Genesis 1:7

1:7 So God made the expanse and separated the water under the expanse from the water above it. ¹  It was so. ² 

Genesis 6:17

6:17 I am about to bring ³  floodwaters ⁴  on the earth to destroy ⁵  from under the sky all the living creatures that have the breath of life in them. ⁶  Everything that is on the earth will die,

Genesis 8:2

8:2 The fountains of the deep and the floodgates of heaven were closed, ⁷  and the rain stopped falling from the sky.

Job 28:4

28:4 Far from where people live ⁸  he sinks a shaft,

in places travelers have long forgotten, ⁹ 

far from other people he dangles and sways. ¹⁰ 

Job 38:8-11

38:8 “Who shut up ¹¹  the sea with doors

when it burst forth, ¹²  coming out of the womb,

38:9 when I made ¹³  the storm clouds its garment,

and thick darkness its swaddling band, ¹⁴ 

38:10 when I prescribed ¹⁵  its limits,

and set ¹⁶  in place its bolts and doors,

38:11 when I said, ‘To here you may come ¹⁷ 

and no farther, ¹⁸ 

here your proud waves will be confined’? ¹⁹ 

Psalms 33:7

33:7 He piles up the water of the sea; ²⁰ 

he puts the oceans ²¹  in storehouses.

Psalms 74:15

74:15 You broke open the spring and the stream; ²² 

you dried up perpetually flowing rivers. ²³ 

Proverbs 8:28-29

8:28 when he established the clouds above,

when the fountains of the deep grew strong, ²⁴ 

8:29 when he gave the sea his decree

that the waters should not pass over his command, ²⁵ 

when he marked out the foundations of the earth,

Isaiah 24:19

24:19 The earth is broken in pieces,

the earth is ripped to shreds,

the earth shakes violently. ²⁶ 

Jeremiah 5:22

5:22 “You should fear me!” says the Lord.

“You should tremble in awe before me! ²⁷ 

I made the sand to be a boundary for the sea,

a permanent barrier that it can never cross.

Its waves may roll, but they can never prevail.

They may roar, but they can never cross beyond that boundary.” ²⁸ 

Jeremiah 51:16

51:16 When his voice thunders, the waters in the heavens roar.

He makes the clouds rise from the far-off horizons.

He makes the lightning flash out in the midst of the rain.

He unleashes the wind from the places where he stores it.

Ezekiel 26:19

26:19 “For this is what the sovereign Lord says: When I make you desolate like the uninhabited cities, when I bring up the deep over you and the surging ²⁹  waters overwhelm you,

Amos 9:5-6

9:5 The sovereign Lord who commands armies will do this. ³⁰ 

He touches the earth and it dissolves; ³¹ 

all who live on it mourn.

The whole earth ³²  rises like the River Nile, ³³ 

and then grows calm ³⁴  like the Nile in Egypt. ³⁵ 

9:6 He builds the upper rooms of his palace ³⁶  in heaven

and sets its foundation supports ³⁷  on the earth. ³⁸ 

He summons the water of the sea

and pours it out on the earth’s surface.

The Lord is his name.

Matthew 24:38

24:38 For in those days before the flood, people ³⁹  were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day Noah entered the ark.

Matthew 24:1

The Destruction of the Temple

24:1 Now ⁴⁰  as Jesus was going out of the temple courts and walking away, his disciples came to show him the temple buildings. ⁴¹ 

Matthew 5:3

5:3 “Blessed ⁴²  are the poor in spirit, ⁴³  for the kingdom of heaven belongs ⁴⁴  to them.

[1:7]  ¹ tn Heb “the expanse.”

[1:7]  ² tn This statement indicates that it happened the way God designed it, underscoring the connection between word and event.

[6:17]  ³ tn The Hebrew construction uses the independent personal pronoun, followed by a suffixed form of הִנֵּה (hinneh, “look”) and the a participle used with an imminent future nuance: “As for me, look, I am going to bring.”

[6:17]  ⁴ tn Heb “the flood, water.”

[6:17]  ⁵ tn The verb שָׁחָת (shakhat, “to destroy”) is repeated yet again, only now in an infinitival form expressing the purpose of the flood.

