Genesis 49:1

The Blessing of Jacob

49:1 Jacob called for his sons and said, “Gather together so I can tell you ¹  what will happen to you in the future. ² 

Numbers 24:14

24:14 And now, I am about to go ³  back to my own people. Come now, and I will advise you as to what this people will do to your people in the future.” ⁴ 

Deuteronomy 4:30

4:30 In your distress when all these things happen to you in the latter days, ⁵  if you return to the Lord your God and obey him ⁶ 

Deuteronomy 18:15

18:15 The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you – from your fellow Israelites; ⁷  you must listen to him.

Deuteronomy 31:29

31:29 For I know that after I die you will totally ⁸  corrupt yourselves and turn away from the path I have commanded you to walk. Disaster will confront you in the days to come because you will act wickedly ⁹  before the Lord, inciting him to anger because of your actions.” ¹⁰ 

Isaiah 2:2

2:2 In the future ¹¹ 

the mountain of the Lord’s temple will endure ¹² 

as the most important of mountains,

and will be the most prominent of hills. ¹³ 

All the nations will stream to it,

Jeremiah 30:24

30:24 The anger of the Lord will not turn back

until he has fully carried out his intended purposes.

In days to come you will come to understand this. ¹⁴ 

Jeremiah 48:47

48:47 Yet in days to come

I will reverse Moab’s ill fortune.” ¹⁵ 

says the Lord. ¹⁶ 

The judgment against Moab ends here.

Ezekiel 38:16

38:16 You will advance ¹⁷  against my people Israel like a cloud covering the earth. In the latter days I will bring you against my land so that the nations may acknowledge me, when before their eyes I magnify myself ¹⁸  through you, O Gog.

Daniel 2:28

2:28 However, there is a God in heaven who reveals mysteries, ¹⁹  and he has made known to King Nebuchadnezzar what will happen in the times to come. ²⁰  The dream and the visions you had while lying on your bed ²¹  are as follows.

Daniel 10:14

10:14 Now I have come to help you understand what will happen to your people in the latter days, for the vision pertains to future days.”

Hosea 3:5

3:5 Afterward, the Israelites will turn and seek the Lord their God and their Davidic king. ²²  Then they will submit to the Lord in fear and receive his blessings ²³  in the future. ²⁴ 

Micah 4:1

Better Days Ahead for Jerusalem

4:1 In the future ²⁵  the Lord’s Temple Mount will be the most important mountain of all; ²⁶ 

it will be more prominent than other hills. ²⁷ 

People will stream to it.

Acts 2:17

2:17 ‘And in the last days ²⁸  it will be,’ God says,

‘that I will pour out my Spirit on all people, ²⁹ 

and your sons and your daughters will prophesy,

and your young men will see visions,

and your old men will dream dreams.

Galatians 4:4

4:4 But when the appropriate time ³⁰  had come, God sent out his Son, born of a woman, born under the law,

Ephesians 1:10

1:10 toward the administration of the fullness of the times, to head up ³¹  all things in Christ – the things in heaven ³²  and the things on earth. ³³ 

Ephesians 1:2

1:2 Grace and peace to you ³⁴  from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ!

Ephesians 3:3

3:3 that ³⁵  by revelation the divine secret ³⁶  was made known to me, as I wrote before briefly. ³⁷ 

Jude 1:18

1:18 For they said to you, “In the end time there will come ³⁸  scoffers, propelled by their own ungodly desires.” ³⁹ 

[49:1]  ¹ tn After the imperative, the cohortative with prefixed vav (ו) indicates purpose/result.

[49:1]  ² tn The expression “in the future” (אַחֲרִית הַיָּמִים, ’akharit hayyamim, “in the end of days”) is found most frequently in prophetic passages; it may refer to the end of the age, the eschaton, or to the distant future. The contents of some of the sayings in this chapter stretch from the immediate circumstances to the time of the settlement in the land to the coming of Messiah. There is a great deal of literature on this chapter, including among others C. Armerding, “The Last Words of Jacob: Genesis 49,” BSac 112 (1955): 320-28; H. Pehlke, “An Exegetical and Theological Study of Genesis 49:1-28” (Th.D. dissertation, Dallas Theological Seminary, 1985); and B. Vawter, “The Canaanite Background of Genesis 49,” CBQ 17 (1955): 1-18.

[24:14]  ³ tn The construction is the particle הִנֵּה (hinneh) suffixed followed by the active participle. This is the futur instans use of the participle, to express something that is about to happen: “I am about to go.”

[24:14]  ⁴ tn Heb “in the latter days.” For more on this expression, see E. Lipinski, “באחרית הימים dans les textes préexiliques,” VT 20 (1970): 445-50.

[4:30]  ⁵ sn The phrase is not used here in a technical sense for the eschaton, but rather refers to a future time when Israel will be punished for its sin and experience exile. See Deut 31:29.

[4:30]  ⁶ tn Heb “hear his voice.” The expression is an idiom meaning “obey,” occurring in Deut 8:20; 9:23; 13:18; 21:18, 20; 26:14, 17; 27:10; 28:1-2, 15, 45, 62; 30:2, 8, 10, 20.

[18:15]  ⁷ tc The MT expands here on the usual formula by adding “from among you” (cf. Deut 17:15; 18:18; Smr; a number of Greek texts). The expansion seems to be for the purpose of emphasis, i.e., the prophet to come must be not just from Israel but an Israelite by blood.

