Isaiah 58:1

The Lord Desires Genuine Devotion

58:1 “Shout loudly! Don’t be quiet!

Yell as loud as a trumpet!

Confront my people with their rebellious deeds; ¹ 

confront Jacob’s family with their sin! ² 

Jeremiah 1:17

1:17 “But you, Jeremiah, ³  get yourself ready! ⁴  Go and tell these people everything I instruct you to say. Do not be terrified of them, or I will give you good reason to be terrified of them. ⁵ 

Ezekiel 2:6-8

2:6 But you, son of man, do not fear them, and do not fear their words – even though briers ⁶  and thorns ⁷  surround you and you live among scorpions – do not fear their words and do not be terrified of the looks they give you, ⁸  for they are a rebellious house! 2:7 You must speak my words to them whether they listen or not, for they are rebellious. 2:8 As for you, son of man, listen to what I am saying to you: Do not rebel like that rebellious house! Open your mouth and eat what I am giving you.”

Ezekiel 3:9-11

3:9 I have made your forehead harder than flint – like diamond! ⁹  Do not fear them or be terrified of the looks they give you, ¹⁰  for they are a rebellious house.”

3:10 And he said to me, “Son of man, take all my words that I speak to you to heart and listen carefully. 3:11 Go to the exiles, to your fellow countrymen, ¹¹  and speak to them – say to them, ‘This is what the sovereign Lord says,’ whether they pay attention or not.”

Jonah 3:2

3:2 “Go immediately ¹²  to Nineveh, that large city, ¹³  and proclaim to ¹⁴  it the message that I tell you.”

Micah 3:8

3:8 But I ¹⁵  am full of the courage that the Lord’s Spirit gives,

and have a strong commitment to justice. ¹⁶ 

This enables me to confront Jacob with its rebellion,

and Israel with its sin. ¹⁷ 

Ephesians 6:19-20

6:19 Pray ¹⁸  for me also, that I may be given the message when I begin to speak ¹⁹  – that I may confidently make known ²⁰  the mystery of the gospel, 6:20 for which I am an ambassador in chains. Pray that I may be able to speak boldly as I ought to speak.

Ephesians 6:1

6:1 Children, ²¹  obey your parents in the Lord ²²  for this is right.

Ephesians 2:2

2:2 in which ²³  you formerly lived ²⁴  according to this world’s present path, ²⁵  according to the ruler of the kingdom ²⁶  of the air, the ruler of ²⁷  the spirit ²⁸  that is now energizing ²⁹  the sons of disobedience, ³⁰ 

[58:1]  ¹ tn Heb “declare to my people their rebellion.”

[58:1]  ² tn Heb “and to the house of Jacob their sin.” The verb “declare” is understood by ellipsis (note the preceding line).

[1:17]  ³ tn The name “Jeremiah” is not in the text. The use of the personal pronoun followed by the proper name is an attempt to reflect the correlative emphasis between Jeremiah’s responsibility noted here and the Lord’s promise noted in the next verse. The emphasis in the Hebrew text is marked by the presence of the subject pronouns at the beginning of each of the two verses.

[1:17]  ⁴ tn Heb “gird up your loins.” For the literal use of this idiom to refer to preparation for action see 2 Kgs 4:29; 9:1. For the idiomatic use to refer to spiritual and emotional preparation as here, see Job 38:3, 40:7, and 1 Pet 1:13 in the NT.

[1:17]  ⁵ tn Heb “I will make you terrified in front of them.” There is a play on words here involving two different forms of the same Hebrew verb and two different but related prepositional phrases, “from before/of,” a preposition introducing the object of a verb of fearing, and “before, in front of,” a preposition introducing a spatial location.

[2:6]  ⁶ tn The Hebrew term occurs only here in the OT.

[2:6]  ⁷ tn The Hebrew term is found elsewhere in the OT only in Ezek 28:24.

[2:6]  ⁸ tn Heb “of their faces.”

[3:9]  ⁹ tn The Hebrew term translated “diamond” is parallel to “iron” in Jer 17:1. The Hebrew uses two terms which are both translated at times as “flint,” but here one is clearly harder than the other. The translation “diamond” attempts to reflect this distinction in English.

[3:9]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “of their faces.”

