring on you every judgment ¹⁹  until he destroys you from this good land which the Lord your God gave you. 23:16 If you violate the covenantal laws of the Lord your God which he commanded you to keep, ²⁰  and follow, worship, and bow down to other gods, ²¹  the Lord will be very angry with you and you will disappear ²²  quickly from the good land which he gave to you.”

Joshua 23:2

23:2 So Joshua summoned all Israel, including the elders, rulers, judges, and leaders, and told them: “I am very old.

Joshua 17:15-18

17:15 Joshua replied to them, “Since you have so many people, ²³  go up into the forest and clear out a place to live in the land of the Perizzites and Rephaites, for the hill country of Ephraim is too small for you.” 17:16 The descendants of Joseph said, “The whole hill country ²⁴  is inadequate for us, and the Canaanites living down in the valley in Beth Shean and its surrounding towns and in the Valley of Jezreel have chariots with iron-rimmed wheels.” ²⁵  17:17 Joshua said to the family ²⁶  of Joseph – to both Ephraim and Manasseh: “You have many people and great military strength. You will not have just one tribal allotment. 17:18 The whole hill country ²⁷  will be yours; though it is a forest, you can clear it and it will be entirely yours. ²⁸  You can conquer the Canaanites, though they have chariots with iron-rimmed wheels and are strong.”

Psalms 78:10-11

78:10 They did not keep their covenant with God, ²⁹ 

and they refused to obey ³⁰  his law.

78:11 They forgot what he had done, ³¹ 

the amazing things he had shown them.

Psalms 78:57

78:57 They were unfaithful ³²  and acted as treacherously as ³³  their ancestors;

they were as unreliable as a malfunctioning bow. ³⁴ 

Isaiah 24:5-6

24:5 The earth is defiled by ³⁵  its inhabitants, ³⁶ 

for they have violated laws,

disregarded the regulation, ³⁷ 

and broken the permanent treaty. ³⁸ 

24:6 So a treaty curse ³⁹  devours the earth;

its inhabitants pay for their guilt. ⁴⁰ 

This is why the inhabitants of the earth disappear, ⁴¹ 

and are reduced to just a handful of people. ⁴² 

Jeremiah 11:7-8

11:7 For I solemnly warned your ancestors to obey me. ⁴³  I warned them again and again, ⁴⁴  ever since I delivered them out of Egypt until this very day. 11:8 But they did not listen to me or pay any attention to me! Each one of them followed the stubborn inclinations of his own wicked heart. So I brought on them all the punishments threatened in the covenant because they did not carry out its terms as I commanded them to do.’” ⁴⁵ 

Jeremiah 22:8-9

22:8 “‘People from other nations will pass by this city. They will ask one another, “Why has the Lord done such a thing to this great city?” 22:9 The answer will come back, “It is because they broke their covenant with the Lord their God and worshiped and served other gods.”

Jeremiah 31:32

31:32 It will not be like the old ⁴⁶  covenant that I made with their ancestors ⁴⁷  when I delivered them ⁴⁸  from Egypt. For they violated that covenant, even though I was like a faithful husband to them,” ⁴⁹  says the Lord. ⁵⁰ 

Ezekiel 16:8

16:8 “‘Then I passed by you and watched you, noticing ⁵¹  that you had reached the age for love. ⁵²  I spread my cloak ⁵³  over you and covered your nakedness. I swore a solemn oath to you and entered into a marriage covenant with you, declares the sovereign Lord, and you became mine.

Ezekiel 16:59

16:59 “‘For this is what the sovereign Lord says: I will deal with you according to what you have done when you despised your oath by breaking your covenant.

Ezekiel 20:37-38

20:37 I will make you pass under ⁵⁴  the shepherd’s staff, ⁵⁵  and I will bring you into the bond of the covenant. 20:38 I will eliminate from among you the rebels and those who revolt ⁵⁶  against me. I will bring them out from the land where they have been residing, but they will not come to the land of Israel. Then you will know that I am the Lord.

