Ezekiel 14:6

14:6 “Therefore say to the house of Israel, ‘This is what the sovereign Lord says: Return! Turn from your idols, and turn your faces away from your abominations.

Ezekiel 18:30-31

18:30 “Therefore I will judge each person according to his conduct, ¹  O house of Israel, declares the sovereign Lord. Repent ²  and turn from all your wickedness; then it will not be an obstacle leading to iniquity. ³  18:31 Throw away all your sins you have committed and fashion yourselves a new heart and a new spirit! ⁴  Why should you die, O house of Israel?

Proverbs 1:23

1:23 If only ⁵  you will respond ⁶  to my rebuke, ⁷ 

then ⁸  I will pour ⁹  out my thoughts ¹⁰  to you

and ¹¹  I will make ¹²  my words known to you.

Proverbs 8:36

8:36 But the one who does not find me ¹³  brings harm ¹⁴  to himself; ¹⁵ 

all who hate me ¹⁶  love death.”

Isaiah 55:6-7

55:6 Seek the Lord while he makes himself available; ¹⁷ 

call to him while he is nearby!

55:7 The wicked need to abandon their lifestyle ¹⁸ 

and sinful people their plans. ¹⁹ 

They should return ²⁰  to the Lord, and he will show mercy to them, ²¹ 

and to their God, for he will freely forgive them. ²² 

Jeremiah 3:22

3:22 Come back to me, you wayward people.

I want to cure your waywardness. ²³ 

Say, ²⁴  ‘Here we are. We come to you

because you are the Lord our God.

Jeremiah 31:18-20

31:18 I have indeed ²⁵  heard the people of Israel ²⁶  say mournfully,

‘We were like a calf untrained to the yoke. ²⁷ 

You disciplined us and we learned from it. ²⁸ 

Let us come back to you and we will do so, ²⁹ 

for you are the Lord our God.

31:19 For after we turned away from you we repented.

After we came to our senses ³⁰  we beat our breasts in sorrow. ³¹ 

We are ashamed and humiliated

because of the disgraceful things we did previously.’ ³² 

31:20 Indeed, the people of Israel are my dear children.

They are the children I take delight in. ³³ 

For even though I must often rebuke them,

I still remember them with fondness.

So I am deeply moved with pity for them ³⁴ 

and will surely have compassion on them.

I, the Lord, affirm it! ³⁵ 

Daniel 9:13

9:13 Just as it is written in the law of Moses, so all this calamity has come on us. Still we have not tried to pacify ³⁶  the LORD our God by turning back from our sin and by seeking wisdom ³⁷  from your reliable moral standards. ³⁸ 

Hosea 14:1

Prophetic Call to Genuine Repentance

14:1 Return, O Israel, to the Lord your God,

for your sin has been your downfall! ³⁹ 

Acts 3:19

3:19 Therefore repent and turn back so that your sins may be wiped out,

Acts 26:20

26:20 but I declared to those in Damascus first, and then to those in Jerusalem and in all Judea, ⁴⁰  and to the Gentiles, that they should repent and turn to God, ⁴¹  performing deeds consistent with ⁴²  repentance.

[18:30]  ¹ tn Heb “ways.”

[18:30]  ² tn The verbs and persons in this verse are plural whereas the individual has been the subject of the chapter.

[18:30]  ³ tn Or “leading to punishment.”

[18:31]  ⁴ sn In Ezek 11:19, 36:26 the new heart and new spirit are promised as future blessings.

[1:23]  ⁵ tn The imperfect tense is in the conditional protasis without the conditional particle, followed by the clause beginning with הִנֵּה (hinneh, “then”). The phrase “If only…” does not appear in the Hebrew but is implied by the syntax; it is supplied in the translation for the sake of clarity.

[1:23]  ⁶ tn Heb “turn.” The verb is from שׁוּב (shuv, “to return; to respond; to repent”).

