Isaiah 6:5

6:5 I said, “Too bad for me! I am destroyed, ¹  for my lips are contaminated by sin, ²  and I live among people whose lips are contaminated by sin. ³  My eyes have seen the king, the Lord who commands armies.” ⁴ 

Isaiah 53:6

53:6 All of us had wandered off like sheep;

each of us had strayed off on his own path,

but the Lord caused the sin of all of us to attack him. ⁵ 

Job 14:4

14:4 Who can make ⁶  a clean thing come from an unclean? ⁷ 

No one!

Job 15:14-16

15:14 What is man that he should be pure,

or one born of woman, that he should be righteous?

15:15 If God places no trust in his holy ones, ⁸ 

if even the heavens ⁹  are not pure in his eyes,

15:16 how much less man, who is abominable and corrupt, ¹⁰ 

who drinks in evil like water! ¹¹ 

Job 25:4

25:4 How then can a human being be righteous before God?

How can one born of a woman be pure? ¹² 

Job 40:4

40:4 “Indeed, I am completely unworthy ¹³  – how could I reply to you?

I put ¹⁴  my hand over my mouth to silence myself. ¹⁵ 

Job 42:5-6

42:5 I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear,

but now my eye has seen you. ¹⁶ 

42:6 Therefore I despise myself, ¹⁷ 

and I repent in dust and ashes!

Psalms 51:5

51:5 Look, I was guilty of sin from birth,

a sinner the moment my mother conceived me. ¹⁸ 

Romans 7:18

7:18 For I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my flesh. For I want to do the good, but I cannot do it. ¹⁹ 

Romans 7:24

7:24 Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?

Ephesians 2:1-2

New Life Individually

2:1 And although you were ²⁰  dead ²¹  in your transgressions and sins, 2:2 in which ²²  you formerly lived ²³  according to this world’s present path, ²⁴  according to the ruler of the kingdom ²⁵  of the air, the ruler of ²⁶  the spirit ²⁷  that is now energizing ²⁸  the sons of disobedience, ²⁹ 

Titus 3:3

3:3 For we too were once foolish, disobedient, misled, enslaved to various passions and desires, spending our lives in evil and envy, hateful and hating one another.

[6:5]  ¹ tn Isaiah uses the suffixed (perfect) form of the verb for rhetorical purposes. In this way his destruction is described as occurring or as already completed. Rather than understanding the verb as derived from דָּמַה (damah, “be destroyed”), some take it from a proposed homonymic root דמה, which would mean “be silent.” In this case, one might translate, “I must be silent.”

[6:5]  ² tn Heb “a man unclean of lips am I.” Isaiah is not qualified to praise the king. His lips (the instruments of praise) are “unclean” because he has been contaminated by sin.

[6:5]  ³ tn Heb “and among a nation unclean of lips I live.”

[6:5]  ⁴ tn Perhaps in this context, the title has a less militaristic connotation and pictures the Lord as the ruler of the heavenly assembly. See the note at 1:9.

[53:6]  ⁵ tn Elsewhere the Hiphil of פָגַע (paga’) means “to intercede verbally” (Jer 15:11; 36:25) or “to intervene militarily” (Isa 59:16), but neither nuance fits here. Apparently here the Hiphil is the causative of the normal Qal meaning, “encounter, meet, touch.” The Qal sometimes refers to a hostile encounter or attack; when used in this way the object is normally introduced by the preposition -בְּ (bet, see Josh 2:16; Judg 8:21; 15:12, etc.). Here the causative Hiphil has a double object – the Lord makes “sin” attack “him” (note that the object attacked is introduced by the preposition -בְּ. In their sin the group was like sheep who had wandered from God’s path. They were vulnerable to attack; the guilt of their sin was ready to attack and destroy them. But then the servant stepped in and took the full force of the attack.

[14:4]  ⁶ tn The expression is מִי־יִתֵּן (mi-yitten, “who will give”; see GKC 477 §151.b). Some commentators (H. H. Rowley and A. B. Davidson) wish to take this as the optative formula: “O that a clean might come out of an unclean!” But that does not fit the verse very well, and still requires the addition of a verb. The exclamation here simply implies something impossible – man is unable to attain purity.

