Isaiah 1:24-25

1:24 Therefore, the sovereign Lord who commands armies, ¹ 

the powerful ruler of Israel, ²  says this:

“Ah, I will seek vengeance ³  against my adversaries,

I will take revenge against my enemies. ⁴ 

1:25 I will attack you; ⁵ 

I will purify your metal with flux. ⁶ 

I will remove all your slag. ⁷ 

Isaiah 4:4

4:4 At that time ⁸  the sovereign master ⁹  will wash the excrement ¹⁰  from Zion’s women,

he will rinse the bloodstains from Jerusalem’s midst, ¹¹ 

as he comes to judge

and to bring devastation. ¹² 

Isaiah 48:10

48:10 Look, I have refined you, but not as silver;

I have purified you ¹³  in the furnace of misery.

Psalms 119:67

119:67 Before I was afflicted I used to stray off, ¹⁴ 

but now I keep your instructions. ¹⁵ 

Psalms 119:71

119:71 It was good for me to suffer,

so that I might learn your statutes.

Proverbs 20:30

20:30 Beatings and wounds cleanse away ¹⁶  evil,

and floggings cleanse ¹⁷  the innermost being. ¹⁸ 

Ezekiel 20:38

20:38 I will eliminate from among you the rebels and those who revolt ¹⁹  against me. I will bring them out from the land where they have been residing, but they will not come to the land of Israel. Then you will know that I am the Lord.

Ezekiel 24:13

24:13 You mix uncleanness with obscene conduct. ²⁰ 

I tried to cleanse you, ²¹  but you are not clean.

You will not be cleansed from your uncleanness ²² 

until I have exhausted my anger on you.

Daniel 11:35

11:35 Even some of the wise will stumble, resulting in their refinement, purification, and cleansing until the time of the end, for it is still for the appointed time.

Malachi 3:2-3

3:2 Who can endure the day of his coming? Who can keep standing when he appears? For he will be like a refiner’s fire, ²³  like a launderer’s soap. 3:3 He will act like a refiner and purifier of silver and will cleanse the Levites and refine them like gold and silver. Then they will offer the Lord a proper offering.

Malachi 3:1

3:1 “I am about to send my messenger, ²⁴  who will clear the way before me. Indeed, the Lord ²⁵  you are seeking will suddenly come to his temple, and the messenger ²⁶  of the covenant, whom you long for, is certainly coming,” says the Lord who rules over all.

Colossians 1:1

Salutation

1:1 From Paul, ²⁷  an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and Timothy our brother,

Hebrews 12:6

12:6 “For the Lord disciplines the one he loves and chastises every son he accepts.” ²⁸ 

Hebrews 12:9-11

12:9 Besides, we have experienced discipline from ²⁹  our earthly fathers ³⁰  and we respected them; shall we not submit ourselves all the more to the Father of spirits and receive life? ³¹  12:10 For they disciplined us for a little while as seemed good to them, but he does so for our benefit, that we may share his holiness. 12:11 Now all discipline seems painful at the time, not joyful. ³²  But later it produces the fruit of peace and righteousness ³³  for those trained by it.

[1:24]  ¹ tn Heb “the master, the Lord who commands armies [traditionally, the Lord of hosts].” On the title “the Lord who commands armies,” see the note at v. 9.

[1:24]  ² tn Heb “the powerful [one] of Israel.”

[1:24]  ³ tn Heb “console myself” (i.e., by getting revenge); NRSV “pour out my wrath on.”

[1:24]  ⁴ sn The Lord here identifies with the oppressed and comes as their defender and vindicator.

[1:25]  ⁵ tn Heb “turn my hand against you.” The second person pronouns in vv. 25-26 are feminine singular. Personified Jerusalem is addressed. The idiom “turn the hand against” has the nuance of “strike with the hand, attack,” in Ps 81:15 HT (81:14 ET); Ezek 38:12; Am 1:8; Zech 13:7. In Jer 6:9 it is used of gleaning grapes.

[1:25]  ⁶ tn Heb “I will purify your dross as [with] flux.” “Flux” refers here to minerals added to the metals in a furnace to prevent oxides from forming. For this interpretation of II בֹּר (bor), see HALOT 153 s.v. II בֹּר and 750 s.v. סִיג.

[1:25]  ⁷ sn The metaphor comes from metallurgy; slag is the substance left over after the metallic ore has been refined.

[4:4]  ⁸ tn Heb “when” (so KJV, NAB, NASB); CEV “after”; NRSV “once.”

[4:4]  ⁹ tn The Hebrew term translated “sovereign master” here is אֲדֹנָי (’adonai).

