Jeremiah 16:12-15

16:12 And you have acted even more wickedly than your ancestors! Each one of you has followed the stubborn inclinations of your own wicked heart and not obeyed me. ¹  16:13 So I will throw you out of this land into a land that neither you nor your ancestors have ever known. There you must worship other gods day and night, for I will show you no mercy.’”

16:14 Yet ²  I, the Lord, say: ³  “A new time will certainly come. ⁴  People now affirm their oaths with ‘I swear as surely as the Lord lives who delivered the people of Israel out of Egypt.’ 16:15 But in that time they will affirm them with ‘I swear as surely as the Lord lives who delivered the people of Israel from the land of the north and from all the other lands where he had banished them.’ At that time I will bring them back to the land I gave their ancestors.” ⁵ 

Isaiah 43:24-25

43:24 You did not buy me aromatic reeds; ⁶ 

you did not present to me ⁷  the fat of your sacrifices.

Yet you burdened me with your sins;

you made me weary with your evil deeds. ⁸ 

43:25 I, I am the one who blots out your rebellious deeds for my sake;

your sins I do not remember.

Isaiah 57:17-18

57:17 I was angry because of their sinful greed;

I attacked them and angrily rejected them, ⁹ 

yet they remained disobedient and stubborn. ¹⁰ 

57:18 I have seen their behavior, ¹¹ 

but I will heal them and give them rest,

and I will once again console those who mourn. ¹² 

Ezekiel 36:31-32

36:31 Then you will remember your evil behavior ¹³  and your deeds which were not good; you will loathe yourselves on account of your sins and your abominable deeds. 36:32 Understand that ¹⁴  it is not for your sake I am about to act, declares the sovereign Lord. Be ashamed and embarrassed by your behavior, O house of Israel.

Hosea 2:14

Future Repentance and Restoration of Israel

2:14 However, in the future I will allure her; ¹⁵ 

I will lead ¹⁶  her back into the wilderness,

and speak tenderly to her.

Romans 5:20

5:20 Now the law came in ¹⁷  so that the transgression ¹⁸  may increase, but where sin increased, grace multiplied all the more,

Ephesians 2:3-5

2:3 among whom ¹⁹  all of us ²⁰  also ²¹  formerly lived out our lives in the cravings of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath ²²  even as the rest… ²³ 

2:4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of his great love with which he loved us, 2:5 even though we were dead in transgressions, made us alive together with Christ – by grace you are saved! ²⁴  –

[16:12]  ¹ sn For the argumentation here compare Jer 7:23-26.

[16:14]  ² tn The particle translated here “Yet” (לָכֵן, lakhen) is regularly translated “So” or “Therefore” and introduces a consequence. However, in a few cases it introduces a contrasting set of conditions. Compare its use in Judg 11:8; Jer 48:12; 49:2; 51:52; and Hos 2:14 (2:16 HT).

[16:14]  ³ tn Heb “Oracle of the Lord.” The Lord has been speaking; the first person has been utilized in translation to avoid a shift which might create confusion.

[16:14]  ⁴ tn Heb “Behold the days are coming.”

[16:15]  ⁵ tn These two verses which constitute one long sentence with compound, complex subordinations has been broken up for sake of English style. It reads, “Therefore, behold the days are coming, says the Lord [Heb ‘oracle of the Lord’] and it will not be said any longer, ‘By the life of the Lord who…Egypt’ but ‘by the life of the Lord who…’ and I will bring them back….”

[43:24]  ⁶ tn That is, “calamus” (so NIV); NCV, TEV, NLT “incense”; CEV “spices.”

[43:24]  ⁷ tn Heb “you did not saturate me”; NASB “Neither have you filled Me.”

[43:24]  ⁸ sn In vv. 22-24 the Lord appears to be condemning his people for failure to bring the proper sacrifices. However, this is problematic. If this refers to the nation’s behavior while in exile, such cultic service was impossible and could hardly be expected by the Lord. If this refers to the nation’s conduct before the exile, it contradicts other passages that depict Israel as bringing excessive sacrifices (see, e.g., Isa 1:11-14; Jer 6:20; Amos 4:4-5, 5:21-23). Rather than being a condemnation of Israel’s failure to bring sacrifices, these verses are better taken as a highly rhetorical comment on the worthlessness of Israel’s religious ritual. They may have brought sacrifices, but not to the Lord, for he did not accept them or even want them. See C. R. North, Second Isaiah, 127, and R. Whybray, Isaiah 40-66 (NCBC), 91.

[57:17]  ⁹ tn Heb “and I struck him, hiding, and I was angry.” פָּנַיִם (panayim, “face”) is the implied object of “hiding.”

[57:17]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “and he walked [as an] apostate in the way of his heart.”

[57:18]  ¹¹ tn Heb “his ways” (so KJV, NASB, NIV); TEV “how they acted.”

[57:18]  ¹² tn Heb “and I will restore consolation to him, to his mourners.”

[36:31]  ¹³ tn Heb “ways.”

[36:32]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “Let it be known.”

[2:14]  ¹⁵ tn The participle מְפַתֶּיהָ (méfatteha, Piel participle masculine singular + 3rd feminine singular suffix from פָּתָה, patah, “to allure”) following the deictic particle הִנֵּה (hinneh, “Now!”) describes an event that will occur in the immediate or near future.

[2:14]  ¹⁶ tn Following the future-time referent participle (מְפַתֶּיהָ, méfatteha) there is a string of perfects introduced by vav consecutive that refer to future events.

[5:20]  ¹⁷ tn Grk “slipped in.”

[5:20]  ¹⁸ tn Or “trespass.”

[2:3]  ¹⁹ sn Among whom. The relative pronoun phrase that begins v. 3 is identical, except for gender, to the one that begins v. 2 (ἐν αἵς [en Jais], ἐν οἵς [en Jois]). By the structure, the author is building an argument for our hopeless condition: We lived in sin and we lived among sinful people. Our doom looked to be sealed as well in v. 2: Both the external environment (kingdom of the air) and our internal motivation and attitude (the spirit that is now energizing) were under the devil’s thumb (cf. 2 Cor 4:4).

[2:3]  ²⁰ tn Grk “we all.”

[2:3]  ²¹ tn Or “even.”

[2:3]  ²² sn Children of wrath is a Semitic idiom which may mean either “people characterized by wrath” or “people destined for wrath.”

[2:3]  ²³ sn Eph 2:1-3. The translation of vv. 1-3 is very literal, even to the point of retaining the awkward syntax of the original. See note on the word dead in 2:1.

[2:5]  ²⁴ tn Or “by grace you have been saved.” The perfect tense in Greek connotes both completed action (“you have been saved”) and continuing results (“you are saved”).