Ezekiel 11:21

11:21 But those whose hearts are devoted to detestable things and abominations, I hereby repay them for what they have done, ¹  says the sovereign Lord.”

Ezekiel 34:17

34:17 “‘As for you, my sheep, this is what the sovereign Lord says: Look, I am about to judge between one sheep and another, between rams and goats.

Ezekiel 34:20-22

34:20 “‘Therefore, this is what the sovereign Lord says to them: Look, I myself will judge between the fat sheep and the lean sheep. 34:21 Because you push with your side and your shoulder, and thrust your horns at all the weak sheep until you scatter them abroad, ²  34:22 I will save my sheep; they will no longer be prey. I will judge between one sheep and another.

Numbers 14:28-30

14:28 Say to them, ‘As I live, ³  says ⁴  the Lord, I will surely do to you just what you have spoken in my hearing. ⁵  14:29 Your dead bodies ⁶  will fall in this wilderness – all those of you who were numbered, according to your full number, from twenty years old and upward, who have murmured against me. 14:30 You will by no means enter into the land where ⁷  I swore ⁸  to settle ⁹  you. The only exceptions are Caleb son of Jephunneh and Joshua son of Nun.

Amos 9:9-10

9:9 “For look, I am giving a command

and I will shake the family of Israel together with all the nations.

It will resemble a sieve being shaken,

when not even a pebble falls to the ground. ¹⁰ 

9:10 All the sinners among my people will die by the sword –

the ones who say, ‘Disaster will not come near, it will not confront us.’

Zechariah 13:8-9

13:8 It will happen in all the land, says the Lord,

that two-thirds of the people ¹¹  in it will be cut off and die,

but one-third will be left in it. ¹² 

13:9 Then I will bring the remaining third into the fire;

I will refine them like silver is refined

and will test them like gold is tested.

They will call on my name and I will answer;

I will say, ‘These are my people,’

and they will say, ‘The Lord is my God.’” ¹³ 

Malachi 3:3

3:3 He will act like a refiner and purifier of silver and will cleanse the Levites and refine them like gold and silver. Then they will offer the Lord a proper offering.

Malachi 4:1-3

4:1 (3:19) ¹⁴  “For indeed the day ¹⁵  is coming, burning like a furnace, and all the arrogant evildoers will be chaff. The coming day will burn them up,” says the Lord who rules over all. “It ¹⁶  will not leave even a root or branch. 4:2 But for you who respect my name, the sun of vindication ¹⁷  will rise with healing wings, ¹⁸  and you will skip about ¹⁹  like calves released from the stall. 4:3 You will trample on the wicked, for they will be like ashes under the soles of your feet on the day which I am preparing,” says the Lord who rules over all.

Matthew 3:9-10

3:9 and don’t think you can say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ For I tell you that God can raise up children for Abraham from these stones! 3:10 Even now the ax is laid at ²⁰  the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.

Matthew 3:12

3:12 His winnowing fork ²¹  is in his hand, and he will clean out his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the storehouse, ²²  but the chaff he will burn up with inextinguishable fire.” ²³ 

Matthew 25:32-33

25:32 All ²⁴  the nations will be assembled before him, and he will separate people one from another like a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. 25:33 He ²⁵  will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.

Romans 9:27-29

9:27 And Isaiah cries out on behalf of Israel, “Though the number of the children ²⁶  of Israel are as the sand of the sea, only the remnant will be saved, 9:28 for the Lord will execute his sentence on the earth completely and quickly.” ²⁷  9:29 Just ²⁸  as Isaiah predicted,

“If the Lord of armies ²⁹  had not left us descendants,

we would have become like Sodom,

and we would have resembled Gomorrah.” ³⁰ 

[11:21]  ¹ tn Heb “their way on their head I have placed.”

[34:21]  ² tn Heb “outside.”

[14:28]  ³ sn Here again is the oath that God swore in his wrath, an oath he swore by himself, that they would not enter the land. “As the Lord lives,” or “by the life of the Lord,” are ways to render it.

[14:28]  ⁴ tn The word נְאֻם (nÿ’um) is an “oracle.” It is followed by the subjective genitive: “the oracle of the Lord” is equal to saying “the Lord says.”

[14:28]  ⁵ tn Heb “in my ears.”

[14:29]  ⁶ tn Or “your corpses” (also in vv. 32, 33).

[14:30]  ⁷ tn The relative pronoun “which” is joined with the resumptive pronoun “in it” to form a smoother reading “where.”

[14:30]  ⁸ tn The Hebrew text uses the anthropomorphic expression “I raised my hand” in taking an oath.

[14:30]  ⁹ tn Heb “to cause you to dwell; to cause you to settle.”