[31:29]  ⁸ tn The Hebrew text uses the infinitive absolute for emphasis, which the translation indicates with “totally.”

[31:29]  ⁹ tn Heb “do the evil.”

[31:29]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “the work of your hands.”

[2:2]  ¹¹ tn Heb “in the end of the days.” This phrase may refer generally to the future, or more technically to the final period of history. See BDB 31 s.v. ַאחֲרִית. The verse begins with a verb that functions as a “discourse particle” and is not translated. In numerous places throughout the OT, the “to be” verb with a prefixed conjunction (וְהָיָה [vÿhayah] and וַיְהִי [vayÿhi]) occurs in this fashion to introduce a circumstantial clause and does not require translation.

[2:2]  ¹² tn Or “be established” (KJV, NIV, NRSV).

[2:2]  ¹³ tn Heb “as the chief of the mountains, and will be lifted up above the hills.” The image of Mount Zion being elevated above other mountains and hills pictures the prominence it will attain in the future.

[30:24]  ¹⁴ sn Jer 30:23-24 are almost a verbatim repetition of 23:19-20. There the verses were addressed to the people of Jerusalem as a warning that the false prophets had no intimate awareness of the Lord’s plans which were plans of destruction for wicked Israel not plans of peace and prosperity. Here they function as further assurance that the Lord will judge the wicked nations oppressing them when he reverses their fortunes and restores them once again to the land as his special people (cf. vv. 18-22).

[48:47]  ¹⁵ tn See 29:14; 30:3 and the translator’s note on 29:14 for the idiom used here.

[48:47]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “Oracle of the Lord.”

[38:16]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “come up.”

[38:16]  ¹⁸ tn Or “reveal my holiness.”

[2:28]  ¹⁹ tn Aram “a revealer of mysteries.” The phrase serves as a quasi-title for God in Daniel.

[2:28]  ²⁰ tn Aram “in the latter days.”

[2:28]  ²¹ tn Aram “your dream and the visions of your head upon your bed.”

[3:5]  ²² tn Heb “David their king”; cf. NCV “the king from David’s family”; TEV “a descendant of David their king”; NLT “David’s descendant, their king.”

[3:5]  ²³ tn Heb “his goodness”; NLT “his good gifts.”

[3:5]  ²⁴ tn Heb “in the end of the days.” Cf. NAB, NASB, NIV, NCV, NLT “in the last days.”

[4:1]  ²⁵ tn Heb “at the end of days.”

[4:1]  ²⁶ tn Heb “will be established as the head of the mountains.”

[4:1]  ²⁷ tn Heb “it will be lifted up above the hills.”

[2:17]  ²⁸ sn The phrase in the last days is not quoted from Joel, but represents Peter’s interpretive explanation of the current events as falling “in the last days.”

[2:17]  ²⁹ tn Grk “on all flesh.”

[4:4]  ³⁰ tn Grk “the fullness of time” (an idiom for the totality of a period of time, with the implication of proper completion; see L&N 67.69).

[1:10]  ³¹ tn The precise meaning of the infinitive ἀνακεφαλαιώσασθαι (anakefalaiwsasqai) in v. 10 is difficult to determine since it was used relatively infrequently in Greek literature and only twice in the NT (here and Rom 13:9). While there have been several suggestions, three deserve mention: (1) “To sum up.” In Rom 13:9, using the same term, the author there says that the law may be “summarized in one command, to love your neighbor as yourself.” The idea then in Eph 1:10 would be that all things in heaven and on earth can be summed up and made sense out of in relation to Christ. (2) “To renew.” If this is the nuance of the verb then all things in heaven and earth, after their plunge into sin and ruin, are renewed by the coming of Christ and his redemption. (3) “To head up.” In this translation the idea is that Christ, in the fullness of the times, has been exalted so as to be appointed as the ruler (i.e., “head”) over all things in heaven and earth (including the church). That this is perhaps the best understanding of the verb is evidenced by the repeated theme of Christ’s exaltation and reign in Ephesians and by the connection to the κεφαλή- (kefalh-) language of 1:22 (cf. Schlier, TDNT 3:682; L&N 63.8; M. Barth, Ephesians [AB 34], 1:89-92; contra A. T. Lincoln, Ephesians [WBC], 32-33).

[1:10]  ³² tn Grk “the heavens.”

[1:10]  ³³ sn And the things on earth. Verse 10 ends with “in him.” The redundancy keeps the focus on Christ at the expense of good Greek style. Verse 11 repeats the reference with a relative pronoun (“in whom”) – again, at the expense of good Greek style. Although the syntax is awkward, the theology is rich. This is not the first time that a NT writer was so overcome with awe for his Lord that he seems to have lost control of his pen. Indeed, it happened frequently enough that some have labeled their christologically motivated solecisms an “apostolic disease.”

[1:2]  ³⁴ tn Grk “Grace to you and peace.”

[3:3]  ³⁵ tn Or “namely, that is.”

[3:3]  ³⁶ tn Or “mystery.”

[3:3]  ³⁷ tn Or “as I wrote above briefly.”

[1:18]  ³⁸ tn Grk “be.”

[1:18]  ³⁹ tn Grk “going according to their own desires of ungodliness.”