Ezekiel 20:5-10

20:5 and say to them:

“‘This is what the sovereign Lord says: On the day I chose Israel I swore ¹  to the descendants ²  of the house of Jacob and made myself known to them in the land of Egypt. I swore ³  to them, “I am the Lord your God.” 20:6 On that day I swore ⁴  to bring them out of the land of Egypt to a land which I had picked out ⁵  for them, a land flowing with milk and honey, ⁶  the most beautiful of all lands. 20:7 I said to them, “Each of you must get rid of the detestable idols you keep before you, ⁷  and do not defile yourselves with the idols of Egypt; I am the Lord your God.” 20:8 But they rebelled against me, and refused to listen to me; no one got rid of their detestable idols, ⁸  nor did they abandon the idols of Egypt. Then I decided to pour out ⁹  my rage on them and fully vent my anger against them in the midst of the land of Egypt. 20:9 I acted for the sake of my reputation, ¹⁰  so that I would not be profaned before the nations among whom they lived, ¹¹  before whom I revealed myself by bringing them out of the land of Egypt. ¹² 

20:10 “‘So I brought them out of the land of Egypt and led them to the wilderness.

Exodus 19:4-6

19:4 ‘You yourselves have seen what I did to Egypt and how I lifted you on eagles’ wings ¹³  and brought you to myself. ¹⁴  19:5 And now, if you will diligently listen to me ¹⁵  and keep ¹⁶  my covenant, then you will be my ¹⁷  special possession ¹⁸  out of all the nations, for all the earth is mine, 19:6 and you will be to me ¹⁹  a kingdom of priests ²⁰  and a holy nation.’ ²¹  These are the words that you will speak to the Israelites.”

Deuteronomy 9:4

9:4 Do not think to yourself after the Lord your God has driven them out before you, “Because of my own righteousness the Lord has brought me here to possess this land.” It is because of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord is driving them out ahead of you.

Psalms 105:10-15

105:10 He gave it to Jacob as a decree,

to Israel as a lasting promise, ²² 

105:11 saying, “To you I will give the land of Canaan

as the portion of your inheritance.”

105:12 When they were few in number,

just a very few, and resident aliens within it,

105:13 they wandered from nation to nation,

and from one kingdom to another. ²³ 

105:14 He let no one oppress them;

he disciplined kings for their sake,

105:15 saying, ²⁴  “Don’t touch my chosen ²⁵  ones!

Don’t harm my prophets!”

Psalms 105:26-37

105:26 He sent his servant Moses,

and Aaron, whom he had chosen.

105:27 They executed his miraculous signs among them, ²⁶ 

and his amazing deeds in the land of Ham.

105:28 He made it dark; ²⁷ 

they did not disobey his orders. ²⁸ 

105:29 He turned their water into blood,

and killed their fish.

105:30 Their land was overrun by frogs,

which even got into the rooms of their kings.

105:31 He ordered flies to come; ²⁹ 

gnats invaded their whole territory.

105:32 He sent hail along with the rain; ³⁰ 

there was lightning in their land. ³¹ 

105:33 He destroyed their vines and fig trees,

and broke the trees throughout their territory.

105:34 He ordered locusts to come, ³² 

innumerable grasshoppers.

105:35 They ate all the vegetation in their land,

and devoured the crops of their fields. ³³ 

105:36 He struck down all the firstborn in their land,

the firstfruits of their reproductive power. ³⁴ 

105:37 He brought his people ³⁵  out enriched ³⁶  with silver and gold;

none of his tribes stumbled.

John 5:25

5:25 I tell you the solemn truth, ³⁷  a time ³⁸  is coming – and is now here – when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live.

Romans 9:15

9:15 For he says to Moses: “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.” ³⁹ 

Ephesians 2:4-5

2:4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of his great love with which he loved us, 2:5 even though we were dead in transgressions, made us alive together with Christ – by grace you are saved! ⁴⁰  –

Titus 3:3-7

3:3 For we too were once foolish, disobedient, misled, enslaved to various passions and desires, spending our lives in evil and envy, hateful and hating one another. 3:4 ⁴¹  But “when the kindness of God our Savior and his love for mankind appeared, 3:5 he saved us not by works of righteousness that we have done but on the basis of his mercy, through the washing of the new birth and the renewing of the Holy Spirit, 3:6 whom he poured out on us in full measure ⁴²  through Jesus Christ our Savior. 3:7 And so, ⁴³  since we have been justified by his grace, we become heirs with the confident expectation of eternal life.” ⁴⁴ 

[20:5]  ¹ tn Heb “I lifted up my hand.”

[20:5]  ² tn Heb “seed.”

