Jeremiah 22:9

22:9 The answer will come back, “It is because they broke their covenant with the Lord their God and worshiped and served other gods.”

Deuteronomy 31:16-17

31:16 Then the Lord said to Moses, “You are about to die, ¹  and then these people will begin to prostitute themselves with the foreign gods of the land into which they ²  are going. They ³  will reject ⁴  me and break my covenant that I have made with them. ⁵  31:17 At that time ⁶  my anger will erupt against them ⁷  and I will abandon them and hide my face from them until they are devoured. Many disasters and distresses will overcome ⁸  them ⁹  so that they ¹⁰  will say at that time, ‘Have not these disasters ¹¹  overcome us ¹²  because our ¹³  God is not among us ¹⁴ ?’

Deuteronomy 31:2

31:2 He said to them, “Today I am a hundred and twenty years old. I am no longer able to get about, ¹⁵  and the Lord has said to me, ‘You will not cross the Jordan.’

Deuteronomy 7:19

7:19 the great judgments ¹⁶  you saw, the signs and wonders, the strength and power ¹⁷  by which he ¹⁸  brought you out – thus the Lord your God will do to all the people you fear.

Ezra 9:10

9:10 “And now what are we able to say after this, our God? For we have forsaken your commandments

Psalms 89:30

89:30 If his sons reject my law

and disobey my regulations,

Psalms 119:53

119:53 Rage takes hold of me because of the wicked,

those who reject your law.

Proverbs 28:4

28:4 Those who forsake the law ¹⁹  praise the wicked, ²⁰ 

but those who keep the law contend ²¹  with them.

Zephaniah 3:1-6

Jerusalem is Corrupt

3:1 The filthy, ²²  stained city is as good as dead;

the city filled with oppressors is finished! ²³ 

3:2 She is disobedient; ²⁴ 

she refuses correction. ²⁵ 

She does not trust the Lord;

she does not seek the advice of ²⁶  her God.

3:3 Her princes ²⁷  are as fierce as roaring lions; ²⁸ 

her rulers ²⁹  are as hungry as wolves in the desert, ³⁰ 

who completely devour their prey by morning. ³¹ 

3:4 Her prophets are proud; ³² 

they are deceitful men.

Her priests defile what is holy; ³³ 

they break God’s laws. ³⁴ 

3:5 The just Lord resides ³⁵  within her;

he commits no unjust acts. ³⁶ 

Every morning he reveals ³⁷  his justice.

At dawn he appears without fail. ³⁸ 

Yet the unjust know no shame.

The Lord’s Judgment will Purify

3:6 “I destroyed ³⁹  nations;

their walled cities ⁴⁰  are in ruins.

I turned their streets into ruins;

no one passes through them.

Their cities are desolate; ⁴¹ 

no one lives there. ⁴² 

[31:16]  ¹ tn Heb “lie down with your fathers” (so NASB); NRSV “ancestors.”

[31:16]  ² tn Heb “he.” Smr, LXX, and the Targums read the plural “they,” which is necessary in any case in the translation because of contemporary English style. The third person singular also occurs in the Hebrew text twice more in this verse, three times in v. 17, once in v. 18, five times in v. 20, and four times in v. 21. Each time it is translated as third person plural for stylistic reasons.

[31:16]  ³ tn Heb “he.” Smr, LXX, and the Targums read the plural “they.” See note on the first occurrence of “they” in v. 16.

[31:16]  ⁴ tn Or “abandon” (TEV, NLT).

[31:16]  ⁵ tn Heb “him.” Smr, LXX, and the Targums read the plural “them.” See note on the first occurrence of “they” in v. 16.

[31:17]  ⁶ tn Heb “on that day.” This same expression also appears later in the verse and in v. 18.

[31:17]  ⁷ tn Heb “him.” Smr, LXX, and the Targums read the plural “them.” See note on the first occurrence of “they” in v. 16.

[31:17]  ⁸ tn Heb “find,” “encounter.”

[31:17]  ⁹ tn Heb “him.” Smr, LXX, and the Targums read the plural “them.” See note on the first occurrence of “they” in v. 16.

[31:17]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “he.” Smr, LXX, and the Targums read the plural “they.” See note on the first occurrence of “they” in v. 16.

[31:17]  ¹¹ tn Heb “evils.”

[31:17]  ¹² tn Heb “me.” Smr, LXX, and the Targums read the plural “us,” which is necessary in any case in the translation because of contemporary English style.

[31:17]  ¹³ tn Heb “my.”

[31:17]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “me.” Smr, LXX, and the Targums read the plural “us,” which is necessary in any case in the translation because of contemporary English style.

[31:2]  ¹⁵ tn Or “am no longer able to lead you” (NIV, NLT); Heb “am no longer able to go out and come in.”

