Isaiah 49:15

49:15 Can a woman forget her baby who nurses at her breast? ¹ 

Can she withhold compassion from the child she has borne? ² 

Even if mothers ³  were to forget,

I could never forget you! ⁴ 

Isaiah 49:23

49:23 Kings will be your children’s ⁵  guardians;

their princesses will nurse your children. ⁶ 

With their faces to the ground they will bow down to you

and they will lick the dirt on ⁷  your feet.

Then you will recognize that I am the Lord;

those who wait patiently for me are not put to shame.

Galatians 4:19

4:19 My children – I am again undergoing birth pains until Christ is formed in you! ⁸ 

Galatians 4:1

4:1 Now I mean that the heir, as long as he is a minor, ⁹  is no different from a slave, though he is the owner ¹⁰  of everything.

Galatians 2:7

2:7 On the contrary, when they saw ¹¹  that I was entrusted with the gospel to the uncircumcised ¹²  just as Peter was to the circumcised ¹³ 

[49:15]  ¹ tn Heb “her suckling”; NASB “her nursing child.”

[49:15]  ² tn Heb “so as not to have compassion on the son of her womb?”

[49:15]  ³ tn Heb “these” (so ASV, NASB).

[49:15]  ⁴ sn The argument of v. 15 seems to develop as follows: The Lord has an innate attachment to Zion, just like a mother does for her infant child. But even if mothers were to suddenly abandon their children, the Lord would never forsake Zion. In other words, the Lord’s attachment to Zion is like a mother’s attachment to her infant child, but even stronger.

[49:23]  ⁵ tn Heb “your,” but Zion here stands by metonymy for her children (see v. 22b).

[49:23]  ⁶ tn Heb “you.” See the preceding note.

[49:23]  ⁷ tn Or “at your feet” (NAB, NIV); NLT “from your feet.”

[4:19]  ⁸ tn Grk “My children, for whom I am again undergoing birth pains until Christ is formed in you.” The relative clauses in English do not pick up the emotional force of Paul’s language here (note “tone of voice” in v. 20, indicating that he is passionately concerned for them); hence, the translation has been altered slightly to capture the connotative power of Paul’s plea.

[4:1]  ⁹ tn Grk “a small child.” The Greek term νήπιος (nhpios) refers to a young child, no longer a helpless infant but probably not more than three or four years old (L&N 9.43). The point in context, though, is that this child is too young to take any responsibility for the management of his assets.

[4:1]  ¹⁰ tn Grk “master” or “lord” (κύριος, kurios).

[2:7]  ¹¹ tn The participle ἰδόντες (idontes) has been taken temporally to retain the structure of the passage. Many modern translations, because of the length of the sentence here, translate this participle as a finite verb and break the Greek sentences into several English sentences (NIV, for example, begins new sentences at the beginning of both vv. 8 and 9).

[2:7]  ¹² tn Grk “to the uncircumcision,” that is, to the Gentiles.

[2:7]  ¹³ tn Grk “to the circumcision,” a collective reference to the Jewish people.