Exodus 34:12

34:12 Be careful not to make ¹  a covenant with the inhabitants of the land where you are going, lest it become a snare ²  among you.

Exodus 34:15

34:15 Be careful ³  not to make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land, for when ⁴  they prostitute themselves ⁵  to their gods and sacrifice to their gods, and someone invites you, ⁶  you will eat from his sacrifice;

Deuteronomy 7:2

7:2 and he ⁷  delivers them over to you and you attack them, you must utterly annihilate ⁸  them. Make no treaty ⁹  with them and show them no mercy!

Joshua 9:14-23

9:14 The men examined ¹⁰  some of their provisions, but they failed to ask the Lord’s advice. ¹¹  9:15 Joshua made a peace treaty with them and agreed to let them live. The leaders of the community ¹²  sealed it with an oath. ¹³ 

9:16 Three days after they made the treaty with them, the Israelites found out they were from the local area and lived nearby. ¹⁴  9:17 So the Israelites set out and on the third day arrived at their cities – Gibeon, Kephirah, Beeroth, and Kiriath Jearim. 9:18 The Israelites did not attack them because the leaders of the community had sworn an oath to them in the name of the Lord God of Israel. ¹⁵  The whole community criticized ¹⁶  the leaders, 9:19 but all the leaders told the whole community, “We swore an oath to them in the name of ¹⁷  the Lord God of Israel. So now we can’t hurt ¹⁸  them! 9:20 We must let them live so we can escape the curse attached to the oath we swore to them.” ¹⁹  9:21 The leaders then added, ²⁰  “Let them live.” So they became ²¹  woodcutters and water carriers for the whole community, as the leaders had decided. ²² 

9:22 ²³ Joshua summoned the Gibeonites ²⁴  and said to them, “Why did you trick ²⁵  us by saying, ‘We live far away from you,’ when you really live nearby? ²⁶  9:23 Now you are condemned to perpetual servitude as woodcutters and water carriers for the house of my God.” ²⁷ 

Joshua 9:2

9:2 they formed an alliance to fight against Joshua and Israel. ²⁸ 

Joshua 21:1-2

Levitical Cities

21:1 The tribal leaders of the Levites went before Eleazar the priest and Joshua son of Nun and the Israelite tribal leaders 21:2 in Shiloh in the land of Canaan and said, “The Lord told Moses to assign us cities in which to live along with the grazing areas for our cattle.”

Psalms 106:35

106:35 They mixed in with the nations

and learned their ways. ²⁹ 

Psalms 106:2

106:2 Who can adequately recount the Lord’s mighty acts,

or relate all his praiseworthy deeds? ³⁰ 

Colossians 1:15

The Supremacy of Christ

1:15 ³¹ He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn ³²  over all creation, ³³ 

[34:12]  ¹ tn The exact expression is “take heed to yourself lest you make.” It is the second use of this verb in the duties, now in the Niphal stem. To take heed to yourself means to watch yourself, be sure not to do something. Here, if they failed to do this, they would end up making entangling treaties.

[34:12]  ² sn A snare would be a trap, an allurement to ruin. See Exod 23:33.

[34:15]  ³ tn The sentence begins simply “lest you make a covenant”; it is undoubtedly a continuation of the imperative introduced earlier, and so that is supplied here.

[34:15]  ⁴ tn The verb is a perfect with a vav consecutive. In the literal form of the sentence, this clause tells what might happen if the people made a covenant with the inhabitants of the land: “Take heed…lest you make a covenant…and then they prostitute themselves…and sacrifice…and invite…and you eat.” The sequence lays out an entire scenario.

[34:15]  ⁵ tn The verb זָנָה (zanah) means “to play the prostitute; to commit whoredom; to be a harlot” or something similar. It is used here and elsewhere in the Bible for departing from pure religion and engaging in pagan religion. The use of the word in this figurative sense is fitting, because the relationship between God and his people is pictured as a marriage, and to be unfaithful to it was a sin. This is also why God is described as a “jealous” or “impassioned” God. The figure may not be merely a metaphorical use, but perhaps a metonymy, since there actually was sexual immorality at the Canaanite altars and poles.

[34:15]  ⁶ tn There is no subject for the verb. It could be rendered “and one invites you,” or it could be made a passive.

[7:2]  ⁷ tn Heb “the Lord your God.” The pronoun has been used in the translation for stylistic reasons to avoid redundancy.

[7:2]  ⁸ tn In the Hebrew text the infinitive absolute before the finite verb emphasizes the statement. The imperfect has an obligatory nuance here. Cf. ASV “shalt (must NRSV) utterly destroy them”; CEV “must destroy them without mercy.”

[7:2]  ⁹ tn Heb “covenant” (so NASB, NRSV); TEV “alliance.”

[9:14]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “took.” This probably means they tasted some of the food to make sure it was stale.

[9:14]  ¹¹ tn Heb “but they did not ask the mouth of the Lord.” This refers to seeking the Lord’s will and guidance through an oracle.

[9:15]  ¹² tn Or “assembly.”

[9:15]  ¹³ tn Heb “Joshua made peace with them and made a treaty with them to let them live, and the leaders of the community swore an oath to them.”

[9:16]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “At the end of three days, after they made the treaty with them, they heard that they were neighbors to them and in their midst they were living.”

[9:18]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “by the Lord God of Israel.”

[9:18]  ¹⁶ tn Or “grumbled against.”

[9:19]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “to them by….”

[9:19]  ¹⁸ tn Or “touch.”

[9:20]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “This is what we will do to them, keeping them alive so there will not be upon us anger concerning the oath which we swore to them.”

[9:21]  ²⁰ tc Heb “and the leaders said to them.” The LXX omits the words “and the leaders said to them.”

[9:21]  ²¹ tn The vav (ו) consecutive construction in the Hebrew text suggests that the narrative resumes at this point. The LXX reads here, “and they will be,” understanding what follows to be a continuation of the leaders’ words rather than a comment by the narrator.

[9:21]  ²² tn Heb “as the leaders said to them.”

[9:22]  ²³ sn Verses 22-27 appear to elaborate on v. 21b.

[9:22]  ²⁴ tn Heb “them.”

[9:22]  ²⁵ tn Or “deceive.”

[9:22]  ²⁶ tn Heb “live in our midst?”

[9:23]  ²⁷ tn Heb “Now you are cursed and a servant will not be cut off from you, woodcutters and water carriers for the house of my God.”

[9:2]  ²⁸ tn Heb “they gathered together to fight against Joshua and Israel [with] one mouth.”

[106:35]  ²⁹ tn Heb “their deeds.”

[106:2]  ³⁰ tn Heb “[or] cause to be heard all his praise.”

[1:15]  ³¹ 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]  ³² 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]  ³³ 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.