Jeremiah 29:12-14

29:12 When you call out to me and come to me in prayer, ¹  I will hear your prayers. ²  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, ³  29:14 I will make myself available to you,’ ⁴  says the Lord. ⁵  ‘Then I will reverse your plight ⁶  and will regather you from all the nations and all the places where I have exiled you,’ says the Lord. ⁷  ‘I will bring you back to the place from which I exiled you.’

Psalms 105:4

105:4 Seek the Lord and the strength he gives!

Seek his presence continually!

Isaiah 45:19

45:19 I have not spoken in secret,

in some hidden place. ⁸ 

I did not tell Jacob’s descendants,

‘Seek me in vain!’ ⁹ 

I am the Lord,

the one who speaks honestly,

who makes reliable announcements. ¹⁰ 

Isaiah 55:6

55:6 Seek the Lord while he makes himself available; ¹¹ 

call to him while he is nearby!

Hosea 3:5

3:5 Afterward, the Israelites will turn and seek the Lord their God and their Davidic king. ¹²  Then they will submit to the Lord in fear and receive his blessings ¹³  in the future. ¹⁴ 

Zechariah 8:21-23

8:21 The inhabitants of one will go to another and say, “Let’s go up at once to ask the favor of the Lord, to seek the Lord who rules over all. Indeed, I’ll go with you.”’ 8:22 Many peoples and powerful nations will come to Jerusalem to seek the Lord who rules over all and to ask his favor. 8:23 The Lord who rules over all says, ‘In those days ten people from all languages and nations will grasp hold of – indeed, grab – the robe of one Jew and say, “Let us go with you, for we have heard that God is with you.”’” ¹⁵ 

[29:12]  ¹ 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]  ² 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]  ³ 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.

[29:14]  ⁴ tn Heb “I will let myself be found by you.” For this nuance of the verb see BDB 594 s.v. מָצָא Niph.1.f and compare the usage in Isa 65:1; 2 Chr 15:2. The Greek version already noted that nuance when it translated the phrase “I will manifest myself to you.”

[29:14]  ⁵ tn Heb “Oracle of the Lord.”

[29:14]  ⁶ tn Heb “restore your fortune.” Alternately, “I will bring you back from exile.” This idiom occurs twenty-six times in the OT and in several cases it is clearly not referring to return from exile but restoration of fortunes (e.g., Job 42:10; Hos 6:11–7:1; Jer 33:11). It is often followed as here by “regather” or “bring back” (e.g., Jer 30:3; Ezek 29:14) so it is often misunderstood as “bringing back the exiles.” The versions (LXX, Vulg., Tg., Pesh.) often translate the idiom as “to go away into captivity,” deriving the noun from שְׁבִי (shÿvi, “captivity”). However, the use of this expression in Old Aramaic documents of Sefire parallels the biblical idiom: “the gods restored the fortunes of the house of my father again” (J. A. Fitzmyer, The Aramaic Inscriptions of Sefire [BibOr], 100-101, 119-20). The idiom means “to turn someone's fortune, bring about change” or “to reestablish as it was” (HALOT 1386 s.v. 3.c). In Ezek 16:53 it is paralleled by the expression “to restore the situation which prevailed earlier.” This amounts to restitutio in integrum, which is applicable to the circumstances surrounding the return of the exiles.

[29:14]  ⁷ tn Heb “Oracle of the Lord.”

[45:19]  ⁸ tn Heb “in a place of a land of darkness” (ASV similar); NASB “in some dark land.”

[45:19]  ⁹ tn “In vain” translates תֹהוּ (tohu), used here as an adverbial accusative: “for nothing.”

[45:19]  ¹⁰ tn The translation above assumes that צֶדֶק (tsedeq) and מֵישָׁרִים (mesharim) are adverbial accusatives (see 33:15). If they are taken as direct objects, indicating the content of what is spoken, one might translate, “who proclaims deliverance, who announces justice.”

[55:6]  ¹¹ tn Heb “while he allows himself to be found.” The Niphal form has a tolerative force here.

[3:5]  ¹² tn Heb “David their king”; cf. NCV “the king from David’s family”; TEV “a descendant of David their king”; NLT “David’s descendant, their king.”

[3:5]  ¹³ tn Heb “his goodness”; NLT “his good gifts.”

[3:5]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “in the end of the days.” Cf. NAB, NASB, NIV, NCV, NLT “in the last days.”

[8:23]  ¹⁵ sn This scene of universal and overwhelming attraction of the nations to Israel’s God finds initial fulfillment in the establishment of the church (Acts 2:5-11) but ultimate completion in the messianic age (Isa 45:14, 24; 60:14; Zech 14:16-21).