Exodus 6:7

6:7 I will take you to myself for a people, and I will be your God. ¹  Then you will know that I am the Lord your God, who brought you out from your enslavement to ²  the Egyptians.

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.”

Exodus 25:8

25:8 Let them make ¹⁰  for me a sanctuary, ¹¹  so that I may live among them.

Exodus 29:45-46

29:45 I will reside ¹²  among the Israelites, and I will be their God, 29:46 and they will know that I am the Lord their God, who brought them out from the land of Egypt, so that I may reside among them. I am the Lord their God.

Leviticus 11:45

11:45 for I am the Lord who brought you up from the land of Egypt to be your God, ¹³  and you are to be holy because I am holy.

Deuteronomy 23:14

23:14 For the Lord your God walks about in the middle of your camp to deliver you and defeat ¹⁴  your enemies for you. Therefore your camp should be holy, so that he does not see anything indecent ¹⁵  among you and turn away from you.

Deuteronomy 27:9

27:9 Then Moses and the Levitical priests spoke to all Israel: “Be quiet and pay attention, Israel. Today you have become the people of the Lord your God.

Deuteronomy 27:12

27:12 “The following tribes ¹⁶  must stand to bless the people on Mount Gerizim when you cross the Jordan: Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, Joseph, and Benjamin.

Ezekiel 37:26-28

37:26 I will make a covenant of peace with them; it will be a perpetual covenant with them. ¹⁷  I will establish them, ¹⁸  increase their numbers, and place my sanctuary among them forever. 37:27 My dwelling place will be with them; I will be their God, and they will be my people. 37:28 Then, when my sanctuary is among them forever, the nations will know that I, the Lord, sanctify Israel.’” ¹⁹ 

Ezekiel 37:2

37:2 He made me walk all around among them. ²⁰  I realized ²¹  there were a great many bones in the valley and they were very dry.

Colossians 1:16-17

1:16 for all things in heaven and on earth were created by him – all things, whether visible or invisible, whether thrones or dominions, ²²  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 ²³  in him.

Revelation 21:3

21:3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying: “Look! The residence ²⁴  of God is among human beings. ²⁵  He ²⁶  will live among them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them. ²⁷ 

[6:7]  ¹ sn These covenant promises are being reiterated here because they are about to be fulfilled. They are addressed to the nation, not individuals, as the plural suffixes show. Yahweh was their God already, because they had been praying to him and he is acting on their behalf. When they enter into covenant with God at Sinai, then he will be the God of Israel in a new way (19:4-6; cf. Gen 17:7-8; 28:20-22; Lev 26:11-12; Jer 24:7; Ezek 11:17-20).

[6:7]  ² tn Heb “from under the burdens of” (so KJV, NASB); NIV “from under the yoke of.”

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

[19:6]  ⁶ 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]  ⁷ 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.

[25:8]  ⁷ tn The verb is a perfect with vav (ו) consecutive; it follows in the sequence initiated by the imperative in v. 2 and continues with the force of a command.

[25:8]  ⁸ tn The word here is מִקְדּשׁ (miqdash), “a sanctuary” or “holy place”; cf. NLT “sacred residence.” The purpose of building it is to enable Yahweh to reside (וְשָׁכַנְתִּי, vÿshakhanti) in their midst. U. Cassuto reminds the reader that God did not need a place to dwell, but the Israelites needed a dwelling place for him, so that they would look to it and be reminded that he was in their midst (Exodus, 327).

[29:45]  ⁹ tn The verb has the root שָׁכַן (shakan), from which came the word for the dwelling place, or sanctuary, itself (מִשְׁכָּן, mishkan). It is also used for the description of “the Shekinah glory.” God is affirming that he will reside in the midst of his people.

[11:45]  ¹¹ tn Heb “to be to you for a God.”

[23:14]  ¹³ tn Heb “give [over] your enemies.”

[23:14]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “nakedness of a thing”; NLT “any shameful thing.” The expression עֶרְוַת דָּבָר (’ervat davar) refers specifically to sexual organs and, by extension, to any function associated with them. There are some aspects of human life that are so personal and private that they ought not be publicly paraded. Cultically speaking, even God is offended by such impropriety (cf. Gen 9:22-23; Lev 18:6-12, 16-19; 20:11, 17-21). See B. Seevers, NIDOTTE 3:528-30.

[27:12]  ¹⁵ tn The word “tribes” has been supplied here and in the following verse in the translation for clarity.

[37:26]  ¹⁷ sn See Isa 24:5; 55:3; 61:8; Jer 32:40; 50:5; Ezek 16:60, for other references to perpetual covenants.

[37:26]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “give them.”

[37:28]  ¹⁹ sn The sanctuary of Israel becomes the main focus of Ezek 40-48.

[37:2]  ²¹ tn Heb “and he made me pass over them, around, around.”

[37:2]  ²² tn The word הִנֵּה (hinneh, traditionally “behold”) indicates becoming aware of something and is here translated as “I realized” because it results from Ezekiel’s recognition of the situation around him. In Hebrew, the exclamation is repeated in the following sentence.

[1:16]  ²³ tn BDAG 579 s.v. κυριότης 3 suggests “bearers of the ruling powers, dominions” here.

[1:17]  ²⁵ tn BDAG 973 s.v. συνίστημι B.3 suggests “continue, endure, exist, hold together” here.

[21:3]  ²⁷ tn Or “dwelling place”; traditionally, “tabernacle”; literally “tent.”

[21:3]  ²⁸ tn Or “people”; Grk “men” (ἀνθρώπων, anqrwpwn), a generic use of the term. In the translation “human beings” was used here because “people” occurs later in the verse and translates a different Greek word (λαοί, laoi).

[21:3]  ²⁹ tn Grk “men, and he.” Because of the length and complexity of the Greek sentence, a new sentence was started here in the translation.

[21:3]  ³⁰ tc ‡ Most mss (א Ï^K) do not add the words “[as] their God” (αὐτῶν θεός, autwn qeos) after “he will be with them.” The mss with these words include A 2030 2050 2329 al. The Andreas group (Ï^A) also has the words, but in a different arrangement with the preceding (ἔσται μετ᾿ αὐτῶν θεὸς αὐτῶν, estai met’ autwn qeo" autwn). Not only do the words float, but scribes may have been motivated to make a connection here more directly with Isa 7:14; 8:8; Jer 24:7; 31:33; Zech 8:8. In light of sufficient external evidence as well as the possibility that the longer reading is theologically motivated, the shorter reading is preferred. NA²⁷ places the words in brackets, indicating doubts as to their authenticity.