Isaiah 38:1-3

The Lord Hears Hezekiah’s Prayer

38:1 In those days Hezekiah was stricken with a terminal illness. ¹  The prophet Isaiah son of Amoz visited him and told him, “This is what the Lord says, ‘Give instructions to your household, for you are about to die; you will not get well.’” 38:2 Hezekiah turned his face to the wall and prayed to the Lord, 38:3 “Please, Lord. Remember how I have served you ²  faithfully and with wholehearted devotion, ³  and how I have carried out your will.” ⁴  Then Hezekiah wept bitterly. ⁵ 

Isaiah 38:5

38:5 “Go and tell Hezekiah: ‘This is what the Lord God of your ancestor ⁶  David says: “I have heard your prayer; I have seen your tears. Look, I will add fifteen years to your life,

Joel 1:14

1:14 Announce a holy fast; ⁷ 

proclaim a sacred assembly.

Gather the elders and ⁸  all the inhabitants of the land

to the temple of the Lord your God,

and cry out to the Lord.

Joel 2:14

2:14 Who knows?

Perhaps he will be compassionate and grant a reprieve, ⁹ 

and leave blessing in his wake ¹⁰  –

a meal offering and a drink offering for you to offer to the Lord your God! ¹¹ 

Amos 5:15

5:15 Hate what is wrong, love what is right!

Promote ¹²  justice at the city gate! ¹³ 

Maybe the Lord, the God who commands armies, will have mercy on ¹⁴  those who are left from ¹⁵  Joseph. ¹⁶ 

Jonah 1:6

1:6 The ship’s captain approached him and said, “What are you doing asleep? ¹⁷  Get up! Cry out ¹⁸  to your god! Perhaps your god ¹⁹  might take notice of us ²⁰  so that we might not die!”

Jonah 3:9-10

3:9 Who knows? ²¹  Perhaps God might be willing to change his mind and relent ²²  and turn from his fierce anger ²³  so that we might not die.” ²⁴  3:10 When God saw their actions – they turned ²⁵  from their evil way of living! ²⁶  – God relented concerning the judgment ²⁷  he had threatened them with ²⁸  and he did not destroy them. ²⁹ 

James 4:9-10

4:9 Grieve, mourn, ³⁰  and weep. Turn your laughter ³¹  into mourning and your joy into despair. 4:10 Humble yourselves before the Lord and he will exalt you.

[38:1]  ¹ tn Heb “was sick to the point of dying”; NRSV “became sick and was at the point of death.”

[38:3]  ² tn Heb “walked before you.” For a helpful discussion of the background and meaning of this Hebrew idiom, see M. Cogan and H. Tadmor, II Kings (AB), 254.

[38:3]  ³ tn Heb “and with a complete heart”; KJV, ASV “with a perfect heart.”

[38:3]  ⁴ tn Heb “and that which is good in your eyes I have done.”

[38:3]  ⁵ tn Heb “wept with great weeping”; NCV “cried loudly”; TEV “began to cry bitterly.”

[38:5]  ⁶ tn Heb “father” (so KJV, NAB, NIV).

[1:14]  ⁷ tn Heb “consecrate a fast” (so NASB).

[1:14]  ⁸ tc The conjunction “and” does not appear in MT or LXX, but does appear in some Qumran texts (4QXII^c and 4QXII^g).

[2:14]  ⁹ tn Heb “turn” or “turn back.”

[2:14]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “leave a blessing behind him.”

[2:14]  ¹¹ tn The phrase “for you to offer” does not appear in the Hebrew, but is supplied in the translation for the sake of clarity.

[5:15]  ¹² tn Heb “set up, establish.” In the ancient Near East it was the responsibility especially of the king to establish justice. Here the prophet extends that demand to local leaders and to the nation as a whole (cf. 5:24).

[5:15]  ¹³ sn Legal disputes were resolved in the city gate (see the note in v. 12). This repetition of this phrase serves to highlight a deliberate contrast to the injustices cited in vv. 11-13.

[5:15]  ¹⁴ tn Or “will show favor to.”

[5:15]  ¹⁵ tn Or “the remnant of” (KJV, NAB, NASB, NIV, NRSV); CEV “what’s left of your people.”

[5:15]  ¹⁶ sn Joseph (= Ephraim and Manasseh), as the most prominent of the Israelite tribes, represents the entire northern kingdom.

[1:6]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “What to you sleeping!” The Niphal participle נִרְדָּם (nirdam) from רָדַם (radam, “to sleep”) functions here not as a vocative use of the noun (so KJV, NKJV, ASV: “O sleeper,” RSV: “you sleeper”) but as a verbal use to depict uninterrupted sleep up to this point. The expression מַה־לְּךָ (mah-lÿkha, “what to you?”) can express surprise (BDB 552 s.v. מָה 1.a; e.g., Job 9:12; 22:12; Eccl 8:4; Isa 45:9,10) or indignation and contempt (BDB 552 s.v. מָה 1.c; e.g., 1 Kgs 19:9, 13). Accordingly, the captain is either surprised that Jonah is able to sleep so soundly through the storm (NIV “How can you sleep?”; JPS, NJPS “How can you be sleeping so soundly?”; NEB, REB “What, sound asleep?”) or indignant that Jonah would sleep in a life-threatening situation when he should be praying (CEV “How can you sleep at a time like this?”; NAB “What are you doing [+ sound NRSV] asleep?”; NJB: “What do you mean by sleeping?”).