[32:8]  ¹ tn The verb is a perfect tense, reflecting the present perfect nuance: “they have turned aside” and are still disobedient. But the verb is modified with the adverb “quickly” (actually a Piel infinitive absolute). It has been only a matter of weeks since they heard the voice of God prohibiting this.

[31:16]  ² tn Heb “lie down with your fathers” (so NASB); NRSV “ancestors.”

[31:16]  ³ tn Heb “he.” Smr, LXX, and the Targums read the plural “they,” which is necessary in any case in the translation because of contemporary English style. The third person singular also occurs in the Hebrew text twice more in this verse, three times in v. 17, once in v. 18, five times in v. 20, and four times in v. 21. Each time it is translated as third person plural for stylistic reasons.

[31:16]  ⁴ tn Heb “he.” Smr, LXX, and the Targums read the plural “they.” See note on the first occurrence of “they” in v. 16.

[31:16]  ⁵ tn Or “abandon” (TEV, NLT).

[31:16]  ⁶ tn Heb “him.” Smr, LXX, and the Targums read the plural “them.” See note on the first occurrence of “they” in v. 16.

[31:17]  ⁷ tn Heb “on that day.” This same expression also appears later in the verse and in v. 18.

[31:17]  ⁸ tn Heb “him.” Smr, LXX, and the Targums read the plural “them.” See note on the first occurrence of “they” in v. 16.

[31:17]  ⁹ tn Heb “find,” “encounter.”

[31:17]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “him.” Smr, LXX, and the Targums read the plural “them.” See note on the first occurrence of “they” in v. 16.

[31:17]  ¹¹ tn Heb “he.” Smr, LXX, and the Targums read the plural “they.” See note on the first occurrence of “they” in v. 16.

[31:17]  ¹² tn Heb “evils.”

[31:17]  ¹³ tn Heb “me.” Smr, LXX, and the Targums read the plural “us,” which is necessary in any case in the translation because of contemporary English style.

[31:17]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “my.”

[31:17]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “me.” Smr, LXX, and the Targums read the plural “us,” which is necessary in any case in the translation because of contemporary English style.

[31:18]  ¹⁶ tn The Hebrew text uses the infinitive absolute for emphasis, which the translation indicates with “certainly.”

[31:18]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “he.” Smr, LXX, and the Targums read the plural “they.” See note on the first occurrence of “they” in v. 16.

[23:15]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “and it will be as every good word which the Lord your God spoke to you has come to pass.”

[23:15]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “so the Lord will bring every injurious [or “evil”] word [or “thing”] upon you.”

[23:16]  ²⁰ tn Heb “when you violate the covenant of the Lord your God which he commanded you.”

[23:16]  ²¹ tn Heb “and you walk and serve other gods and bow down to them.”

[23:16]  ²² tn Or “perish.”

[17:15]  ²³ tn Heb “If you are a great people.”

[17:16]  ²⁴ tn The Hebrew text has simply “the hill country,” which must here include the hill country of Ephraim and the forest regions mentioned in v. 15.

[17:16]  ²⁵ tn Heb “and there are iron chariots among all the Canaanites who live in the land of the valley, to those who are in Beth Shean and its daughters and to those who are in the Valley of Jezreel.” Regarding the translation “chariots with iron-rimmed wheels” see Y. Yadin, The Art of Warfare in Biblical Lands, 255 and R. Drews, “The ‘Chariots of Iron’ of Joshua and Judges,” JSOT 45 (1989): 15-23.

[17:17]  ²⁶ tn Heb “house.”

[17:18]  ²⁷ tn The Hebrew text has simply “the hill country,” which must here include the hill country of Ephraim and the forest regions mentioned in v. 15.

[17:18]  ²⁸ tn Heb “and its limits will be yours.”

[78:10]  ²⁹ tn Heb “the covenant of God.”

[78:10]  ³⁰ tn Heb “walk in.”

[78:11]  ³¹ tn Heb “his deeds.”

[78:57]  ³² tn Heb “they turned back.”

