Ezekiel 39:29

39:29 I will no longer hide my face from them, when I pour out my Spirit on the house of Israel, ¹  declares the sovereign Lord.”

Deuteronomy 31:17-18

31:17 At that time ²  my anger will erupt against them ³  and I will abandon them and hide my face from them until they are devoured. Many disasters and distresses will overcome ⁴  them ⁵  so that they ⁶  will say at that time, ‘Have not these disasters ⁷  overcome us ⁸  because our ⁹  God is not among us ¹⁰ ?’ 31:18 But I will certainly ¹¹  hide myself at that time because of all the wickedness they ¹²  will have done by turning to other gods.

Deuteronomy 32:20

32:20 He said, “I will reject them, ¹³ 

I will see what will happen to them;

for they are a perverse generation,

children ¹⁴  who show no loyalty.

Psalms 10:1

Psalm 10 ¹⁵ 

10:1 Why, Lord, do you stand far off?

Why do you pay no attention during times of trouble? ¹⁶ 

Psalms 30:7

30:7 O Lord, in your good favor you made me secure. ¹⁷ 

Then you rejected me ¹⁸  and I was terrified.

Isaiah 1:15

1:15 When you spread out your hands in prayer,

I look the other way; ¹⁹ 

when you offer your many prayers,

I do not listen,

because your hands are covered with blood. ²⁰ 

Isaiah 8:17

8:17 I will wait patiently for the Lord,

who has rejected the family of Jacob; ²¹ 

I will wait for him.

Isaiah 59:2

59:2 But your sinful acts have alienated you from your God;

your sins have caused him to reject you and not listen to your prayers. ²² 

Isaiah 64:7

64:7 No one invokes ²³  your name,

or makes an effort ²⁴  to take hold of you.

For you have rejected us ²⁵ 

and handed us over to our own sins. ²⁶ 

Jeremiah 33:5

33:5 ‘The defenders of the city will go out and fight with the Babylonians. ²⁷  But they will only fill those houses and buildings with the dead bodies of the people that I will kill in my anger and my wrath. ²⁸  That will happen because I have decided to turn my back on ²⁹  this city on account of the wicked things they have done. ³⁰ 

[39:29]  ¹ sn See Ezek 11:19; 37:14.

[31:17]  ² tn Heb “on that day.” This same expression also appears later in the verse and in v. 18.

[31:17]  ³ tn Heb “him.” Smr, LXX, and the Targums read the plural “them.” See note on the first occurrence of “they” in v. 16.

[31:17]  ⁴ tn Heb “find,” “encounter.”

[31:17]  ⁵ tn Heb “him.” Smr, LXX, and the Targums read the plural “them.” See note on the first occurrence of “they” in v. 16.

[31:17]  ⁶ tn Heb “he.” Smr, LXX, and the Targums read the plural “they.” See note on the first occurrence of “they” in v. 16.

[31:17]  ⁷ tn Heb “evils.”

[31:17]  ⁸ tn Heb “me.” Smr, LXX, and the Targums read the plural “us,” which is necessary in any case in the translation because of contemporary English style.

[31:17]  ⁹ tn Heb “my.”

[31:17]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “me.” Smr, LXX, and the Targums read the plural “us,” which is necessary in any case in the translation because of contemporary English style.

[31:18]  ¹¹ tn The Hebrew text uses the infinitive absolute for emphasis, which the translation indicates with “certainly.”

[31:18]  ¹² tn Heb “he.” Smr, LXX, and the Targums read the plural “they.” See note on the first occurrence of “they” in v. 16.

[32:20]  ¹³ tn Heb “I will hide my face from them.”

[32:20]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “sons” (so NAB, NASB); TEV “unfaithful people.”

[10:1]  ¹⁵ sn Psalm 10. Many Hebrew mss and the ancient Greek version (LXX) combine Psalms 9 and 10 into a single psalm. Taken in isolation, Psalm 10 is a petition for help in which the psalmist urges the Lord to deliver him from his dangerous enemies, whom he describes in vivid and terrifying detail. The psalmist concludes with confidence; he is certain that God’s justice will prevail.

[10:1]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “you hide for times in trouble.” The interrogative “why” is understood by ellipsis; note the preceding line. The Hiphil verbal form “hide” has no expressed object. Some supply “your eyes” by ellipsis (see BDB 761 s.v. I עָלַם Hiph and HALOT 835 s.v. I עלם hif) or emend the form to a Niphal (“you hide yourself,” see BHS, note c; cf. NEB, NIV, NRSV).

[30:7]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “in your good favor you caused to stand for my mountain strength.” Apparently this means “you established strength for my mountain” (“mountain” in this case representing his rule, which would be centered on Mt. Zion) or “you established strength as my mountain” (“mountain” in this case being a metaphor for security).

[30:7]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “you hid your face.” The idiom “hide the face” can mean “ignore” (see Pss 10:11; 13:1; 51:9) or, as here, carry the stronger idea of “reject” (see Ps 88:14).

[1:15]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “I close my eyes from you.”

[1:15]  ²⁰ sn This does not just refer to the blood of sacrificial animals, but also the blood, as it were, of their innocent victims. By depriving the poor and destitute of proper legal recourse and adequate access to the economic system, the oppressors have, for all intents and purposes, “killed” their victims.

[8:17]  ²¹ tn Heb “who hides his face from the house of Jacob.”