[4:4]  ¹⁰ tn The word refers elsewhere to vomit (Isa 28:8) and fecal material (Isa 36:12). Many English versions render this somewhat euphemistically as “filth” (e.g., NAB, NIV, NRSV). Ironically in God’s sight the beautiful jewelry described earlier is nothing but vomit and feces, for it symbolizes the moral decay of the city’s residents (cf. NLT “moral filth”).

[4:4]  ¹¹ sn See 1:21 for a related concept.

[4:4]  ¹² tn Heb “by a spirit of judgment and by a spirit of burning.” The precise meaning of the second half of the verse is uncertain. רוּחַ (ruakh) can be understood as “wind” in which case the passage pictures the Lord using a destructive wind as an instrument of judgment. However, this would create a mixed metaphor, for the first half of the verse uses the imagery of washing and rinsing to depict judgment. Perhaps the image would be that of a windstorm accompanied by heavy rain. רוּחַ can also mean “spirit,” in which case the verse may be referring to the Lord’s Spirit or, more likely, to a disposition that the Lord brings to the task of judgment. It is also uncertain if בָּעַר (ba’ar) here means “burning” or “sweeping away, devastating.”

[48:10]  ¹³ tc The Hebrew text has בְּחַרְתִּיךָ (bÿkhartikha, “I have chosen you”), but the Qumran scroll 1QIsa^a reads correctly בחנתיכה (“I have tested you”). The metallurgical background of the imagery suggests that purification through testing is the idea.

[119:67]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “before I suffered, I was straying off.”

[119:67]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “your word.”

[20:30]  ¹⁶ tc The verb מָרַק (maraq) means “to polish; to scour”; in the Hiphil it means “to cleanse away,” but it is only attested here, and that in the Kethib reading of תַּמְרִיק (tamriq). The Qere has תַּמְרוּק (tamruq, “are a means of cleansing”). The LXX has “blows and contusions fall on evil men, and stripes penetrate their inner beings”; the Latin has “the bruise of a wound cleanses away evil things.” C. H. Toy suggests emending the text to read “stripes cleanse the body, and blows the inward parts” or “cosmetics purify the body, and blows the soul” (Proverbs [ICC], 397). Cf. CEV “can knock all of the evil out of you.”

[20:30]  ¹⁷ tn The term “cleanse” does not appear in this line but is supplied in the translation in the light of the parallelism.

[20:30]  ¹⁸ sn Physical punishment may prove spiritually valuable. Other proverbs say that some people will never learn from this kind of punishment, but in general this may be the only thing that works for some cases.

[20:38]  ¹⁹ tn See the note at 2:3.

[24:13]  ²⁰ tn Heb “in your uncleanness (is) obscene conduct.”

[24:13]  ²¹ tn Heb “because I cleansed you.” In this context (see especially the very next statement), the statement must refer to divine intention and purpose. Despite God’s efforts to cleanse his people, they resisted him and remained morally impure.

[24:13]  ²² tn The Hebrew text adds the word “again.”

[3:2]  ²³ sn The refiner’s fire was used to purify metal and refine it by melting it and allowing the dross, which floated to the top, to be scooped off.

[3:1]  ²⁴ tn In Hebrew the phrase “my messenger” is מַלְאָכִי (mal’akhi), the same form as the prophet’s name (see note on the name “Malachi” in 1:1). However, here the messenger appears to be an eschatological figure who is about to appear, as the following context suggests. According to 4:5, this messenger is “Elijah the prophet,” whom the NT identifies as John the Baptist (Matt 11:10; Mark 1:2) because he came in the “spirit and power” of Elijah (Matt 11:14; 17:11-12; Lk 1:17).

[3:1]  ²⁵ tn Here the Hebrew term הָאָדוֹן (ha’adon) is used, not יְהוָה (yÿhvah, typically rendered Lord). Thus the focus is not on the Lord as the covenant God, but on his role as master.

[3:1]  ²⁶ sn This messenger of the covenant may be equated with my messenger (that is, Elijah) mentioned earlier in the verse, or with the Lord himself. In either case the messenger functions as an enforcer of the covenant. Note the following verses, which depict purifying judgment on a people that has violated the Lord’s covenant.

[1:1]  ²⁷ tn Grk “Paul.” The word “from” is not in the Greek text, but has been supplied to indicate the sender of the letter.

[12:6]  ²⁸ sn A quotation from Prov 3:11-12.

[12:9]  ²⁹ tn Grk “we had our earthly fathers as discipliners.”

[12:9]  ³⁰ tn Grk “the fathers of our flesh.” In Hebrews, “flesh” is a characteristic way of speaking about outward, physical, earthly life (cf. Heb 5:7; 9:10, 13), as opposed to the inward or spiritual dimensions of life.

[12:9]  ³¹ tn Grk “and live.”

[12:11]  ³² tn Grk “all discipline at the time does not seem to be of joy, but of sorrow.”

[12:11]  ³³ tn Grk “the peaceful fruit of righteousness.”