[3:11]  ¹¹ tn Heb “to the sons of your people.”

[3:2]  ¹² sn The commands of 1:2 are repeated here. See the note there on the combination of “arise” and “go.”

[3:2]  ¹³ tn Heb “Nineveh, the great city.”

[3:2]  ¹⁴ tn The verb קָרָא (qara’, “proclaim”) is repeated from 1:2 but with a significant variation. The phrase in 1:2 was the adversative קְרָא עָל (qÿra’ ’al, “proclaim against”), which often designates an announcement of threatened judgment (1 Kgs 13:4, 32; Jer 49:29; Lam 1:15). However, here the phrase is the more positive קְרָא אֶל (qÿra’ ’el, “proclaim to”) which often designates an oracle of deliverance or a call to repentance, with an accompanying offer of deliverance that is either explicit or implied (Deut 20:10; Isa 40:2; Zech 1:4; HALOT 1129 s.v. קרא 8; BDB 895 s.v. קָרָא 3.a). This shift from the adversative preposition עַל (“against”) to the more positive preposition אֶל (“to”) might signal a shift in God’s intentions or perhaps it simply makes his original intention more clear. While God threatened to judge Nineveh, he was very willing to relent and forgive when the people repented from their sins (3:8-10). Jonah later complains that he knew that God was likely to relent from the threatened judgment all along (4:2).

[3:8]  ¹⁵ sn The prophet Micah speaks here and contrasts himself with the mercenaries just denounced by the Lord in the preceding verses.

[3:8]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “am full of power, the Spirit of the Lord, and justice and strength.” The appositional phrase “the Spirit of the Lord” explains the source of the prophet’s power. The phrase “justice and strength” is understood here as a hendiadys, referring to the prophet’s strong sense of justice.

[3:8]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “to declare to Jacob his rebellion and to Israel his sin.” The words “this enables me” are supplied in the translation for clarification.

[6:19]  ¹⁸ tn To avoid a lengthy, convoluted sentence in English, the Greek sentence was broken up at this point and the verb “pray” was inserted in the English translation to pick up the participle προσευχόμενοι (proseuxomenoi, “praying”) in v. 18.

[6:19]  ¹⁹ tn Grk “that a word may be given to me in the opening of my mouth.” Here “word” (λόγος, logo") is used in the sense of “message.”

[6:19]  ²⁰ tn The infinitive γνωρίσαι (gnwrisai, “to make known”) is functioning epexegetically to further explain what the author means by the preceding phrase “that I may be given the message when I begin to speak.”

[6:1]  ²¹ tn The use of the article τά (ta) with τέκνα (tekna) functions in a generic way to distinguish this group from husbands, wives, fathers and slaves and is left, therefore, untranslated. The generic article is used with γύναῖκες (gunaikes) in 5:22, ἄνδρες (andres) in 5:25, δοῦλοι (douloi) in 6:5, and κύριοι (kurioi) in 6:9.

[6:1]  ²² tc B D* F G as well as a few versional and patristic representatives lack “in the Lord” (ἐν κυρίῳ, en kuriw), while the phrase is well represented in Ì⁴⁶ א A D¹ I^vid Ψ 0278 0285 33 1739 1881 Ï sy co. Scribes may have thought that the phrase could be regarded a qualifier on the kind of parents a child should obey (viz., only Christian parents), and would thus be tempted to delete the phrase to counter such an interpretation. It is unlikely that the phrase would have been added, since the form used to express such sentiment in this Haustafel is ὡς τῷ κυρίῳ/Χριστῷ (Jw" tw kuriw/Cristw, “as to the Lord/Christ”; see 5:22; 6:5). Even though the witnesses for the omission are impressive, it is more likely that the phrase was deleted than added by scribal activity.

[2:2]  ²³ sn The relative pronoun which is feminine as is sins, indicating that sins is the antecedent.

[2:2]  ²⁴ tn Grk “walked.”

[2:2]  ²⁵ tn Or possibly “Aeon.”

[2:2]  ²⁶ tn Grk “domain, [place of] authority.”

[2:2]  ²⁷ tn Grk “of” (but see the note on the word “spirit” later in this verse).

[2:2]  ²⁸ 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]  ²⁹ tn Grk “working in.”

[2:2]  ³⁰ 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.