Haggai 1:9

1:9 ‘You expected a large harvest, but instead ¹  there was little, and when you brought it home it disappeared right away. ²  Why?’ asks the Lord who rules over all. ‘Because my temple remains in ruins, thanks to each of you favoring his own house! ³ 

Genesis 42:6

42:6 Now Joseph was the ruler of the country, the one who sold grain to all the people of the country. ⁴  Joseph’s brothers came and bowed down ⁵  before him with ⁶  their faces to the ground.

Genesis 42:23

42:23 (Now ⁷  they did not know that Joseph could understand them, ⁸  for he was speaking through an interpreter.) ⁹ 

Genesis 42:27

42:27 When one of them ¹⁰  opened his sack to get feed for his donkey at their resting place, ¹¹  he saw his money in the mouth of his sack. ¹² 

Deuteronomy 28:22

28:22 He ¹³  will afflict you with weakness, ¹⁴  fever, inflammation, infection, ¹⁵  sword, ¹⁶  blight, and mildew; these will attack you until you perish.

Deuteronomy 28:1

The Covenant Blessings

28:1 “If you indeed ¹⁷  obey the Lord your God and are careful to observe all his commandments I am giving ¹⁸  you today, the Lord your God will elevate you above all the nations of the earth.

Deuteronomy 8:1-2

The Lord’s Provision in the Desert

8:1 You must keep carefully all these commandments ¹⁹  I am giving ²⁰  you today so that you may live, increase in number, ²¹  and go in and occupy the land that the Lord promised to your ancestors. ²²  8:2 Remember the whole way by which he ²³  has brought you these forty years through the desert ²⁴  so that he might, by humbling you, test you to see if you have it within you to keep his commandments or not.

Deuteronomy 6:1

Exhortation to Keep the Covenant Principles

6:1 Now these are the commandments, ²⁵  statutes, and ordinances that the Lord your God instructed me to teach you so that you may carry them out in the land where you are headed ²⁶ 

Isaiah 37:27

37:27 Their residents are powerless; ²⁷ 

they are terrified and ashamed.

They are as short-lived as plants in the field

or green vegetation. ²⁸ 

They are as short-lived as grass on the rooftops ²⁹ 

when it is scorched by the east wind. ³⁰ 

Amos 4:9

4:9 “I destroyed your crops ³¹  with blight and disease.

Locusts kept ³²  devouring your orchards, ³³  vineyards, fig trees, and olive trees.

Still you did not come back to me.”

The Lord is speaking!

[1:9]  ¹ tn Heb “look!” (הִנֵּה, hinneh). The term, an interjection, draws attention to the point being made.

[1:9]  ² tn Heb “I blew it away” (so NRSV, TEV, NLT). The imagery here suggests that human achievements are so fragile and temporal that a mere breath from God can destroy them (see Ezek 22:20, 21; and Isa 40:7 with נָשַׁב, nashav).

[1:9]  ³ tn Heb “and each of you runs to his own house”; NIV “is busy with”; TEV “is busy working on”; NCV “work hard for.”

[42:6]  ⁴ tn The disjunctive clause either introduces a new episode in the unfolding drama or provides the reader with supplemental information necessary to understanding the story.

[42:6]  ⁵ sn Joseph’s brothers came and bowed down before him. Here is the beginning of the fulfillment of Joseph’s dreams (see Gen 37). But it is not the complete fulfillment, since all his brothers and his parents must come. The point of the dream, of course, was not simply to get the family to bow to Joseph, but that Joseph would be placed in a position of rule and authority to save the family and the world (41:57).

[42:6]  ⁶ tn The word “faces” is an adverbial accusative, so the preposition has been supplied in the translation.

[42:23]  ⁷ tn The disjunctive clause provides supplemental information that is important to the story.

[42:23]  ⁸ tn “was listening.” The brothers were not aware that Joseph could understand them as they spoke the preceding words in their native language.

[42:23]  ⁹ tn Heb “for [there was] an interpreter between them.” On the meaning of the word here translated “interpreter” see HALOT 590 s.v. מֵלִיץ and M. A. Canney, “The Hebrew melis (Prov IX 12; Gen XLII 2-3),” AJSL 40 (1923/24): 135-37.

