Isaiah 58:9

58:9 Then you will call out, and the Lord will respond;

you will cry out, and he will reply, ‘Here I am.’

You must ¹  remove the burdensome yoke from among you

and stop pointing fingers and speaking sinfully.

Isaiah 65:24

65:24 Before they even call out, ²  I will respond;

while they are still speaking, I will hear.

Psalms 50:15

50:15 Pray to me when you are in trouble! ³ 

I will deliver you, and you will honor me!” ⁴ 

Jeremiah 29:11-13

29:11 For I know what I have planned for you,’ says the Lord. ⁵  ‘I have plans to prosper you, not to harm you. I have plans to give you ⁶  a future filled with hope. ⁷  29:12 When you call out to me and come to me in prayer, ⁸  I will hear your prayers. ⁹  29:13 When you seek me in prayer and worship, you will find me available to you. If you seek me with all your heart and soul, ¹⁰ 

Jeremiah 33:3

33:3 ‘Call on me in prayer and I will answer you. I will show you great and mysterious ¹¹  things which you still do not know about.’

Ezekiel 36:37

36:37 “This is what the sovereign Lord says: I will allow the house of Israel to ask me to do this for them: ¹²  I will multiply their people like sheep. ¹³ 

Matthew 7:7-11

Ask, Seek, Knock

7:7 “Ask ¹⁴  and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door ¹⁵  will be opened for you. 7:8 For everyone who asks ¹⁶  receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened. 7:9 Is ¹⁷  there anyone among you who, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? 7:10 Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? ¹⁸  7:11 If you then, although you are evil, ¹⁹  know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts ²⁰  to those who ask him!

Ephesians 3:20

3:20 Now to him who by the power that is working within us ²¹  is able to do far beyond ²²  all that we ask or think,

Ephesians 3:1

Paul's Relationship to the Divine Mystery

3:1 For this reason I, Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus ²³  for the sake of you Gentiles –

Ephesians 5:14-15

5:14 For everything made evident is light, and for this reason it says: ²⁴ 

“Awake, ²⁵  O sleeper! ²⁶ 

Rise from the dead,

and Christ will shine on you!” ²⁷ 

Live Wisely

5:15 Therefore be very careful how you live – not as unwise but as wise,

[58:9]  ¹ tn Heb “if you.” In the Hebrew text vv. 9b-10 are one long conditional sentence. The protasis (“if” clauses appear in vv. 9b-10a), with the apodosis (“then” clause) appearing in v. 10b.

[65:24]  ² tn The verb that introduces this verse serves as a discourse particle and is untranslated; see note on “in the future” in 2:2.

[50:15]  ³ tn Heb “call [to] me in a day of trouble.”

[50:15]  ⁴ sn In vv. 7-15 the Lord makes it clear that he was not rebuking Israel because they had failed to offer sacrifices (v. 8a). On the contrary, they had been faithful in doing so (v. 8b). However, their understanding of the essence of their relationship with God was confused. Apparently they believed that he needed/desired such sacrifices and that offering them would ensure their prosperity. But the Lord owns all the animals of the world and did not need Israel’s meager sacrifices (vv. 9-13). Other aspects of the relationship were more important to the Lord. He desired Israel to be thankful for his blessings (v. 14a), to demonstrate gratitude for his intervention by repaying the vows they made to him (v. 14b), and to acknowledge their absolute dependence on him (v. 15a). Rather than viewing their sacrifices as somehow essential to God’s well-being, they needed to understand their dependence on him.

[29:11]  ⁵ tn Heb “Oracle of the Lord.”

[29:11]  ⁶ tn Heb “I know the plans that I am planning for you, oracle of the Lord, plans of well-being and not for harm to give to you….”

[29:11]  ⁷ tn Or “the future you hope for”; Heb “a future and a hope.” This is a good example of hendiadys where two formally coordinated nouns (adjectives, verbs) convey a single idea where one of the terms functions as a qualifier of the other. For this figure see E. W. Bullinger, Figures of Speech, 658-72. This example is discussed on p. 661.

[29:12]  ⁸ tn Heb “come and pray to me.” This is an example of verbal hendiadys where two verb formally joined by “and” convey a main concept with the second verb functioning as an adverbial qualifier.

[29:12]  ⁹ tn Or “You will call out to me and come to me in prayer and I will hear your prayers.” The verbs are vav consecutive perfects and can be taken either as unconditional futures or as contingent futures. See GKC 337 §112.kk and 494 §159.g and compare the usage in Gen 44:22 for the use of the vav consecutive perfects in contingent futures. The conditional clause in the middle of 29:13 and the deuteronomic theology reflected in both Deut 30:1-5 and 1 Kgs 8:46-48 suggest that the verbs are continent futures here. For the same demand for wholehearted seeking in these contexts which presuppose exile see especially Deut 30:2, 1 Kgs 8:48.

