Job 27:9

27:9 Does God listen to his cry

when distress overtakes him?

Psalms 66:18-19

66:18 If I had harbored sin in my heart, ¹ 

the Lord would not have listened.

66:19 However, God heard;

he listened to my prayer.

Isaiah 1:15

1:15 When you spread out your hands in prayer,

I look the other way; ² 

when you offer your many prayers,

I do not listen,

because your hands are covered with blood. ³ 

Isaiah 58:9-10

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 ⁴  remove the burdensome yoke from among you

and stop pointing fingers and speaking sinfully.

58:10 You must ⁵  actively help the hungry

and feed the oppressed. ⁶ 

Then your light will dispel the darkness, ⁷ 

and your darkness will be transformed into noonday. ⁸ 

James 4:3-4

4:3 you ask and do not receive because you ask wrongly, so you can spend it on your passions.

4:4 Adulterers, do you not know that friendship with the world means hostility toward God? ⁹  So whoever decides to be the world’s friend makes himself God’s enemy.

[66:18]  ¹ tn Heb “sin if I had seen in my heart.”

[1:15]  ² tn Heb “I close my eyes from you.”

[1:15]  ³ sn This does not just refer to the blood of sacrificial animals, but also the blood, as it were, of their innocent victims. By depriving the poor and destitute of proper legal recourse and adequate access to the economic system, the oppressors have, for all intents and purposes, “killed” their victims.

[58:9]  ⁴ 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.

[58:10]  ⁵ tn Heb “if you.” See the note on “you must” in v. 9b.

[58:10]  ⁶ tn Heb “If you furnish for the hungry [with] your being, and the appetite of the oppressed you satisfy.”

[58:10]  ⁷ tn Heb “will rise in the darkness.”

[58:10]  ⁸ tn Heb “and your darkness [will be] like noonday.”

[4:4]  ⁹ tn Grk “is hostility toward God.”