[78:57]  ³³ tn Or “acted treacherously like.”

[78:57]  ³⁴ tn Heb “they turned aside like a deceitful bow.”

[24:5]  ³⁵ tn Heb “beneath”; cf. KJV, ASV, NRSV “under”; NAB “because of.”

[24:5]  ³⁶ sn Isa 26:21 suggests that the earth’s inhabitants defiled the earth by shedding the blood of their fellow human beings. See also Num 35:33-34, which assumes that bloodshed defiles a land.

[24:5]  ³⁷ tn Heb “moved past [the?] regulation.”

[24:5]  ³⁸ tn Or “everlasting covenant” (KJV, NASB, NIV, NRSV, NLT); NAB “the ancient covenant”; CEV “their agreement that was to last forever.”

[24:6]  ³⁹ sn Ancient Near Eastern treaties often had “curses,” or threatened judgments, attached to them. (See Deut 28 for a biblical example of such curses.) The party or parties taking an oath of allegiance acknowledged that disobedience would activate these curses, which typically threatened loss of agricultural fertility as depicted in the following verses.

[24:6]  ⁴⁰ tn The verb אָשַׁם (’asham, “be guilty”) is here used metonymically to mean “pay, suffer for one’s guilt” (see HALOT 95 s.v. אשׁם).

[24:6]  ⁴¹ tn BDB 359 s.v. חָרַר derives the verb חָרוּ (kharu) from חָרַר (kharar, “burn”), but HALOT 351 s.v. II חרה understands a hapax legomenon חָרָה (kharah, “to diminish in number,” a homonym of חָרָה) here, relating it to an alleged Arabic cognate meaning “to decrease.” The Qumran scroll 1QIsa^a has חורו, perhaps understanding the root as חָוַר (khavar, “grow pale”; see Isa 29:22 and HALOT 299 s.v. I חור).

[24:6]  ⁴² tn Heb “and mankind is left small [in number].”

[11:7]  ⁴³ tn Heb “warned them…saying, ‘Obey me.’” However, it allows the long sentence to be broken up easier if the indirect quote is used.

[11:7]  ⁴⁴ tn For the explanation for this rendering see the note on 7:13.

[11:8]  ⁴⁵ tn Heb “So I brought on them all the terms of this covenant which I commanded to do and they did not do.” There is an interesting polarity that is being exploited by two different nuances implicit in the use of the word “terms” (דִּבְרֵי [divre], literally “words”), i.e., what the Lord “brings on” them, namely, the curses that are the penalty for disobedience and the stipulations that they are “to do,” that is, to carry out. The sentence is broken up this way in keeping with contemporary English style to avoid the long and complicated style of the original.

[31:32]  ⁴⁶ tn The word “old” is not in the text but is implicit in the use of the word “new.” It is supplied in the translation for greater clarity.

[31:32]  ⁴⁷ tn Heb “fathers.”

[31:32]  ⁴⁸ tn Heb “when I took them by the hand and led them out.”

[31:32]  ⁴⁹ tn Or “I was their master.” See the study note on 3:14.

[31:32]  ⁵⁰ tn Heb “Oracle of the Lord.”

[16:8]  ⁵¹ tn The word הִנֵּה (hinneh, traditionally “behold”) indicates becoming aware of something and has been translated here as a participle.

[16:8]  ⁵² tn See similar use of this term in Ezek 23:17; Prov 7:16; Song of Songs 4:10; 7:13.

[16:8]  ⁵³ tn Heb “wing” or “skirt.” The gesture symbolized acquiring a woman in early Arabia (similarly, see Deut 22:30; Ruth 3:9).

[20:37]  ⁵⁴ tn This is the same Hebrew verb used to describe the passing of the children through the fire.

[20:37]  ⁵⁵ sn The metaphor may be based in Lev 27:32 (see also Jer 33:13; Matt 25:32-33). A shepherd would count his sheep as they passed beneath his staff.

[20:38]  ⁵⁶ tn See the note at 2:3.