Exodus 35:21-22

35:21 Everyone ¹  whose heart stirred him to action ²  and everyone whose spirit was willing ³  came and brought the offering for the Lord for the work of the tent of meeting, for all its service, and for the holy garments. ⁴  35:22 They came, men and women alike, ⁵  all who had willing hearts. They brought brooches, earrings, rings and ornaments, all kinds of gold jewelry, ⁶  and everyone came who waved ⁷  a wave offering of gold to the Lord.

Exodus 35:29

35:29 The Israelites brought a freewill offering to the Lord, every man and woman whose heart was willing to bring materials for all the work that the Lord through ⁸  Moses had commanded them ⁹  to do.

Exodus 35:1

Sabbath Regulations

35:1 Moses assembled the whole community of the Israelites and said to them, “These are the things that the Lord has commanded you to do. ¹⁰ 

Exodus 29:3

29:3 You are to put them in one basket and present ¹¹  them in the basket, along with ¹²  the bull and the two rams.

Exodus 29:5

29:5 and take the garments and clothe Aaron with the tunic, ¹³  the robe of the ephod, the ephod, and the breastpiece; you are to fasten the ephod on him by using the skillfully woven waistband. ¹⁴ 

Exodus 29:9

29:9 and wrap the sashes around Aaron and his sons ¹⁵  and put headbands on them, and so the ministry of priesthood will belong to them by a perpetual ordinance. Thus you are to consecrate ¹⁶  Aaron and his sons.

Exodus 29:17

29:17 Then you are to cut the ram into pieces and wash the entrails and its legs and put them on its pieces and on its head

Exodus 29:1

The Consecration of Aaron and His Sons

29:1 ¹⁷ “Now this is what ¹⁸  you are to do for them to consecrate them so that they may minister as my priests. Take a young ¹⁹  bull and two rams without blemish; ²⁰ 

Colossians 1:8

1:8 who also told us of your love in the Spirit.

Colossians 1:5-17

1:5 Your faith and love have arisen ²¹  from the hope laid up ²²  for you in heaven, which you have heard about in the message of truth, the gospel ²³  1:6 that has come to you. Just as in the entire world this gospel ²⁴  is bearing fruit and growing, so it has also been bearing fruit and growing ²⁵  among you from the first day you heard it and understood the grace of God in truth. 1:7 You learned the gospel ²⁶  from Epaphras, our dear fellow slave ²⁷  – a ²⁸  faithful minister of Christ on our ²⁹  behalf – 1:8 who also told us of your love in the Spirit.

Paul’s Prayer for the Growth of the Church

1:9 For this reason we also, from the day we heard about you, ³⁰  have not ceased praying for you and asking God ³¹  to fill ³²  you with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, 1:10 so that you may live ³³  worthily of the Lord and please him in all respects ³⁴  – bearing fruit in every good deed, growing in the knowledge of God, 1:11 being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might for the display of ³⁵  all patience and steadfastness, joyfully 1:12 giving thanks to the Father who has qualified you to share ³⁶  in the saints’ ³⁷  inheritance in the light. 1:13 He delivered us from the power of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of the Son he loves, ³⁸  1:14 in whom we have redemption, ³⁹  the forgiveness of sins.

The Supremacy of Christ

1:15 ⁴⁰ He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn ⁴¹  over all creation, ⁴² 

1:16 for all things in heaven and on earth were created by him – all things, whether visible or invisible, whether thrones or dominions, ⁴³  whether principalities or powers – all things were created through him and for him.

1:17 He himself is before all things and all things are held together ⁴⁴  in him.

Philemon 1:14

1:14 However, ⁴⁵  without your consent I did not want to do anything, so that your good deed would not be out of compulsion, but from your own willingness.

[35:21]  ¹ tn Heb “man.”

[35:21]  ² tn The verb means “lift up, bear, carry.” Here the subject is “heart” or will, and so the expression describes one moved within to act.

[35:21]  ³ tn Heb “his spirit made him willing.” The verb is used in Scripture for the freewill offering that people brought (Lev 7).

[35:21]  ⁴ tn Literally “the garments of holiness,” the genitive is the attributive genitive, marking out what type of garments these were.