[42:27]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “and the one.” The article indicates that the individual is vivid in the mind of the narrator, yet it is not important to identify him by name.

[42:27]  ¹¹ tn Heb “at the lodging place.”

[42:27]  ¹² tn Heb “and look, it [was] in the mouth of his sack.” By the use of the particle הִנֵּה (hinneh, “look”), the narrator invites the reader to look through the eyes of the character and thereby draws attention to the money.

[28:22]  ¹³ tn Heb “The Lord.” See note on “he” in 28:8.

[28:22]  ¹⁴ tn Or perhaps “consumption” (so KJV, NASB, NRSV). The term is from a verbal root that indicates a weakening of one’s physical strength (cf. NAB “wasting”; NIV, NLT “wasting disease”).

[28:22]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “hot fever”; NIV “scorching heat.”

[28:22]  ¹⁶ tn Or “drought” (so NIV, NRSV, NLT).

[28:1]  ¹⁷ tn The Hebrew text uses the infinitive absolute for emphasis, which the translation indicates with “indeed.”

[28:1]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “commanding”; NAB “which I enjoin on you today” (likewise in v. 15).

[8:1]  ¹⁹ tn The singular term (מִצְוָה, mitsvah) includes the whole corpus of covenant stipulations, certainly the book of Deuteronomy at least (cf. Deut 5:28; 6:1, 25; 7:11; 11:8, 22; 15:5; 17:20; 19:9; 27:1; 30:11; 31:5). The plural (מִצְוֹת, mitsot) refers to individual stipulations (as in vv. 2, 6).

[8:1]  ²⁰ tn Heb “commanding” (so NASB). For stylistic reasons, to avoid redundancy, “giving” has been used in the translation (likewise in v. 11).

[8:1]  ²¹ tn Heb “multiply” (so KJV, NASB, NLT); NIV, NRSV “increase.”

[8:1]  ²² tn Heb “fathers” (also in vv. 16, 18).

[8:2]  ²³ tn Heb “the Lord your God.” The pronoun has been used in the translation for stylistic reasons.

[8:2]  ²⁴ tn Or “wilderness” (so KJV, NRSV, NLT); likewise in v. 15.

[6:1]  ²⁵ tn Heb “commandment.” The word מִצְוָה (mitsvah) again is in the singular, serving as a comprehensive term for the whole stipulation section of the book. See note on the word “commandments” in 5:31.

[6:1]  ²⁶ tn Heb “where you are going over to possess it” (so NASB); NRSV “that you are about to cross into and occupy.”

[37:27]  ²⁷ tn Heb “short of hand”; KJV, ASV “of small power”; NASB “short of strength.”

[37:27]  ²⁸ tn Heb “they are plants in the field and green vegetation.” The metaphor emphasizes how short-lived these seemingly powerful cities really were. See Ps 90:5-6; Isa 40:6-8, 24.

[37:27]  ²⁹ tn Heb “[they are] grass on the rooftops.” See the preceding note.

[37:27]  ³⁰ tc The Hebrew text has “scorched before the standing grain” (perhaps meaning “before it reaches maturity”), but it is preferable to emend קָמָה (qamah, “standing grain”) to קָדִים (qadim, “east wind”) with the support of 1Q Isa^a; cf. J. N. Oswalt, Isaiah (NICOT), 1:657, n. 8.

[4:9]  ³¹ tn Heb “you.” By metonymy the crops belonging to these people are meant. See the remainder of this verse, which describes the agricultural devastation caused by locusts.

[4:9]  ³² tn The Hiphil infinitive construct is taken adverbially (“kept”) and connected to the activity of the locusts (NJPS). It also could be taken with the preceding sentence and related to the Lord’s interventions (“I kept destroying,” cf. NEB, NJB, NIV, NRSV), or it could be understood substantivally in construct with the following nouns (“Locusts devoured your many orchards,” cf. NASB; cf. also KJV, NKJV).

[4:9]  ³³ tn Or “gardens.”