[29:13]  ¹⁰ tn Or “If you wholeheartedly seek me”; Heb “You will seek me and find [me] because you will seek me with all your heart.” The translation attempts to reflect the theological nuances of “seeking” and “finding” and the psychological significance of “heart” which refers more to intellectual and volitional concerns in the OT than to emotional ones.

[33:3]  ¹¹ tn This passive participle or adjective is normally used to describe cities or walls as “fortified” or “inaccessible.” All the lexicons, however, agree in seeing it used here metaphorically of “secret” or “mysterious” things, things that Jeremiah could not know apart from the Lord’s revelation. G. L. Keown, P. J. Scalise, and T. G. Smothers (Jeremiah 26-52 [WBC], 170) make the interesting observation that the word is used here in a context in which the fortifications of Jerusalem are about to fall to the Babylonians; the fortified things in God’s secret counsel fall through answer to prayer.

[36:37]  ¹² tn The Niphal verb may have a tolerative function here, “Again (for) this I will allow myself to be sought by the house of Israel to act for them.” Or it may be reflexive: “I will reveal myself to the house of Israel by doing this also.”

[36:37]  ¹³ sn Heb “I will multiply them like sheep, human(s).”

[7:7]  ¹⁴ sn The three present imperatives in this verse (Ask…seek…knock) are probably intended to call for a repeated or continual approach before God.

[7:7]  ¹⁵ tn Grk “it”; the referent (a door) is implied by the context and has been specified in the translation here and in v. 8 for clarity.

[7:8]  ¹⁶ sn The actions of asking, seeking, and knocking are repeated here from v. 7 with the encouragement that God does respond.

[7:9]  ¹⁷ tn Grk “Or is there.”

[7:10]  ¹⁸ sn The two questions of vv. 9-10 expect the answer, “No parent would do this!”

[7:11]  ¹⁹ tn The participle ὄντες (ontes) has been translated concessively.

[7:11]  ²⁰ sn The provision of the good gifts is probably a reference to the wisdom and guidance supplied in response to repeated requests. The teaching as a whole stresses not that we get everything we want, but that God gives the good that we need.

[3:20]  ²¹ sn On the power that is working within us see 1:19-20.

[3:20]  ²² tn Or “infinitely beyond,” “far more abundantly than.”

[3:1]  ²³ tc Several early and important witnesses, chiefly of the Western text (א* D* F G [365]), lack ᾿Ιησοῦ (Ihsou, “Jesus”) here, while most Alexandrian and Byzantine mss (Ì⁴⁶ א¹ A B [C] D¹ Ψ 33 1739 [1881] Ï lat sy bo) have the word. However, because of the Western text’s proclivities to add or delete to the text, seemingly at whim, serious doubts should be attached to the shorter reading. It is strengthened, however, by א’s support. Nevertheless, since both א and D were corrected with the addition of ᾿Ιησοῦ, their testimony might be questioned. Further, in uncial script the nomina sacra here could have led to missing a word by way of homoioteleuton (cMuiMu). At the same time, in light of the rarity of scribal omission of nomina sacra (see TCGNT 582, n. 1), a decision for inclusion of the word here must be tentative. NA²⁷ rightly places ᾿Ιησοῦ in brackets.

[5:14]  ²⁴ sn The following passage has been typeset as poetry because many scholars regard this passage as poetic or hymnic. These terms are used broadly to refer to the genre of writing, not to the content. There are two broad criteria for determining if a passage is poetic or hymnic: “(a) stylistic: a certain rhythmical lilt when the passages are read aloud, the presence of parallelismus membrorum (i.e., an arrangement into couplets), the semblance of some metre, and the presence of rhetorical devices such as alliteration, chiasmus, and antithesis; and (b) linguistic: an unusual vocabulary, particularly the presence of theological terms, which is different from the surrounding context” (P. T. O’Brien, Philippians [NIGTC], 188-89). Classifying a passage as hymnic or poetic is important because understanding this genre can provide keys to interpretation. However, not all scholars agree that the above criteria are present in this passage, so the decision to typeset it as poetry should be viewed as a tentative decision about its genre.

[5:14]  ²⁵ tn Grk “Rise up.”

[5:14]  ²⁶ tn The articular nominative participle ὁ καθεύδων (Jo kaqeudwn) is probably functioning as a nominative for vocative. Thus, it has been translated as “O sleeper.”

[5:14]  ²⁷ sn A composite quotation, possibly from Isa 26:19, 51:17, 52:1, and 60:1.