[35:22]  ⁵ tn The expression in Hebrew is “men on/after the women,” meaning men with women, to ensure that it was clear that the preceding verse did not mean only men. B. Jacob takes it further, saying that the men came after the women because the latter had taken the initiative (Exodus, 1017).

[35:22]  ⁶ tn Heb “all gold utensils.”

[35:22]  ⁷ tn The verb could be translated “offered,” but it is cognate with the following noun that is the wave offering. This sentence underscores the freewill nature of the offerings people made. The word “came” is supplied from v. 21 and v. 22.

[35:29]  ⁸ tn Heb “by the hand of.”

[35:29]  ⁹ tn Here “them” has been supplied.

[35:1]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “to do them”; this is somewhat redundant in English and has been simplified in the translation.

[29:3]  ¹¹ tn The verb קָרַב (qarav) in the Hiphil means to “bring near” to the altar, or, to offer something to God. These gifts will, therefore, be offered to him for the service of this ritual.

[29:3]  ¹² tn Heb “and with.”

[29:5]  ¹³ tn The Hiphil of לָבַשׁ (lavash, “to clothe”) will take double accusatives; so the sign of the accusative is with Aaron, and then with the articles of clothing. The translation will have to treat Aaron as the direct object and the articles as indirect objects, because Aaron receives the prominence in the verse – you will clothe Aaron.

[29:5]  ¹⁴ tn The verb used in this last clause is a denominative verb from the word for ephod. And so “ephod the ephod on him” means “fasten as an ephod the ephod on him” (S. R. Driver, Exodus, 316).

[29:9]  ¹⁵ tc Hebrew has both the objective pronoun “them” and the names “Aaron and his sons.” Neither the LXX nor Leviticus 8:13 has “Aaron and his sons,” suggesting that this may have been a later gloss in the text.

[29:9]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “and you will fill the hand” and so “consecrate” or “ordain.” The verb draws together the individual acts of the process.

[29:1]  ¹⁷ sn Chap. 29 is a rather long, involved discussion of the consecration of Aaron the priest. It is similar to the ordination service in Lev 8. In fact, the execution of what is instructed here is narrated there. But these instructions must have been formulated after or in conjunction with Lev 1-7, for they presuppose a knowledge of the sacrifices. The bulk of the chapter is the consecration of the priests: 1-35. It has the preparation (1-3), washing (4), investiture and anointing (5-9), sin offering (10-14), burnt offering (15-18), installation peace offering (19-26, 31-34), other offerings’ rulings (27-30), and the duration of the ritual (35). Then there is the consecration of the altar (36-37), and the oblations (38-46). There are many possibilities for the study and exposition of this material. The whole chapter is the consecration of tabernacle, altar, people, and most of all the priests. God was beginning the holy operations with sacral ritual. So the overall message would be: Everyone who ministers, everyone who worships, and everything they use in the presence of Yahweh, must be set apart to God by the cleansing, enabling, and sanctifying work of God.

[29:1]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “the thing.”

[29:1]  ¹⁹ tn Literally: “take one bull, a ‘son’ of the herd.”

[29:1]  ²⁰ tn The word תָּמִים (tamim) means “perfect.” The animals could not have diseases or be crippled or blind (see Mal 1). The requirement was designed to ensure that the people would give the best they had to Yahweh. The typology pointed to the sinless Messiah who would fulfill all these sacrifices in his one sacrifice on the cross.

[1:5]  ²¹ tn Col 1:3-8 form one long sentence in the Greek text and have been divided at the end of v. 4 and v. 6 and within v. 6 for clarity, in keeping with the tendency in contemporary English toward shorter sentences. Thus the phrase “Your faith and love have arisen from the hope” is literally “because of the hope.” The perfect tense “have arisen” was chosen in the English to reflect the fact that the recipients of the letter had acquired this hope at conversion in the past, but that it still remains and motivates them to trust in Christ and to love one another.

[1:5]  ²² tn BDAG 113 s.v. ἀπόκειμαι 2 renders ἀποκειμένην (apokeimenhn) with the expression “reserved” in this verse.

[1:5]  ²³ tn The term “the gospel” (τοῦ εὐαγγελίου, tou euangeliou) is in apposition to “the word of truth” (τῷ λόγῳ τῆς ἀληθείας, tw logw th" alhqeia") as indicated in the translation.