[1:23]  ⁷ sn The noun תּוֹכַחַת (tokhakhat, “rebuke”) is used in all kinds of disputes including rebuking, arguing, reasoning, admonishing, and chiding. The term is broad enough to include here warning and rebuke. Cf. KJV, NAB, NRSV “reproof”; TEV “when I reprimand you”; CEV “correct you.”

[1:23]  ⁸ tn Heb “Behold!”

[1:23]  ⁹ tn The Hiphil cohortative of נָבַע (nava’, “to pour out”) describes the speaker’s resolution to pour out wisdom on those who respond.

[1:23]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “my spirit.” The term “spirit” (רוּחַ, ruakh) functions as a metonymy (= spirit) of association (= thoughts), as indicated by the parallelism with “my words” (דְּבָרַי, dÿbaray). The noun רוּחַ (ruakh, “spirit”) can have a cognitive nuance, e.g., “spirit of wisdom” (Exod 28:3; Deut 34:9). It is used metonymically for “words” (Job 20:3) and “mind” (Isa 40:13; Ezek 11:5; 20:32; 1 Chr 28:12; see BDB 925 s.v. רוּחַ 6). The “spirit of wisdom” produces skill and capacity necessary for success (Isa 11:2; John 7:37-39).

[1:23]  ¹¹ tn The conjunction “and” does not appear in the Hebrew text, but is supplied in the translation for the sake of smoothness.

[1:23]  ¹² tn Here too the form is the cohortative, stressing the resolution of wisdom to reveal herself to the one who responds.

[8:36]  ¹³ tn Heb “the one sinning [against] me.” The verb חָטָא (khata’, “to sin”) forms a contrast with “find” in the previous verse, and so has its basic meaning of “failing to find, miss.” So it is talking about the one who misses wisdom, as opposed to the one who finds it.

[8:36]  ¹⁴ tn The Qal active participle functions verbally here. The word stresses both social and physical harm and violence.

[8:36]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “his soul.”

[8:36]  ¹⁶ tn The basic idea of the verb שָׂנֵא (sane’, “to hate”) is that of rejection. Its antonym is also used in the line, “love,” which has the idea of choosing. So not choosing (i.e., hating) wisdom amounts to choosing (i.e., loving) death.

[55:6]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “while he allows himself to be found.” The Niphal form has a tolerative force here.

[55:7]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “Let the wicked one abandon his way.” The singular is collective.

[55:7]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “and the man of evil his thoughts.” The singular is collective.

[55:7]  ²⁰ tn Heb “let him return.” The singular is collective, meaning “let them.”

[55:7]  ²¹ tn The imperfect with vav (ו) conjunctive after the jussive indicates purpose/result.

[55:7]  ²² sn The appeal and promise of vv. 6-7 echoes the language of Deut 4:25-31; 30:1-10; and 1 Kgs 8:46-53, all of which anticipate the exile and speak of the prerequisites for restoration.

[3:22]  ²³ tn Or “I will forgive your apostasies.” Heb “I will [or want to] heal your apostasies.” For the use of the verb “heal” (רָפָא, rafa’) to refer to spiritual healing and forgiveness see Hos 14:4.

[3:22]  ²⁴ tn Or “They say.” There is an obvious ellipsis of a verb of saying here since the preceding words are those of the Lord and the following are those of the people. However, there is debate about whether these are the response of the people to the Lord’s invitation, a response which is said to be inadequate according to the continuation in 4:1-4, or whether these are the Lord’s model for Israel’s confession of repentance to which he adds further instructions about the proper heart attitude that should accompany it in 4:1-4. The former implies a dialogue with an unmarked twofold shift in speaker between 3:22b-25 and 4:1-4:4 while the latter assumes the same main speaker throughout with an unmarked instruction only in 3:22b-25. This disrupts the flow of the passage less and appears more likely.