[6:17]  ⁶ tn The Hebrew construction here is different from the previous two; here it is רוּחַ חַיִּים (ruakh khayyim) rather than נֶפֶשׁ הַיָּה (nefesh khayyah) or נִשְׁמַת חַיִּים (nishmat khayyim). It refers to everything that breathes.

[8:2]  ⁷ tn Some (e.g., NIV) translate the preterite verb forms in this verse as past perfects (e.g., “had been closed”), for it seems likely that the sources of the water would have stopped before the waters receded.

[28:4]  ⁸ tc The first part of this verse, “He cuts a shaft far from the place where people live,” has received a lot of attention. The word for “live” is גָּר (gar). Some of the proposals are: “limestone,” on the basis of the LXX; “far from the light,” reading נֵר (ner); “by a foreign people,” taking the word to means “foreign people”; “a foreign people opening shafts”; or taking gar as “crater” based on Arabic. Driver puts this and the next together: “a strange people who have been forgotten cut shafts” (see AJSL 3 [1935]: 162). L. Waterman had “the people of the lamp” (“Note on Job 28:4,” JBL 71 [1952]: 167ff). And there are others. Since there is really no compelling argument in favor of one of these alternative interpretations, the MT should be preserved until shown to be wrong.

[28:4]  ⁹ tn Heb “forgotten by the foot.” This means that there are people walking above on the ground, and the places below, these mines, are not noticed by the pedestrians above.

[28:4]  ¹⁰ sn This is a description of the mining procedures. Dangling suspended from a rope would be a necessary part of the job of going up and down the shafts.

[38:8]  ¹¹ tn The MT has “and he shut up.” The Vulgate has “Who?” and so many commentaries and editions adopt this reading, if not from the Vulgate, then from the sense of the sequence in the text itself.

[38:8]  ¹² tn The line uses two expressions, first the temporal clause with גִּיחַ (giakh, “when it burst forth”) and then the finite verb יֵצֵא (yetse’, “go out”) to mark the concomitance of the two actions.

[38:9]  ¹³ tn The temporal clause here uses the infinitive from שִׂים (sim, “to place; to put; to make”). It underscores the sovereign placing of things.

[38:9]  ¹⁴ tn This noun is found only here. The verb is in Ezek 16:4, and a related noun is in Ezek 30:21.

[38:10]  ¹⁵ tc The MT has “and I broke,” which cannot mean “set, prescribed” or the like. The LXX and the Vulgate have such a meaning, suggesting a verb עֲשִׁית (’ashiyt, “plan, prescribe”). A. Guillaume finds an Arabic word with a meaning “measured it by span by my decree.” Would God give himself a decree? R. Gordis simply argues that the basic meaning “break” develops the connotation of “decide, determine” (2 Sam 5:24; Job 14:3; Dan 11:36).

[38:10]  ¹⁶ tn Dhorme suggested reversing the two verbs, making this the first, and then “shatter” for the second colon.

[38:11]  ¹⁷ tn The imperfect verb receives the permission nuance here.

[38:11]  ¹⁸ tn The text has תֹסִיף (tosif, “and you may not add”), which is often used idiomatically (as in verbal hendiadys constructions).

[38:11]  ¹⁹ tn The MT literally says, “here he will put on the pride of your waves.” The verb has no expressed subject and so is made a passive voice. But there has to be some object for the verb “put,” such as “limit” or “boundary”; the translations “confined; halted; stopped” all serve to paraphrase such an idea. The LXX has “broken” at this point, suggesting the verse might have been confused – but “breaking the pride” of the waves would mean controlling them. Some commentators have followed this, exchanging the verb in v. 11 with this one.

[33:7]  ²⁰ tn Heb “[he] gathers like a pile the waters of the sea.” Some prefer to emend נֵד (ged, “heap, pile”; cf. NASB) to נֹד (nod, “bottle”; cf. NRSV; NIV “into jars”), but “pile” is used elsewhere to describe water that the Lord confines to one place (Exod 15:8; Josh 3:13, 16; Ps 78:13). This verse appears to refer to Gen 1:9, where God decrees that the watery deep be gathered to one place so that dry land might appear. If so, the participles in this and the following line depict this action with special vividness, as if the reader were present on the occasion. Another option is that the participles picture the confinement of the sea to one place as an ongoing divine activity.