[1:6]  ²⁴ tn Grk “just as in the entire world it is bearing fruit.” The antecedent (“the gospel”) of the implied subject (“it”) of ἐστιν (estin) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[1:6]  ²⁵ tn Though the participles are periphrastic with the present tense verb ἐστίν (estin), the presence of the temporal indicator “from the day” in the next clause indicates that this is a present tense that reaches into the past and should be translated as “has been bearing fruit and growing.” For a discussion of this use of the present tense, see ExSyn 519-20.

[1:7]  ²⁶ tn Or “learned it.” The Greek text simply has “you learned” without the reference to “the gospel,” but “the gospel” is supplied to clarify the sense of the clause. Direct objects were frequently omitted in Greek when clear from the context.

[1:7]  ²⁷ tn The Greek word translated “fellow slave” is σύνδουλος (sundoulo"); the σύν- prefix here denotes association. Though δοῦλος is normally translated “servant,” the word does not bear the connotation of a free individual serving another. BDAG notes that “‘servant’ for ‘slave’ is largely confined to Biblical transl. and early American times…in normal usage at the present time the two words are carefully distinguished” (BDAG 260 s.v.). The most accurate translation is “bondservant” (sometimes found in the ASV for δοῦλος), in that it often indicates one who sells himself into slavery to another. But as this is archaic, few today understand its force.

[1:7]  ²⁸ tn The Greek text has “who (ὅς, Jos) is a faithful minister.” The above translation conveys the antecedent of the relative pronoun quite well and avoids the redundancy with the following substantival participle of v. 8, namely, “who told” (ὁ δηλώσας, Jo dhlwsa").

[1:7]  ²⁹ tc ‡ Judging by the superior witnesses for the first person pronoun ἡμῶν (Jhmwn, “us”; Ì⁴⁶ א* A B D* F G 326* 1505 al) vs. the second person pronoun ὑμῶν (Jumwn, “you”; found in א² C D¹ Ψ 075 33 1739 1881 Ï lat sy co), ἡμῶν should be regarded as original. Although it is possible that ἡμῶν was an early alteration of ὑμῶν (either unintentionally, as dittography, since it comes seventeen letters after the previous ἡμῶν; or intentionally, to conform to the surrounding first person pronouns), this supposition is difficult to maintain in light of the varied and valuable witnesses for this reading. Further, the second person is both embedded in the verb ἐμάθετε (emaqete) and is explicit in v. 8 (ὑμῶν). Hence, the motivation to change to the first person pronoun is counterbalanced by such evidence. The second person pronoun may have been introduced unintentionally via homoioarcton with the ὑπέρ (Juper) that immediately precedes it. As well, the second person reading is somewhat harder for it seems to address Epaphras’ role only in relation to Paul and his colleagues, rather than in relation to the Colossians. Nevertheless, the decision must be based ultimately on external evidence (because the internal evidence can be variously interpreted), and this strongly supports ἡμῶν.

[1:9]  ³⁰ tn Or “heard about it”; Grk “heard.” There is no direct object stated in the Greek (direct objects were frequently omitted in Greek when clear from the context). A direct object is expected by an English reader, however, so most translations supply one. Here, however, it is not entirely clear what the author “heard”: a number of translations supply “it” (so KJV, NASB, NRSV; NAB “this”), but this could refer back either to (1) “your love in the Spirit” at the end of v. 8, or (2) “your faith in Christ Jesus and the love that you have for all the saints” (v. 4). In light of this uncertainty, other translations supply “about you” (TEV, NIV, CEV, NLT). This is preferred by the present translation since, while it does not resolve the ambiguity entirely, it does make it less easy for the English reader to limit the reference only to “your love in the Spirit” at the end of v. 8.

[1:9]  ³¹ tn The term “God” does not appear in the Greek text, but the following reference to “the knowledge of his will” makes it clear that “God” is in view as the object of the “praying and asking,” and should therefore be included in the English translation for clarity.

[1:9]  ³² tn The ἵνα (Jina) clause has been translated as substantival, indicating the content of the prayer and asking. The idea of purpose may also be present in this clause.

[1:10]  ³³ tn The infinitive περιπατῆσαι (peripathsai, “to walk, to live, to live one’s life”) is best taken as an infinitive of purpose related to “praying” (προσευχόμενοι, proseucomenoi) and “asking” (αἰτούμενοι, aitoumenoi) in v. 9 and is thus translated as “that you may live.”