[1:6]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “cry out” or “call upon.” The verb קָרָא (qara’, “to call out, to cry out”) + the preposition אֶל (’el, “to”) often depicts a loud, audible cry of prayer to God for help in the midst of trouble: “to call on, to shout to” (HALOT 1129 s.v. קרא 9.b; BDB 895 s.v. קָרָא 2.a; e.g., Judg 15:18; 1 Sam 12:17, 18; 2 Sam 22:7; Hos 7:7; Pss 3:4 [5 HT]; 4:3 [4 HT]). Jonker notes: “The basic meaning of qr’ is to draw attention to oneself by the audible use of one’s voice in order to establish contact with someone else. The reaction of the called person is normally expressed by the verbs…‘answer’ and…‘hear’” (L. Jonker, NIDOTTE 3:971).

[1:6]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “the god.” The article on הָאֱלֹהִים (ha’elohim) denotes previous reference to אֱלֹהֶיךָ (’elohekha, “your god”; see IBHS 242-43 §13.5.1d). The captain refers here to the “god” just mentioned, that is, whatever god Jonah might pray to (“your god”).

[1:6]  ²⁰ tn Or “give thought to us.” The verb is found only here in the OT. Related nouns are in Job 12:5 and Ps 146:5. The captain hopes for some favorable attention from a god who might act on behalf of his endangered crewmen.

[3:9]  ²¹ sn The king expresses his uncertainty whether Jonah’s message constituted a conditional announcement or an unconditional decree. Jeremiah 18 emphasizes that God sometimes gives people an opportunity to repent when they hear an announcement of judgment. However, as Amos and Isaiah learned, if a people refused to repent over a period of time, the patience of God could be exhausted. The offer of repentance in a conditional announcement of judgment can be withdrawn and in its place an unconditional decree of judgment issued. In many cases it is difficult to determine on the front end whether or not a prophetic message of coming judgment is conditional or unconditional, thus explaining the king’s uncertainty.

[3:9]  ²² tn “he might turn and relent.” The two verbs יָשׁוּב וְנִחַם (yashub vÿnikham) may function independently (“turn and repent”) or form a verbal hendiadys (“be willing to turn”; see IBHS 540 §32.3b). The imperfect יָשׁוּב and the perfect with prefixed vav וְנִחַם form a future-time narrative sequence. Both verbs function in a modal sense, denoting possibility, as the introductory interrogative suggests (“Who knows…?”). When used in reference to past actions, שׁוּב (shub) can mean “to be sorry” or “to regret” that someone did something in the past, and when used in reference to future planned actions, it can mean “to change one’s mind” about doing something or “to relent” from sending judgment (BDB 997 s.v. שׁוּב 6). The verb נִחַם (nikham) can mean “to be sorry” about past actions (e.g., Gen 6:6, 7; 1 Sam 15:11, 35) and “to change one’s mind” about future actions (BDB 637 s.v. נחם 2). These two verbs are used together elsewhere in passages that consider the question of whether or not God will change his mind and relent from judgment he has threatened (e.g., Jer 4:28). The verbal root שׁוּב is used four times in vv. 8-10, twice of the Ninevites “repenting” from their moral evil and twice of God “relenting” from his threatened calamity. This repetition creates a wordplay that emphasizes the appropriateness of God’s response: if the people repent, God might relent.

[3:9]  ²³ tn Heb “from the burning of his nose/face.” See Exod 4:14; 22:24; 32:12; Num 25:4; 32:14; Deut 9:19.

[3:9]  ²⁴ tn The imperfect verb נֹאבֵד (no’ved, “we might not die”) functions in a modal sense, denoting possibility. The king’s hope parallels that of the ship’s captain in 1:6. See also Exod 32:7-14; 2 Sam 12:14-22; 1 Kgs 8:33-43; 21:17-29; Jer 18:6-8; Joel 2:11-15.

[3:10]  ²⁵ tn This clause is introduced by כִּי (ki, “that”) and functions as an epexegetical, explanatory clause.

[3:10]  ²⁶ tn Heb “from their evil way” (so KJV, ASV, NAB); NASB “wicked way.”

[3:10]  ²⁷ tn Heb “calamity” or “disaster.” The noun רָעָה (ra’ah, “calamity, disaster”) functions as a metonymy of result – the cause being the threatened judgment (e.g., Exod 32:12, 14; 2 Sam 24:16; Jer 18:8; 26:13, 19; 42:10; Joel 2:13; Jonah 4:2; HALOT 1263 s.v. רָעָה 6). The root רָעָה is repeated three times in vv. 8 and 10. Twice it refers to the Ninevites’ moral “evil” (vv. 8 and 10a) and here it refers to the “calamity” or “disaster” that the Lord had threatened (v. 10b). This repetition of the root forms a polysemantic wordplay that exploits this broad range of meanings of the noun. The wordplay emphasizes that God’s response was appropriate: because the Ninevites repented from their moral “evil” God relented from the “calamity” he had threatened.

[3:10]  ²⁸ tn Heb “the disaster that he had spoken to do to them.”

[3:10]  ²⁹ tn Heb “and he did not do it.” See notes on 3:8-9.

[4:9]  ³⁰ tn This term and the following one are preceded by καί (kai) in the Greek text, but contemporary English generally uses connectives only between the last two items in such a series.

[4:9]  ³¹ tn Grk “let your laughter be turned.”