[20:5]  ³ tn Heb “I lifted up my hand.”

[20:6]  ⁴ tn Heb “I lifted up my hand to them.”

[20:6]  ⁵ tn Or “searched out.” The Hebrew word is used to describe the activity of the spies in “spying out” the land of Canaan (Num 13-14); cf. KJV “I had espied for them.”

[20:6]  ⁶ sn The phrase “a land flowing with milk and honey,” a figure of speech describing the land’s abundant fertility, occurs in v. 15 as well as Exod 3:8, 17; 13:5; 33:3; Lev 20:24; Num 13:27; Deut 6:3; 11:9; 26:9; 27:3; Josh 5:6; Jer 11:5; 32:23 (see also Deut 1:25; 8:7-9).

[20:7]  ⁷ tn Heb “each one, the detestable things of his eyes, throw away.” The Pentateuch does not refer to the Israelites worshiping idols in Egypt, but Josh 24:14 appears to suggest that they did so.

[20:8]  ⁸ tn Heb “each one, the detestable things of their eyes did not throw away.”

[20:8]  ⁹ tn Heb “and I said/thought to pour out.”

[20:9]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “for the sake of my name.”

[20:9]  ¹¹ tn Heb “before the eyes of the nations in whose midst they were.”

[20:9]  ¹² tn Heb “to whom I made myself known before their eyes to bring them out from the land of Egypt.” The translation understands the infinitive construct (“to bring them out”) as indicating manner. God’s deliverance of his people from Egypt was an act of self-revelation in that it displayed his power and his commitment to his promises.

[19:4]  ¹³ tn The figure compares the way a bird would teach its young to fly and leave the nest with the way Yahweh brought Israel out of Egypt. The bird referred to could be one of several species of eagles, but more likely is the griffin-vulture. The image is that of power and love.

[19:4]  ¹⁴ sn The language here is the language of a bridegroom bringing the bride to the chamber. This may be a deliberate allusion to another metaphor for the covenant relationship.

[19:5]  ¹⁵ 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]  ¹⁶ 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]  ¹⁷ tn The lamed preposition expresses possession here: “to me” means “my.”

[19:5]  ¹⁸ 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]  ¹⁹ tn Or “for me” (NIV, NRSV), or, if the lamed (ל) preposition has a possessive use, “my kingdom” (so NCV).

[19:6]  ²⁰ 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]  ²¹ 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.

[105:10]  ²² tn Or “eternal covenant.”

[105:13]  ²³ tn Heb “and from a kingdom to another nation.”

[105:15]  ²⁴ tn The word “saying” is supplied in the translation for clarification and for stylistic reasons.

[105:15]  ²⁵ tn Heb “anointed.”

[105:27]  ²⁶ tn Apparently the pronoun refers to “his servants” (i.e., the Israelites, see v. 25).

[105:28]  ²⁷ tn Heb “he sent darkness and made it dark.”

[105:28]  ²⁸ tn Heb “they did not rebel against his words.” Apparently this refers to Moses and Aaron, who obediently carried out God’s orders.

[105:31]  ²⁹ tn Heb “he spoke and flies came.”

[105:32]  ³⁰ tn Heb “he gave their rains hail.”

[105:32]  ³¹ tn Heb “fire of flames [was] in their land.”

[105:34]  ³² tn Heb “he spoke and locusts came.”

[105:35]  ³³ tn Heb “the fruit of their ground.”

[105:36]  ³⁴ tn Heb “the beginning of all their strength,” that is, reproductive power (see Ps 78:51).

[105:37]  ³⁵ tn Heb “them”; the referent (the Lord’s people) has been supplied in the translation for clarity.

[105:37]  ³⁶ tn The word “enriched” is supplied in the translation for clarification and for stylistic reasons.

[5:25]  ³⁷ tn Grk “Truly, truly, I say to you.”

[5:25]  ³⁸ tn Grk “an hour.”

[9:15]  ³⁹ sn A quotation from Exod 33:19.

[2:5]  ⁴⁰ tn Or “by grace you have been saved.” The perfect tense in Greek connotes both completed action (“you have been saved”) and continuing results (“you are saved”).

[3:4]  ⁴¹ tn Verses 4-7 are set as poetry in NA²⁶/NA²⁷. These verses probably constitute the referent of the expression “this saying” in v. 8.

[3:6]  ⁴² tn Or “on us richly.”

[3:7]  ⁴³ tn This is the conclusion of a single, skillfully composed sentence in Greek encompassing Titus 3:4-7. Showing the goal of God’s merciful salvation, v. 7 begins literally, “in order that, being justified…we might become heirs…”

[3:7]  ⁴⁴ tn Grk “heirs according to the hope of eternal life.”