[59:2]  ²² tn Heb “and your sins have caused [his] face to be hidden from you so as not to hear.”

[64:7]  ²³ tn Or “calls out in”; NASB, NIV, NRSV “calls on.”

[64:7]  ²⁴ tn Or “rouses himself”; NASB “arouses himself.”

[64:7]  ²⁵ tn Heb “for you have hidden your face from us.”

[64:7]  ²⁶ tc The Hebrew text reads literally, “and you caused us to melt in the hand of our sin.” The verb וַתְּמוּגֵנוּ (vattÿmugenu) is a Qal preterite 2nd person masculine singular with a 1st person common plural suffix from the root מוּג (mug, “melt”). However, elsewhere the Qal of this verb is intransitive. If the verbal root מוּג (mug) is retained here, the form should be emended to a Polel pattern (וַתְּמֹגְגֵנוּ, vattÿmogÿgenu). The translation assumes an emendation to וַתְּמַגְּנֵנוּ (vattÿmaggÿnenu, “and you handed us over”). This form is a Piel preterite 2nd person masculine singular with a 1st person common plural suffix from the verbal root מִגֵּן (miggen, “hand over, surrender”; see HALOT 545 s.v. מגן and BDB 171 s.v. מָגָן). The point is that God has abandoned them to their sinful ways and no longer seeks reconciliation.

[33:5]  ²⁷ tn Heb “The Chaldeans.” See the study note on 21:4 for further explanation.

[33:5]  ²⁸ sn This refers to the tearing down of buildings within the city to strengthen the wall or to fill gaps in it which had been broken down by the Babylonian battering rams. For a parallel to this during the siege of Sennacherib in the time of Hezekiah see Isa 22:10; 2 Chr 32:5. These torn-down buildings were also used as burial mounds for those who died in the fighting or through starvation and disease during the siege. The siege prohibited them from taking the bodies outside the city for burial and leaving them in their houses or in the streets would have defiled them.

[33:5]  ²⁹ tn Heb “Because I have hidden my face from.” The modern equivalent for this gesture of rejection is “to turn the back on.” See Ps 13:1 for comparable usage. The perfect is to be interpreted as a perfect of resolve (cf. IBHS 488-89 §30.5.1d and compare the usage in Ruth 4:3).

[33:5]  ³⁰ tn The translation and meaning of vv. 4-5 are somewhat uncertain. The translation and precise meaning of vv. 4-5 are uncertain at a number of points due to some difficult syntactical constructions and some debate about the text and meaning of several words. The text reads more literally, “33:4 For thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, concerning the houses of this city and concerning the houses of the kings of Judah which have been torn down on account the siege ramps and the sword 33:5 going to fight the Chaldeans and to fill them with the dead bodies of the men whom I have killed in my anger and in my wrath and on account of all whose wickedness I have hidden my face from this city.” There are two difficult syntactical forms (1) the participle at the beginning of v. 5 “going [or those going] to fight” (בָּאִים, ba’im) and (2) the infinitive plus suffix that introduces the next clause “and to fill them” (וּלְמַלְאָם, ulÿmal’am). The translation has interpreted the former as a verbal use of the participle with an indefinite subject “they” (= the defenders of Jerusalem who have torn down the buildings; cf. GKC 460-61 §144.i for this point of grammar). The conjunction plus preposition plus infinitive construct has been interpreted as equivalent to a finite verb (cf. IBHS 611 §36.3.2a, i.e., “and they will fill them [the houses and buildings of v. 4]”). Adopting the Greek text of these two verses would produce a smoother reading. It reads “For thus says the Lord concerning the houses of this city and concerning the houses of the kings of Judah which have been pulled down for mounds and fortifications to fight against the Chaldeans and to fill it [should be “them”] with the corpses of men whom I smote in my anger and my wrath and I turned away my face from them [rather than from “this city” of the Hebrew text] for all their wickedness: Behold I will…” The Greek does not have the problem with the participle because it has seen it as part of a word meaning fortification. This also eliminates the problem with the infinitive because it is interpreted as parallel with “to fight.” I.e., the defenders used these torn-down buildings for defensive fortifications and for burial places. It would be tempting to follow this reading. However, there is no graphically close form for “fortification” that would explain how the more difficult בָּאִים הֶחָרֶב (hekharev ba’im) of the Hebrew text arose and there is doubt whether סֹלְלוֹת (solÿlot) can refer to a defense mound. W. L. Holladay (Jeremiah [Hermeneia], 2:221, 225) has suggested reading הַחֲרַכִּים (hakharakim) in place of הֶחָרֶב (hekharev) in the technical sense of “crenels,” the gaps between the raised portion on top of the wall (which raised portion he calls “merlons” and equates with סֹלְלוֹת, solÿlot). He does not, however, further suggest seeing בָּאִים (ba’im) as part of this corrupted form, choosing to see it rather as a gloss. His emendation and interpretation, however, have been justly criticized as violating the usage of both סֹלְלוֹת which is elsewhere “siege mound” and חֲרַכִּים (kharakim) which elsewhere refers only to the latticed opening of a window (Song 2:9). Until a more acceptable explanation of how the difficult Hebrew text could have arisen from the Greek, the Hebrew should be retained, though it is admittedly awkward. G. L. Keown, P. J. Scalise, and T. G. Smothers (Jeremiah 26-52 [WBC], 166, 172) have perhaps the best discussion of the issues and the options involved here.