Joshua 1:8

1:8 This law scroll must not leave your lips! ¹  You must memorize it ²  day and night so you can carefully obey ³  all that is written in it. Then you will prosper ⁴  and be successful. ⁵ 

Joshua 21:44-45

21:44 The Lord made them secure, ⁶  in fulfillment of all he had solemnly promised their ancestors. ⁷  None of their enemies could resist them. ⁸  21:45 Not one of the Lord’s faithful promises to the family of Israel ⁹  was left unfulfilled; every one was realized. ¹⁰ 

Exodus 23:31

23:31 I will set ¹¹  your boundaries from the Red Sea to the sea of the Philistines, and from the desert to the River, ¹²  for I will deliver the inhabitants of the land into your hand, and you will drive them out before you.

Numbers 13:32-33

13:32 Then they presented the Israelites with a discouraging ¹³  report of the land they had investigated, saying, “The land that we passed through ¹⁴  to investigate is a land that devours ¹⁵  its inhabitants. ¹⁶  All the people we saw there ¹⁷  are of great stature. 13:33 We even saw the Nephilim ¹⁸  there (the descendants of Anak came from the Nephilim), and we seemed liked grasshoppers both to ourselves ¹⁹  and to them.” ²⁰ 

Proverbs 25:13

25:13 Like the cold of snow in the time of harvest, ²¹ 

so is a faithful messenger to those who send him,

for he refreshes the heart ²²  of his masters.

[1:8]  ¹ tn Heb “mouth.”

[1:8]  ² tn Heb “read it in undertones,” or “recite it quietly” (see HALOT 1:237).

[1:8]  ³ tn Heb “be careful to do.”

[1:8]  ⁴ tn Heb “you will make your way prosperous.”

[1:8]  ⁵ tn Heb “and be wise,” but the word can mean “be successful” by metonymy.

[21:44]  ⁶ tn Heb “gave them rest all around.”

[21:44]  ⁷ tn Heb “according to all he swore to their fathers.”

[21:44]  ⁸ tn Heb “not a man stood from before them from all their enemies.”

[21:45]  ⁹ tn Heb “the house of Israel.” Cf. NCV “the Israelites”; TEV “the people of Israel”; CEV, NLT “Israel.”

[21:45]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “not a word from all the good word which the Lord spoke to the house of Israel fell; the whole came to pass.”

[23:31]  ¹¹ tn The form is a perfect tense with vav consecutive.

[23:31]  ¹² tn In the Hebrew Bible “the River” usually refers to the Euphrates (cf. NASB, NCV, NRSV, TEV, CEV, NLT). There is some thought that it refers to a river Nahr el Kebir between Lebanon and Syria. See further W. C. Kaiser, Jr., “Exodus,” EBC 2:447; and G. W. Buchanan, The Consequences of the Covenant (NovTSup), 91-100.

[13:32]  ¹³ tn Or “an evil report,” i.e., one that was a defamation of the grace of God.

[13:32]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “which we passed over in it”; the pronoun on the preposition serves as a resumptive pronoun for the relative, and need not be translated literally.

[13:32]  ¹⁵ tn The verb is the feminine singular participle from אָכַל (’akhal); it modifies the land as a “devouring land,” a bold figure for the difficulty of living in the place.

[13:32]  ¹⁶ sn The expression has been interpreted in a number of ways by commentators, such as that the land was infertile, that the Canaanites were cannibals, that it was a land filled with warlike dissensions, or that it denotes a land geared for battle. It may be that they intended the land to seem infertile and insecure.

[13:32]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “in its midst.”

[13:33]  ¹⁸ tc The Greek version uses gigantes (“giants”) to translate “the Nephilim,” but it does not retain the clause “the sons of Anak are from the Nephilim.”

[13:33]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “in our eyes.”

[13:33]  ²⁰ tn Heb “in their eyes.”

[25:13]  ²¹ sn The emblem in the parallelism of this verse is the simile of the first line. Because snow at the time of harvest would be rare, and probably unwelcome, various commentators have sought to explain this expression. R. N. Whybray suggests it may refer to snow brought down from the mountains and kept cool in an ice hole (Proverbs [CBC], 148); this seems rather forced. J. H. Greenstone following Rashi, a Jewish scholar who lived a.d. 1040-1105, suggests it might refer to the refreshing breeze that comes from snow-capped mountains (Proverbs, 260). C. H. Toy suggests a snow-cooled drink (Proverbs [ICC], 464), and W. McKane an application of ice water to the forehead (Proverbs [OTL], 585). Some English versions replace “snow” with “water” (cf. TEV “cold water”; CEV “cool water”). These all attempt to explain the simile; but the point is clear enough, a faithful servant is refreshing to his master. The analogy could be hypothetical – as refreshing as the coolness of snow would be in harvest time.

[25:13]  ²² tn Heb “he restores the life [or, soul] of his masters.” The idea suggests that someone who sends the messenger either entrusts his life to him or relies on the messenger to resolve some concern. A faithful messenger restores his master’s spirit and so is “refreshing.”