[9:9]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “like being shaken with a sieve, and a pebble does not fall to the ground.” The meaning of the Hebrew word צְרוֹר (tsÿror), translated “pebble,” is unclear here. In 2 Sam 17:13 it appears to refer to a stone. If it means “pebble,” then the sieve described in v. 6 allows the grain to fall into a basket while retaining the debris and pebbles. However, if one interprets צְרוֹר as a “kernel of grain” (cf. NASB, NIV, NKJV, NLT) then the sieve is constructed to retain the grain and allow the refuse and pebbles to fall to the ground. In either case, the simile supports the last statement in v. 8 by making it clear that God will distinguish between the righteous (the grain) and the wicked (the pebbles) when he judges, and will thereby preserve a remnant in Israel. Only the sinners will be destroyed (v. 10).

[13:8]  ¹¹ tn The words “of the people” are supplied in the translation for clarity (cf. NCV, TEV, NLT).

[13:8]  ¹² sn The fractions mentioned here call to mind the affliction of God’s people described by Ezekiel, though Ezekiel referred to his own times whereas Zechariah is looking forward to a future eschatological age. Ezekiel spoke of cutting his hair at God’s command (Ezek 5:1-4) and then of burning a third of it, striking a third with a sword, and scattering the rest. From this last third a few hairs would survive to become the nucleus of a new Israel. It is this “third” Zechariah speaks of (v. 9), the remnant who will be purified and reclaimed as God’s covenant people.

[13:9]  ¹³ sn The expression I will say ‘It is my people,’ and they will say ‘the Lord is my God’ is reminiscent of the restoration of Israel predicted by Hosea, who said that those who had been rejected as God’s people would be reclaimed and once more become his sons and daughters (Hos 2:23).

[4:1]  ¹⁴ sn Beginning with 4:1, the verse numbers through 4:6 in the English Bible differ from the verse numbers in the Hebrew text (BHS), with 4:1 ET = 3:19 HT, 4:2 ET = 3:20 HT, etc., through 4:6 ET = 3:24 HT. Thus the book of Malachi in the Hebrew Bible has only three chapters, with 24 verses in ch. 3.

[4:1]  ¹⁵ sn This day is the well-known “day of the Lord” so pervasive in OT eschatological texts (see Joel 2:30-31; Amos 5:18; Obad 15). For the believer it is a day of grace and salvation; for the sinner, a day of judgment and destruction.

[4:1]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “so that it” (so NASB, NRSV). For stylistic reasons a new sentence was begun here in the translation.

[4:2]  ¹⁷ tn Here the Hebrew word צְדָקָה (tsÿdaqah), usually translated “righteousness” (so KJV, NIV, NRSV, NLT; cf. NAB “justice”), has been rendered as “vindication” because it is the vindication of God’s people that is in view in the context. Cf. BDB 842 s.v. צְדָקָה 6; “righteousness as vindicated, justification, salvation, etc.”

[4:2]  ¹⁸ sn The point of the metaphor of healing wings is unclear. The sun seems to be compared to a bird. Perhaps the sun’s “wings” are its warm rays. “Healing” may refer to a reversal of the injury done by evildoers (see Mal 3:5).

[4:2]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “you will go out and skip about.”

[3:10]  ²⁰ sn Laid at the root. That is, placed and aimed, ready to begin cutting.

[3:12]  ²¹ sn A winnowing fork was a pitchfork-like tool used to toss threshed grain in the air so that the wind blew away the chaff, leaving the grain to fall to the ground. The note of purging is highlighted by the use of imagery involving sifting though threshed grain for the useful kernels.

[3:12]  ²² tn Or “granary,” “barn” (referring to a building used to store a farm’s produce rather than a building to house livestock).

[3:12]  ²³ sn The image of fire that cannot be extinguished is from the OT: Job 20:26; Isa 34:8-10; 66:24.

[25:32]  ²⁴ tn Here καί (kai) has not been translated.

[25:33]  ²⁵ tn Here καί (kai) has not been translated.

[9:27]  ²⁶ tn Grk “sons.”

[9:28]  ²⁷ tc In light of the interpretive difficulty of this verse, a longer reading seems to have been added to clarify the meaning. The addition, in the middle of the sentence, makes the whole verse read as follows: “For he will execute his sentence completely and quickly in righteousness, because the Lord will do it quickly on the earth.” The shorter reading is found largely in Alexandrian mss (Ì⁴⁶ א* A B 6 1506 1739 1881 pc co), while the longer reading is found principally in Western and Byzantine mss (א² D F G Ψ 33 Ï lat). The longer reading follows Isa 10:22-23 (LXX) verbatim, while Paul in the previous verse quoted the LXX loosely. This suggests the addition was made by a copyist trying to make sense out of a difficult passage rather than by the author himself.

[9:29]  ²⁸ tn Here καί (kai) has not been translated because of differences between Greek and English style.

[9:29]  ²⁹ tn Traditionally, “Lord of hosts”; Grk “Lord Sabaoth,” which means “Lord of the [heavenly] armies,” sometimes translated more generally as “Lord Almighty.”

[9:29]  ³⁰ sn A quotation from Isa 1:9.