[14:4]  ⁷ sn The point being made is that the entire human race is contaminated by sin, and therefore cannot produce something pure. In this context, since man is born of woman, it is saying that the woman and the man who is brought forth from her are impure. See Ps 51:5; Isa 6:5; and Gen 6:5.

[15:15]  ⁸ tn Eliphaz here reiterates the point made in Job 4:18.

[15:15]  ⁹ sn The question here is whether the reference is to material “heavens” (as in Exod 24:10 and Job 25:5), or to heavenly beings. The latter seems preferable in this context.

[15:16]  ¹⁰ tn The two descriptions here used are “abominable,” meaning “disgusting” (a Niphal participle with the value of a Latin participle [see GKC 356-57 §116.e]), and “corrupt” (a Niphal participle which occurs only in Pss 14:3 and 53:4), always in a moral sense. On the significance of the first description, see P. Humbert, “Le substantif toáe„ba„ et le verbe táb dans l’Ancien Testament,” ZAW 72 [1960]: 217ff.). On the second word, G. R. Driver suggests from Arabic, “debauched with luxury, corrupt” (“Some Hebrew Words,” JTS 29 [1927/28]: 390-96).

[15:16]  ¹¹ sn Man commits evil with the same ease and facility as he drinks in water – freely and in large quantities.

[25:4]  ¹² sn Bildad here does not come up with new expressions; rather, he simply uses what Eliphaz had said (see Job 4:17-19 and 15:14-16).

[40:4]  ¹³ tn The word קַלֹּתִי (qalloti) means “to be light; to be of small account; to be unimportant.” From this comes the meaning “contemptible,” which in the causative stem would mean “to treat with contempt; to curse.” Dhorme tries to make the sentence a conditional clause and suggests this meaning: “If I have been thoughtless.” There is really no “if” in Job’s mind.

[40:4]  ¹⁴ tn The perfect verb here should be classified as an instantaneous perfect; the action is simultaneous with the words.

[40:4]  ¹⁵ tn The words “to silence myself” are supplied in the translation for clarity.

[42:5]  ¹⁶ sn This statement does not imply there was a vision. He is simply saying that this experience of God was real and personal. In the past his knowledge of God was what he had heard – hearsay. This was real.

[42:6]  ¹⁷ tn Or “despise what I said.” There is no object on the verb; Job could be despising himself or the things he said (see L. J. Kuyper, “Repentance of Job,” VT 9 [1959]: 91-94).

[51:5]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “Look, in wrongdoing I was brought forth, and in sin my mother conceived me.” The prefixed verbal form in the second line is probably a preterite (without vav [ו] consecutive), stating a simple historical fact. The psalmist is not suggesting that he was conceived through an inappropriate sexual relationship (although the verse has sometimes been understood to mean that, or even that all sexual relationships are sinful). The psalmist’s point is that he has been a sinner from the very moment his personal existence began. By going back beyond the time of birth to the moment of conception, the psalmist makes his point more emphatically in the second line than in the first.

[7:18]  ¹⁹ tn Grk “For to wish is present in/with me, but not to do it.”

[2:1]  ²⁰ tn The adverbial participle “being” (ὄντας, ontas) is taken concessively.

[2:1]  ²¹ sn Chapter 2 starts off with a participle, although you were dead, that is left dangling. The syntax in Greek for vv. 1-3 constitutes one incomplete sentence, though it seems to have been done intentionally. The dangling participle leaves the readers in suspense while they wait for the solution (in v. 4) to their spiritual dilemma.

[2:2]  ²² sn The relative pronoun which is feminine as is sins, indicating that sins is the antecedent.

[2:2]  ²³ tn Grk “walked.”

[2:2]  ²⁴ tn Or possibly “Aeon.”

[2:2]  ²⁵ tn Grk “domain, [place of] authority.”

[2:2]  ²⁶ tn Grk “of” (but see the note on the word “spirit” later in this verse).

[2:2]  ²⁷ 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]  ²⁸ tn Grk “working in.”

[2:2]  ²⁹ 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.