[1:10]  ³⁴ tn BDAG 129 s.v. ἀρεσκεία states that ἀρεσκείαν (areskeian) refers to a “desire to please εἰς πᾶσαν ἀ. to please (the Lord) in all respects Col 1:10.”

[1:11]  ³⁵ tn The expression “for the display of” is an attempt to convey in English the force of the Greek preposition εἰς (eis) in this context.

[1:12]  ³⁶ tn BDAG 473 s.v. ἱκανόω states, “τινὰ εἴς τι someone for someth. Col 1:12.” The point of the text is that God has qualified the saints for a “share” or “portion” in the inheritance of the saints.

[1:12]  ³⁷ tn Grk “the inheritance of the saints.” The genitive noun τῶν ἁγίων (twn Jagiwn) is a possessive genitive: “the saints’ inheritance.”

[1:13]  ³⁸ tn Here αὐτοῦ (autou) has been translated as a subjective genitive (“he loves”).

[1:14]  ³⁹ tc διὰ τοῦ αἵματος αὐτοῦ (dia tou {aimato" autou, “through his blood”) is read at this juncture by several minuscule mss (614 630 1505 2464 al) as well as a few, mostly secondary, versional and patristic witnesses. But the reading was prompted by the parallel in Eph 1:7 where the wording is solid. If these words had been in the original of Colossians, why would scribes omit them here but not in Eph 1:7? Further, the testimony on behalf of the shorter reading is quite overwhelming: {א A B C D F G Ψ 075 0150 6 33 1739 1881 Ï latt co as well as several other versions and fathers}. The conviction that “through his blood” is not authentic in Col 1:14 is as strong as the conviction that these words are authentic in Eph 1:7.

[1:15]  ⁴⁰ sn This passage has been typeset as poetry because many scholars regard this passage as poetic or hymnic. These terms are used broadly to refer to the genre of writing, not to the content. There are two broad criteria for determining if a passage is poetic or hymnic: “(a) stylistic: a certain rhythmical lilt when the passages are read aloud, the presence of parallelismus membrorum (i.e., an arrangement into couplets), the semblance of some metre, and the presence of rhetorical devices such as alliteration, chiasmus, and antithesis; and (b) linguistic: an unusual vocabulary, particularly the presence of theological terms, which is different from the surrounding context” (P. T. O’Brien, Philippians [NIGTC], 188-89). Classifying a passage as hymnic or poetic is important because understanding this genre can provide keys to interpretation. However, not all scholars agree that the above criteria are present in this passage, so the decision to typeset it as poetry should be viewed as a tentative decision about its genre.

[1:15]  ⁴¹ tn The Greek term πρωτότοκος (prwtotokos) could refer either to first in order of time, such as a first born child, or it could refer to one who is preeminent in rank. M. J. Harris, Colossians and Philemon (EGGNT), 43, expresses the meaning of the word well: “The ‘firstborn’ was either the eldest child in a family or a person of preeminent rank. The use of this term to describe the Davidic king in Ps 88:28 LXX (=Ps 89:27 EVV), ‘I will also appoint him my firstborn (πρωτότοκον), the most exalted of the kings of the earth,’ indicates that it can denote supremacy in rank as well as priority in time. But whether the πρωτό- element in the word denotes time, rank, or both, the significance of the -τοκος element as indicating birth or origin (from τίκτω, give birth to) has been virtually lost except in ref. to lit. birth.” In Col 1:15 the emphasis is on the priority of Jesus’ rank as over and above creation (cf. 1:16 and the “for” clause referring to Jesus as Creator).

[1:15]  ⁴² tn The genitive construction πάσης κτίσεως (pash" ktisew") is a genitive of subordination and is therefore translated as “over all creation.” See ExSyn 103-4.

[1:16]  ⁴³ tn BDAG 579 s.v. κυριότης 3 suggests “bearers of the ruling powers, dominions” here.

[1:17]  ⁴⁴ tn BDAG 973 s.v. συνίστημι B.3 suggests “continue, endure, exist, hold together” here.

[1:14]  ⁴⁵ tn Though the Greek text does not read the term “however,” it is clearly implied and thus supplied in the English translation to accent the contrastive nature of Paul’s statement.