[31:18]  ²⁵ tn The use of “indeed” is intended to reflect the infinitive absolute which precedes the verb for emphasis (see IBHS 585-86 §35.3.1f).

[31:18]  ²⁶ tn Heb “Ephraim.” See the study note on 31:9. The more familiar term is used, the term “people” added to it, and plural pronouns used throughout the verse to aid in understanding.

[31:18]  ²⁷ tn Heb “like an untrained calf.” The metaphor is that of a calf who has never been broken to bear the yoke (cf. Hos 4:16; 10:11).

[31:18]  ²⁸ tn The verb here is from the same root as the preceding and is probably an example of the “tolerative Niphal,” i.e., “I let myself be disciplined/I responded to it.” See IBHS 389-90 §23.4g and note the translation of some of the examples there, especially Isa 19:22; 65:1.

[31:18]  ²⁹ tn Heb “Bring me back in order that I may come back.” For the use of the plural pronouns see the marginal note at the beginning of the verse. The verb “bring back” and “come back” are from the same root in two different verbal stems and in the context express the idea of spiritual repentance and restoration of relationship not physical return to the land. (See BDB 999 s.v. שׁוּב Hiph.2.a for the first verb and 997 s.v. Qal.6.c for the second.) For the use of the cohortative to express purpose after the imperative see GKC 320 §108.d or IBHS 575 §34.5.2b.

[31:19]  ³⁰ tn For this meaning of the verb see HAL 374 s.v. יָדַע Nif 5 or W. L. Holladay, Concise Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon, 129. REB translates “Now that I am submissive” relating the verb to a second root meaning “be submissive.” (See HALOT 375 s.v. II יָדַע and J. Barr, Comparative Philology and the Text of the Old Testament, 19-21, for evidence for this verb. Other passages cited with this nuance are Judg 8:16; Prov 10:9; Job 20:20.)

[31:19]  ³¹ tn Heb “I struck my thigh.” This was a gesture of grief and anguish (cf. Ezek 21:12 [21:17 HT]). The modern equivalent is “to beat the breast.”

[31:19]  ³² tn Heb “because I bear the reproach of my youth.” For the plural referents see the note at the beginning of v. 18.

[31:20]  ³³ tn Heb “Is Ephraim a dear son to me or a child of delight?” For the substitution of Israel for Ephraim and the plural pronouns for the singular see the note on v. 18. According to BDB 210 s.v. הֲ 1.c the question is rhetorical having the force of an impassioned affirmation. See 1 Sam 2:27; Job 41:9 (41:1 HT) for parallel usage.

[31:20]  ³⁴ tn Heb “my stomach churns for him.” The parallelism shows that this refers to pity or compassion.

[31:20]  ³⁵ tn Heb “Oracle of the Lord.”

[9:13]  ³⁶ tn Heb “we have not pacified the face of.”

[9:13]  ³⁷ tn Or “by gaining insight.”

[9:13]  ³⁸ tn Heb “by your truth.” The Hebrew term does not refer here to abstract truth, however, but to the reliable moral guidance found in the covenant law. See vv 10-11.

[14:1]  ³⁹ tn Heb “For you have stumbled in your iniquity”; NASB, NRSV “because of your iniquity.”

[26:20]  ⁴⁰ tn BDAG 1093-94 s.v. χώρα 2.b states, “of the provincial name (1 Macc 8:3) ἡ χώρα τῆς ᾿Ιουδαίας Ac 26:20.”

[26:20]  ⁴¹ sn That they should repent and turn to God. This is the shortest summary of Paul’s message that he preached.

[26:20]  ⁴² tn BDAG 93 s.v. ἄξιος 1.b, “καρποὶ ἄ. τῆς μετανοίας fruits in keeping with your repentance…Lk 3:8; Mt 3:8. For this ἄ. τῆς μετανοίας ἔργα Ac 26:20.” Note how Paul preached the gospel offer and the issue of response together, side by side.