Isaiah 1:4

1:4 ¹ The sinful nation is as good as dead, ² 

the people weighed down by evil deeds.

They are offspring who do wrong,

children ³  who do wicked things.

They have abandoned the Lord,

and rejected the Holy One of Israel. ⁴ 

They are alienated from him. ⁵ 

Isaiah 30:1

Egypt Will Prove Unreliable

30:1 “The rebellious ⁶  children are as good as dead,” ⁷  says the Lord,

“those who make plans without consulting me, ⁸ 

who form alliances without consulting my Spirit, ⁹ 

and thereby compound their sin. ¹⁰ 

Isaiah 30:9

30:9 For these are rebellious people –

they are lying children,

children unwilling to obey the Lord’s law. ¹¹ 

Ezekiel 2:4

2:4 The people ¹²  to whom I am sending you are obstinate and hard-hearted, ¹³  and you must say to them, ‘This is what the sovereign Lord says.’ ¹⁴ 

Hosea 10:9

Failure to Learn from the Sin and Judgment of Gibeah

10:9 O Israel, you have sinned since the time ¹⁵  of Gibeah,

and there you have remained.

Did not war overtake the evildoers in Gibeah?

Matthew 13:38

13:38 The field is the world and the good seed are the people ¹⁶  of the kingdom. The weeds are the people ¹⁷  of the evil one,

Ephesians 2:2-3

2:2 in which ¹⁸  you formerly lived ¹⁹  according to this world’s present path, ²⁰  according to the ruler of the kingdom ²¹  of the air, the ruler of ²²  the spirit ²³  that is now energizing ²⁴  the sons of disobedience, ²⁵  2:3 among whom ²⁶  all of us ²⁷  also ²⁸  formerly lived out our lives in the cravings of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath ²⁹  even as the rest… ³⁰ 

Ephesians 5:6

Live in the Light

5:6 Let nobody deceive you with empty words, for because of these things God’s wrath comes on the sons of disobedience. ³¹ 

Colossians 3:6

3:6 Because of these things the wrath of God is coming on the sons of disobedience. ³² 

[1:4]  ¹ sn Having summoned the witnesses and announced the Lord’s accusation against Israel, Isaiah mourns the nation’s impending doom. The third person references to the Lord in the second half of the verse suggest that the quotation from the Lord (cf. vv. 2-3) has concluded.

[1:4]  ² tn Heb “Woe [to the] sinful nation.” The Hebrew term הוֹי, (hoy, “woe, ah”) was used in funeral laments (see 1 Kgs 13:30; Jer 22:18; 34:5) and carries the connotation of death. In highly dramatic fashion the prophet acts out Israel’s funeral in advance, emphasizing that their demise is inevitable if they do not repent soon.

[1:4]  ³ tn Or “sons” (NASB). The prophet contrasts four terms of privilege – nation, people, offspring, children – with four terms that depict Israel’s sinful condition in Isaiah’s day – sinful, evil, wrong, wicked (see J. A. Motyer, The Prophecy of Isaiah, 43).

[1:4]  ⁴ sn Holy One of Israel is one of Isaiah’s favorite divine titles for God. It pictures the Lord as the sovereign king who rules over his covenant people and exercises moral authority over them.

[1:4]  ⁵ tn Heb “they are estranged backward.” The LXX omits this statement, which presents syntactical problems and seems to be outside the synonymous parallelistic structure of the verse.

[30:1]  ⁶ tn Or “stubborn” (NCV); cf. NIV “obstinate.”

[30:1]  ⁷ tn Heb “Woe [to] rebellious children.”

[30:1]  ⁸ tn Heb “making a plan, but not from me.”

[30:1]  ⁹ tn Heb “and pouring out a libation, but not [from] my spirit.” This translation assumes that the verb נָסַךְ (nasakh) means “pour out,” and that the cognate noun מַסֵּכָה (massekhah) means “libation.” In this case “pouring out a libation” alludes to a ceremony that formally ratifies an alliance. Another option is to understand the verb נָסַךְ as a homonym meaning “weave,” and the cognate noun מַסֵּכָה as a homonym meaning “covering.” In this case forming an alliance is likened to weaving a garment.

[30:1]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “consequently adding sin to sin.”

[30:9]  ¹¹ tn Or perhaps, “instruction” (so NASB, NIV, NRSV); NCV, TEV “teachings.”