[7:19]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “testings” (so NAB), a reference to the plagues. See note at 4:34.

[7:19]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “the strong hand and outstretched arm.” See 4:34.

[7:19]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “the Lord your God.” The pronoun has been used in the translation for stylistic reasons to avoid redundancy.

[28:4]  ¹⁹ sn Some commentators do not think that the word refers to the Mosaic law, but to “instruction” or “teaching” in general (cf. NCV “who disobey what they have been taught”). However, the expression “keep the law” in the second line indicates that it is binding, which would not be true of teaching in general (J. Bright, “The Apodictic Prohibition: Some Observations,” JBL 92 [1973]: 185-204). Moreover, Proverbs 28:9 and 29:18 refer to the law, and this chapter has a stress on piety.

[28:4]  ²⁰ sn The proverb gives the outcome and the evidence of those who forsake the law – they “praise the wicked.” This may mean (1) calling the wicked good or (2) justifying what the wicked do, for such people are no longer sensitive to evil.

[28:4]  ²¹ tn The verb is the Hitpael imperfect of גָּרָה (garah), which means “to stir up strife” but in this stem means “to engage in strife” (cf. NIV “resist them”). Tg. Prov 28:4 adds an explanatory expansion, “so as to induce them to repent.”

[3:1]  ²² tn The present translation assumes מֹרְאָה (mor’ah) is derived from רֹאִי (ro’i,“excrement”; see Jastrow 1436 s.v. רֳאִי). The following participle, “stained,” supports this interpretation (cf. NEB “filthy and foul”; NRSV “soiled, defiled”). Another option is to derive the form from מָרָה (marah, “to rebel”); in this case the term should be translated “rebellious” (cf. NASB, NIV “rebellious and defiled”). This idea is supported by v. 2. For discussion of the two options, see HALOT 630 s.v. I מרא and J. J. M. Roberts, Nahum, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah (OTL), 206.

[3:1]  ²³ tn Heb “Woe, soiled and stained one, oppressive city.” The verb “is finished” is supplied in the second line. On the Hebrew word הוֹי (hoy, “ah, woe”), see the note on the word “dead” in 2:5.

[3:2]  ²⁴ tn Heb “she does not hear a voice” Refusing to listen is equated with disobedience.

[3:2]  ²⁵ tn Heb “she does not receive correction.” The Hebrew phrase, when negated, refers elsewhere to rejecting verbal advice (Jer 17:23; 32:33; 35:13) and refusing to learn from experience (Jer 2:30; 5:3).

[3:2]  ²⁶ tn Heb “draw near to.” The present translation assumes that the expression “draw near to” refers to seeking God’s will (see 1 Sam 14:36).

[3:3]  ²⁷ tn Or “officials.”

[3:3]  ²⁸ tn Heb “her princes in her midst are roaring lions.” The metaphor has been translated as a simile (“as fierce as”) for clarity.

[3:3]  ²⁹ tn Traditionally “judges.”

[3:3]  ³⁰ tn Heb “her judges [are] wolves of the evening,” that is, wolves that prowl at night. The translation assumes an emendation to עֲרָבָה (’aravah, “desert”). For a discussion of this and other options, see Adele Berlin, Zephaniah (AB 25A), 128. The metaphor has been translated as a simile (“as hungry as”) for clarity.

[3:3]  ³¹ tn Heb “they do not gnaw [a bone] at morning.” The precise meaning of the line is unclear. The statement may mean these wolves devour their prey so completely that not even a bone is left to gnaw by the time morning arrives. For a discussion of this and other options, see Adele Berlin, Zephaniah (AB 25A), 129.

[3:4]  ³² sn Applied to prophets, the word פֹּחֲזִים (pokhazim, “proud”) probably refers to their audacity in passing off their own words as genuine prophecies from the Lord (see Jer 23:32).

[3:4]  ³³ tn Or “defile the temple.”

[3:4]  ³⁴ tn Heb “they treat violently [the] law.”

[3:5]  ³⁵ tn The word “resides” is supplied for clarification.

[3:5]  ³⁶ tn Or “he does no injustice.”

[3:5]  ³⁷ tn Heb “gives”; or “dispenses.”

[3:5]  ³⁸ tn Heb “at the light he is not missing.” Note that NASB (which capitalizes pronouns referring to Deity) has divided the lines differently: “Every morning He brings His justice to light; // He does not fail.”

[3:6]  ³⁹ tn Heb “cut off.”

[3:6]  ⁴⁰ tn Heb “corner towers”; NEB, NRSV “battlements.”

[3:6]  ⁴¹ tn This Hebrew verb (צָדָה, tsadah) occurs only here in the OT, but its meaning is established from the context and from an Aramaic cognate.

[3:6]  ⁴² tn Heb “so that there is no man, without inhabitant.”