Ezekiel 16:8

16:8 “‘Then I passed by you and watched you, noticing ¹  that you had reached the age for love. ²  I spread my cloak ³  over you and covered your nakedness. I swore a solemn oath to you and entered into a marriage covenant with you, declares the sovereign Lord, and you became mine.

Ezekiel 16:15

16:15 “‘But you trusted in your beauty and capitalized on your fame by becoming a prostitute. You offered your sexual favors to every man who passed by so that your beauty ⁴  became his.

Ezekiel 16:20-21

16:20 “‘You took your sons and your daughters whom you bore to me and you sacrificed them ⁵  as food for the idols to eat. As if your prostitution not enough, 16:21 you slaughtered my children and sacrificed them to the idols. ⁶ 

Ezekiel 23:37-39

23:37 For they have committed adultery and blood is on their hands. They have committed adultery with their idols, and their sons, whom they bore to me, ⁷  they have passed through the fire as food to their idols. ⁸  23:38 Moreover, they have done this to me: In the very same day ⁹  they desecrated my sanctuary and profaned my Sabbaths. 23:39 On the same day they slaughtered their sons for their idols, they came to my sanctuary to desecrate it. This is what they have done in the middle of my house.

Deuteronomy 5:9

5:9 You must not worship or serve them, for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God. I punish ¹⁰  the sons, grandsons, and great-grandsons for the sin of the fathers who reject ¹¹  me, ¹² 

Deuteronomy 12:31

12:31 You must not worship the Lord your God the way they do! ¹³  For everything that is abhorrent ¹⁴  to him, ¹⁵  everything he hates, they have done when worshiping their gods. They even burn up their sons and daughters before their gods!

Isaiah 1:4

1:4 ¹⁶ The sinful nation is as good as dead, ¹⁷ 

the people weighed down by evil deeds.

They are offspring who do wrong,

children ¹⁸  who do wicked things.

They have abandoned the Lord,

and rejected the Holy One of Israel. ¹⁹ 

They are alienated from him. ²⁰ 

Zechariah 11:8

11:8 Next I eradicated the three shepherds in one month, ²¹  for I ran out of patience with them and, indeed, they detested me as well.

Romans 1:30-31

1:30 slanderers, haters of God, insolent, arrogant, boastful, contrivers of all sorts of evil, disobedient to parents, 1:31 senseless, covenant-breakers, ²²  heartless, ruthless.

[16:8]  ¹ tn The word הִנֵּה (hinneh, traditionally “behold”) indicates becoming aware of something and has been translated here as a participle.

[16:8]  ² tn See similar use of this term in Ezek 23:17; Prov 7:16; Song of Songs 4:10; 7:13.

[16:8]  ³ tn Heb “wing” or “skirt.” The gesture symbolized acquiring a woman in early Arabia (similarly, see Deut 22:30; Ruth 3:9).

[16:15]  ⁴ tn Heb “it” (so KJV, ASV); the referent (the beauty in which the prostitute trusted, see the beginning of the verse) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[16:20]  ⁵ sn The sacrifice of children was prohibited in Lev 18:21; 20:2; Deut 12:31; 18:10.

[16:21]  ⁶ tn Heb “and you gave them, by passing them through to them.” Some believe this alludes to the pagan practice of making children pass through the fire.

[23:37]  ⁷ sn The Lord speaks here in the role of the husband of the sisters.

[23:37]  ⁸ tn Heb “they have passed to them for food.” The verb is commonly taken to refer to passing children through fire, especially as an offering to the pagan god Molech. See Jer 32:35.

[23:38]  ⁹ tn Heb “in that day.”

[5:9]  ¹⁰ tn In the Hebrew text the form is a participle, which is subordinated to what precedes. For the sake of English style, the translation divides this lengthy verse into two sentences.

[5:9]  ¹¹ tn Heb “who hate” (so NAB, NIV, NLT). Just as “to love” (אָהַב, ’ahav) means in a covenant context “to choose, obey,” so “to hate” (שָׂנֵא, sane’) means “to reject, disobey” (cf. the note on the word “loved” in Deut 4:37; see also 5:10).

[5:9]  ¹² tn Heb “visiting the sin of fathers upon sons and upon a third (generation) and upon a fourth (generation) of those who hate me.” God sometimes punishes children for the sins of a father (cf. Num 16:27, 32; Josh 7:24-25; 2 Sam 21:1-9). On the principle of corporate solidarity and responsibility in OT thought see J. Kaminsky, Corporate Responsibility in the Hebrew Bible (JSOTSup). In the idiom of the text, the father is the first generation and the “sons” the second generation, making grandsons the third and great-grandsons the fourth. The reference to a third and fourth generation is a way of emphasizing that the sinner’s punishment would last throughout his lifetime. In this culture, where men married and fathered children at a relatively young age, it would not be unusual for one to see his great-grandsons. In an Aramaic tomb inscription from Nerab dating to the seventh century b.c., Agbar observes that he was surrounded by “children of the fourth generation” as he lay on his death bed (see ANET 661). The language of the text differs from Exod 34:7, the sons are the first generation, the grandsons (literally, “sons of the sons”) the second, great-grandsons the third, and great-great-grandsons the fourth. One could argue that formulation in Deut 5:9 (see also Exod 20:50) is elliptical/abbreviated or that it suffers from textual corruption (the repetition of the words “sons” would invite accidental omission).

[12:31]  ¹³ tn Heb “you must not do thus to/for the Lord your God.”

[12:31]  ¹⁴ tn See note on this term at Deut 7:25.

[12:31]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “every abomination of the Lord.” See note on the word “his” in v. 27.

[1:4]  ¹⁶ sn Having summoned the witnesses and announced the Lord’s accusation against Israel, Isaiah mourns the nation’s impending doom. The third person references to the Lord in the second half of the verse suggest that the quotation from the Lord (cf. vv. 2-3) has concluded.

[1:4]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “Woe [to the] sinful nation.” The Hebrew term הוֹי, (hoy, “woe, ah”) was used in funeral laments (see 1 Kgs 13:30; Jer 22:18; 34:5) and carries the connotation of death. In highly dramatic fashion the prophet acts out Israel’s funeral in advance, emphasizing that their demise is inevitable if they do not repent soon.

[1:4]  ¹⁸ tn Or “sons” (NASB). The prophet contrasts four terms of privilege – nation, people, offspring, children – with four terms that depict Israel’s sinful condition in Isaiah’s day – sinful, evil, wrong, wicked (see J. A. Motyer, The Prophecy of Isaiah, 43).

[1:4]  ¹⁹ sn Holy One of Israel is one of Isaiah’s favorite divine titles for God. It pictures the Lord as the sovereign king who rules over his covenant people and exercises moral authority over them.

[1:4]  ²⁰ tn Heb “they are estranged backward.” The LXX omits this statement, which presents syntactical problems and seems to be outside the synonymous parallelistic structure of the verse.

[11:8]  ²¹ sn Zechariah is only dramatizing what God had done historically (see the note on the word “cedars” in 11:1). The “one month” probably means just any short period of time in which three kings ruled in succession. Likely candidates are Elah, Zimri, Tibni (1 Kgs 16:8-20); Zechariah, Shallum, Menahem (2 Kgs 15:8-16); or Jehoiakim, Jehoiachin, Zedekiah (2 Kgs 24:1–25:7).

[1:31]  ²² tn Or “promise-breakers.”