[2:4]  ¹² tn Heb “sons.” The word choice may reflect treaty idiom, where the relationship between an overlord and his subjects can be described as that of father and son.

[2:4]  ¹³ tc Heb “stern of face and hard of heart.” The phrases “stern of face” and “hard of heart” are lacking in the LXX.

[2:4]  ¹⁴ tn The phrase “thus says [the Lord]” occurs 129 times in Ezekiel; the announcement is identical to the way messengers often introduced their messages (Gen 32:5; 45:9; Exod 5:10; Num 20:14; Judg 11:15).

[10:9]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “days” (so KJV, NAB, NIV, NRSV).

[13:38]  ¹⁶ tn Grk “the sons of the kingdom.” This idiom refers to people who should properly be, or were traditionally regarded as, a part of God’s kingdom. L&N 11.13 translates the phrase: “people of God’s kingdom, God’s people.”

[13:38]  ¹⁷ tn Grk “the sons of the evil one.” See the preceding note on the phrase “people of the kingdom” earlier in this verse, which is the opposite of this phrase. See also L&N 9.4; 11.13; 11.14.

[2:2]  ¹⁸ sn The relative pronoun which is feminine as is sins, indicating that sins is the antecedent.

[2:2]  ¹⁹ tn Grk “walked.”

[2:2]  ²⁰ tn Or possibly “Aeon.”

[2:2]  ²¹ tn Grk “domain, [place of] authority.”

[2:2]  ²² tn Grk “of” (but see the note on the word “spirit” later in this verse).

[2:2]  ²³ sn The ruler of the kingdom of the air is also the ruler of the spirit that is now energizing the sons of disobedience. Although several translations regard the ruler to be the same as the spirit, this is unlikely since the cases in Greek are different (ruler is accusative and spirit is genitive). To get around this, some have suggested that the genitive for spirit is a genitive of apposition. However, the semantics of the genitive of apposition are against such an interpretation (cf. ExSyn 100).

[2:2]  ²⁴ tn Grk “working in.”

[2:2]  ²⁵ sn Sons of disobedience is a Semitic idiom that means “people characterized by disobedience.” However, it also contains a subtle allusion to vv. 4-10: Some of those sons of disobedience have become sons of God.

[2:3]  ²⁶ sn Among whom. The relative pronoun phrase that begins v. 3 is identical, except for gender, to the one that begins v. 2 (ἐν αἵς [en Jais], ἐν οἵς [en Jois]). By the structure, the author is building an argument for our hopeless condition: We lived in sin and we lived among sinful people. Our doom looked to be sealed as well in v. 2: Both the external environment (kingdom of the air) and our internal motivation and attitude (the spirit that is now energizing) were under the devil’s thumb (cf. 2 Cor 4:4).

[2:3]  ²⁷ tn Grk “we all.”

[2:3]  ²⁸ tn Or “even.”

[2:3]  ²⁹ sn Children of wrath is a Semitic idiom which may mean either “people characterized by wrath” or “people destined for wrath.”

[2:3]  ³⁰ sn Eph 2:1-3. The translation of vv. 1-3 is very literal, even to the point of retaining the awkward syntax of the original. See note on the word dead in 2:1.

[5:6]  ³¹ sn The expression sons of disobedience is a Semitic idiom that means “people characterized by disobedience.” In this context it refers to “all those who are disobedient.” Cf. Eph 2:2-3.

[3:6]  ³² tc The words ἐπὶ τοὺς υἱοὺς τῆς ἀπειθείας (epi tou" Juiou" th" apeiqeia", “on the sons of disobedience”) are lacking in Ì⁴⁶ B b sa, but are found in א A C D F G H I Ψ 075 0278 33 1739 1881 Ï lat sy bo. The words are omitted by several English translations (NASB, NIV, ESV, TNIV). This textual problem is quite difficult to resolve. On the one hand, the parallel account in Eph 5:6 has these words, thus providing scribes a motive for adding them here. On the other hand, the reading without the words may be too hard: The ἐν οἷς (en |oi") of v. 7 seems to have no antecedent without υἱούς already in the text, although it could possibly be construed as neuter referring to the vice list in v. 5. Further, although the witness of B is especially important, there are other places in which B and Ì⁴⁶ share errant readings of omission. Nevertheless, the strength of the internal evidence against the longer reading is at least sufficient to cause doubt here. The decision to retain the words in the text is less than certain.