[33:7]  ²¹ tn Or “watery depths.” The form תְּהוֹמוֹת (tÿhomot, “watery depths”) is the plural form of תְּהוֹם (tÿhom, “great deep”; see Gen 1:2).

[74:15]  ²² sn You broke open the spring and the stream. Perhaps this alludes to the way in which God provided water for the Israelites as they traveled in the wilderness following the exodus (see Ps 78:15-16, 20; 105:41).

[74:15]  ²³ sn Perpetually flowing rivers are rivers that contain water year round, unlike the seasonal streams that flow only during the rainy season. Perhaps the psalmist here alludes to the drying up of the Jordan River when the Israelites entered the land of Canaan under Joshua (see Josh 3-4).

[8:28]  ²⁴ tn To form a better parallel some commentators read this infinitive בַּעֲזוֹז (ba’azoz), “when [they] grew strong,” as a Piel causative, “when he made firm, fixed fast” (cf. NIV “fixed securely”; NLT “established”). But the following verse (“should not pass over”) implies the meaning “grew strong” here.

[8:29]  ²⁵ tn Heb “his mouth.”

[24:19]  ²⁶ tn Once more repetition is used to draw attention to a statement. In the Hebrew text each lines ends with אֶרֶץ (’erets, “earth”). Each line also uses a Hitpolel verb form from a geminate root preceded by an emphatic infinitive absolute.

[5:22]  ²⁷ tn Heb “Should you not fear me? Should you not tremble in awe before me?” The rhetorical questions expect the answer explicit in the translation.

[5:22]  ²⁸ tn Heb “it.” The referent is made explicit to avoid any possible confusion.

[26:19]  ²⁹ tn Heb “many.”

[9:5]  ³⁰ tn The words “will do this” are supplied in the translation for clarification.

[9:5]  ³¹ tn Or “melts.” The verb probably depicts earthquakes and landslides. See v. 5b.

[9:5]  ³² tn Heb “all of it.”

[9:5]  ³³ tn Heb “the Nile.” The word “River” is supplied in the translation for clarity.

[9:5]  ³⁴ tn Or “sinks back down.”

[9:5]  ³⁵ sn See Amos 8:8, which is very similar to this verse.

[9:6]  ³⁶ tc The MT reads “his steps.” If this is correct, then the reference may be to the steps leading up to the heavenly temple or the throne of God (cf. 1 Kgs 10:19-20). The prefixed מ (mem) may be dittographic (note the preceding word ends in mem). The translation assumes an emendation to עֲלִיָּתוֹ (’aliyyato, “his upper rooms”).

[9:6]  ³⁷ tn Traditionally, “vault” (so ASV, NAB, NRSV). The precise meaning of this word in this context is unclear. Elsewhere it refers to objects grouped or held together. F. I. Andersen and D. N. Freedman (Amos [AB], 845-46) suggest the foundational structure of a building is in view.

[9:6]  ³⁸ sn Verse 6a pictures the entire universe as a divine palace founded on the earth and extending into the heavens.

[24:38]  ³⁹ tn Grk “they,” but in an indefinite sense, “people.”

[24:1]  ⁴⁰ tn Here καί (kai) has been translated as “now” to indicate the transition to a new topic.

[24:1]  ⁴¹ sn The Jerusalem temple was widely admired around the world. See Josephus, Ant. 15.11 [15.380-425]; J. W. 5.5 [5.184-227] and Tacitus, History 5.8, who called it “immensely opulent.” Josephus compared it to a beautiful snowcapped mountain.

[5:3]  ⁴² sn The term Blessed introduces the first of several beatitudes promising blessing to those whom God cares for. They serve as an invitation to come into the grace God offers.

[5:3]  ⁴³ sn The poor in spirit is a reference to the “pious poor” for whom God especially cares. See Ps 14:6; 22:24; 25:16; 34:6; 40:17; 69:29.

[5:3]  ⁴⁴ sn The present tense (belongs) here is significant. Jesus makes the kingdom and its blessings currently available. This phrase is unlike the others in the list with the possessive pronoun being emphasized.