Exodus 35:21-29

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.

35:23 Everyone who had ⁸  blue, purple, or ⁹  scarlet yarn, fine linen, goats’ hair, ram skins dyed red, or fine leather ¹⁰  brought them. ¹¹  35:24 Everyone making an offering of silver or bronze brought it as ¹²  an offering to the Lord, and everyone who had acacia wood ¹³  for any work of the service brought it. ¹⁴  35:25 Every woman who was skilled ¹⁵  spun with her hands and brought what she had spun, blue, purple, or scarlet yarn, or fine linen, 35:26 and all the women whose heart stirred them to action and who were skilled ¹⁶  spun goats’ hair.

35:27 The leaders brought onyx stones and other gems to be mounted ¹⁷  for the ephod and the breastpiece, 35:28 and spices and olive oil for the light, for the anointing oil, and for the fragrant incense.

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 ¹⁸  Moses had commanded them ¹⁹  to do.

Mark 12:43-44

12:43 He called his disciples and said to them, “I tell you the truth, ²⁰  this poor widow has put more into the offering box ²¹  than all the others. ²²  12:44 For they all gave out of their wealth. ²³  But she, out of her poverty, put in what she had to live on, everything she had.” ²⁴ 

Mark 14:8-9

14:8 She did what she could. She anointed my body beforehand for burial. 14:9 I tell you the truth, ²⁵  wherever the gospel is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will also be told in memory of her.”

Mark 14:2

14:2 For they said, “Not during the feast, so there won’t be a riot among the people.” ²⁶ 

Colossians 1:2-3

1:2 to the saints, the faithful ²⁷  brothers and sisters ²⁸  in Christ, at Colossae. Grace and peace to you ²⁹  from God our Father! ³⁰ 

Paul’s Thanksgiving and Prayer for the Church

1:3 We always ³¹  give thanks to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you,

Colossians 1:12

1:12 giving thanks to the Father who has qualified you to share ³²  in the saints’ ³³  inheritance in the light.

Colossians 1:6-7

1:6 that has come to you. Just as in the entire world this gospel ³⁴  is bearing fruit and growing, so it has also been bearing fruit and growing ³⁵  among you from the first day you heard it and understood the grace of God in truth. 1:7 You learned the gospel ³⁶  from Epaphras, our dear fellow slave ³⁷  – a ³⁸  faithful minister of Christ on our ³⁹  behalf –

[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.

[35:23]  ⁸ tn The text uses a relative clause with a resumptive pronoun for this: “who was found with him,” meaning “with whom was found.”

[35:23]  ⁹ tn The conjunction in this verse is translated “or” because the sentence does not intend to say that each person had all these things. They brought what they had.

[35:23]  ¹⁰ tn See the note on this phrase in Exod 25:5.

[35:23]  ¹¹ tn Here “them” has been supplied.

[35:24]  ¹² tn This translation takes “offering” as an adverbial accusative explaining the form or purpose of their bringing things. It could also be rendered as the direct object, but that would seem to repeat without much difference what had just been said.

[35:24]  ¹³ sn U. Cassuto notes that the expression “with whom was found” does not rule out the idea that these folks went out and cut down acacia trees (Exodus, 458). It is unlikely that they had much wood in their tents.

[35:24]  ¹⁴ tn Here “it” has been supplied.

[35:25]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “wisdom of heart,” which means that they were skilled and could make all the right choices about the work.

[35:26]  ¹⁶ tn The text simply uses a prepositional phrase, “with/in wisdom.” It seems to be qualifying “the women” as the relative clause is.

[35:27]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “and stones of the filling.”

[35:29]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “by the hand of.”

[35:29]  ¹⁹ tn Here “them” has been supplied.

[12:43]  ²⁰ tn Grk “Truly (ἀμήν, amhn), I say to you.”

[12:43]  ²¹ tn See the note on the term “offering box” in v. 41.

[12:43]  ²² sn Has put more into the offering box than all the others. With God, giving is weighed evaluatively, not counted. The widow was praised because she gave sincerely and at some considerable cost to herself.

[12:44]  ²³ tn Grk “out of what abounded to them.”

[12:44]  ²⁴ sn The contrast between this passage, 12:41-44, and what has come before in 11:27-12:40 is remarkable. The woman is set in stark contrast to the religious leaders. She was a poor widow, they were rich. She was uneducated in the law, they were well educated in the law. She was a woman, they were men. But whereas they evidenced no faith and actually stole money from God and men (cf. 11:17), she evidenced great faith and gave out of her extreme poverty everything she had.

[14:9]  ²⁵ tn Grk “Truly (ἀμήν, amhn), I say to you.”

[14:2]  ²⁶ sn The suggestion here is that Jesus was too popular to openly arrest him. The verb were trying is imperfect. It suggests, in this context, that they were always considering the opportunities.

[1:2]  ²⁷ tn Grk “and faithful.” The construction in Greek (as well as Paul’s style) suggests that the saints are identical to the faithful; hence, the καί (kai) is best left untranslated (cf. Eph 1:1). See ExSyn 281-82.

[1:2]  ²⁸ tn Grk “brothers,” but the Greek word may be used for “brothers and sisters” or “fellow Christians” as here (cf. BDAG 18 s.v. ἀδελφός 1, where considerable nonbiblical evidence for the plural ἀδελφοί [adelfoi] meaning “brothers and sisters” is cited).

[1:2]  ²⁹ tn Or “Grace to you and peace.”

[1:2]  ³⁰ tc Most witnesses, including some important ones (א A C F G I [P] 075 Ï it bo), read “and the Lord Jesus Christ” at the end of this verse, no doubt to conform the wording to the typical Pauline salutation. However, excellent and early witnesses (B D K L Ψ 33 81 1175 1505 1739 1881 al sa) lack this phrase. Since the omission is inexplicable as arising from the longer reading (otherwise, these mss would surely have deleted the phrase in the rest of the corpus Paulinum), it is surely authentic.

[1:3]  ³¹ tn The adverb πάντοτε (pantote) is understood to modify the indicative εὐχαριστοῦμεν (eucaristoumen) because it precedes περὶ ὑμῶν (peri Jumwn) which probably modifies the indicative and not the participle προσευχόμενοι (proseucomenoi). But see 1:9 where the same expression occurs and περὶ ὑμῶν modifies the participle “praying” (προσευχόμενοι).

[1:12]  ³² 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]  ³³ tn Grk “the inheritance of the saints.” The genitive noun τῶν ἁγίων (twn Jagiwn) is a possessive genitive: “the saints’ inheritance.”

[1:6]  ³⁴ 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]  ³⁵ 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]  ³⁶ 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]  ³⁷ 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]  ³⁸ 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]  ³⁹ 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.