Joshua 23:16

23:16 If you violate the covenantal laws of the Lord your God which he commanded you to keep, ¹  and follow, worship, and bow down to other gods, ²  the Lord will be very angry with you and you will disappear ³  quickly from the good land which he gave to you.”

Joshua 23:2

23:2 So Joshua summoned all Israel, including the elders, rulers, judges, and leaders, and told them: “I am very old.

Joshua 15:2

15:2 Their southern border started at the southern tip of the Salt Sea, ⁴ 

Psalms 21:8-9

21:8 You ⁵  prevail over ⁶  all your enemies;

your power is too great for those who hate you. ⁷ 

21:9 You burn them up like a fiery furnace ⁸  when you appear; ⁹ 

the Lord angrily devours them; ¹⁰ 

the fire consumes them.

Psalms 34:16

34:16 But the Lord opposes evildoers

and wipes out all memory of them from the earth. ¹¹ 

Psalms 90:11

90:11 Who can really fathom the intensity of your anger? ¹² 

Your raging fury causes people to fear you. ¹³ 

Zephaniah 1:2-6

The Lord’s Day of Judgment is Approaching

1:2 “I will destroy ¹⁴  everything from the face of the earth,” says the Lord.

1:3 “I will destroy people and animals;

I will destroy the birds in the sky

and the fish in the sea.

(The idolatrous images of these creatures will be destroyed along with evil people.) ¹⁵ 

I will remove ¹⁶  humanity from the face of the earth,” says the Lord.

1:4 “I will attack ¹⁷  Judah

and all who live in Jerusalem. ¹⁸ 

I will remove ¹⁹  from this place every trace of Baal worship, ²⁰ 

as well as the very memory ²¹  of the pagan priests. ²² 

1:5 I will remove ²³  those who worship the stars in the sky from their rooftops, ²⁴ 

those who swear allegiance to the Lord ²⁵  while taking oaths in the name of ²⁶  their ‘king,’ ²⁷ 

1:6 and those who turn their backs on ²⁸  the Lord

and do not want the Lord’s help or guidance.” ²⁹ 

Hebrews 10:38

10:38 But my righteous one will live by faith, and if he shrinks back, I ³⁰  take no pleasure in him. ³¹ 

Hebrews 10:1

Concluding Exposition: Old and New Sacrifices Contrasted

10:1 For the law possesses a shadow of the good things to come but not the reality itself, and is therefore completely unable, by the same sacrifices offered continually, year after year, to perfect those who come to worship. ³² 

Hebrews 3:12

3:12 See to it, ³³  brothers and sisters, ³⁴  that none of you has ³⁵  an evil, unbelieving heart that forsakes ³⁶  the living God. ³⁷ 

[23:16]  ¹ tn Heb “when you violate the covenant of the Lord your God which he commanded you.”

[23:16]  ² tn Heb “and you walk and serve other gods and bow down to them.”

[23:16]  ³ tn Or “perish.”

[15:2]  ⁴ tn Heb “Their southern border was from the end of the Salt Sea, from the tongue that faces to the south.”

[21:8]  ⁵ tn The king is now addressed. One could argue that the Lord is still being addressed, but v. 9 militates against this proposal, for there the Lord is mentioned in the third person and appears to be distinct from the addressee (unless, of course, one takes “Lord” in v. 9 as vocative; see the note on “them” in v. 9b). Verse 7 begins this transition to a new addressee by referring to both the king and the Lord in the third person (in vv. 1-6 the Lord is addressed and only the king referred to in the third person).

[21:8]  ⁶ tn Heb “your hand finds.” The idiom pictures the king grabbing hold of his enemies and defeating them (see 1 Sam 23:17). The imperfect verbal forms in vv. 8-12 may be translated with the future tense, as long as the future is understood as generalizing.

[21:8]  ⁷ tn Heb “your right hand finds those who hate you.”

[21:9]  ⁸ tn Heb “you make them like a furnace of fire.” Although many modern translations retain the literal Hebrew, the statement is elliptical. The point is not that he makes them like a furnace, but like an object burned in a furnace (cf. NEB, “at your coming you shall plunge them into a fiery furnace”).

[21:9]  ⁹ tn Heb “at the time of your face.” The “face” of the king here refers to his angry presence. See Lam 4:16.

[21:9]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “the Lord, in his anger he swallows them, and fire devours them.” Some take “the Lord” as a vocative, in which case he is addressed in vv. 8-9a. But this makes the use of the third person in v. 9b rather awkward, though the king could be the subject (see vv. 1-7).

[34:16]  ¹¹ tn Heb “the face of the Lord [is] against the doers of evil to cut off from the earth memory of them.”

[90:11]  ¹² tn Heb “Who knows the strength of your anger?”

[90:11]  ¹³ tn Heb “and like your fear [is] your raging fury.” Perhaps one should emend וּכְיִרְאָתְךְ (ukhyir’otekh, “and like your fear”) to יִרְאָתְךְ (yir’otkh, “your fear”), understanding a virtual dittography (אַפֶּךָ וּכְיִרְאָתְךְ, ’apekha ukhyir’otekh) to have occurred. In this case the psalmist asserts “your fear [is] your raging fury,” that is, your raging fury is what causes others to fear you. The suffix on “fear” is understood as objective.

[1:2]  ¹⁴ tn The Hebrew text combines the infinitive absolute of אָסַף (’asaf, “gather up, sweep away”) with a Hiphil prefixed first person form of סוּף (suf, “come to an end”; see Jer 8:13 for the same combination). This can be translated literally, “Sweeping away, I will bring to an end.” Some prefer to emend the text so that the infinitive and finite form of the verb are from the same root (“I will certainly sweep away,” if from אָסַף [cf. NEB, NIV, NRSV]; “I will certainly bring to an end,” if from סוּף). For a discussion of proposals see J. J. M. Roberts, Nahum, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah (OTL), 167, 169.

[1:3]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “And the stumbling blocks [or, “ruins”] with the evil”; or “the things that make the evil stumble.” The line does not appear in the original form of the LXX; it may be a later scribal addition. The present translation assumes the “stumbling blocks” are idolatrous images of animals, birds, and fish. See J. J. M. Roberts, Nahum, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah (OTL), 167, and Adele Berlin, Zephaniah (AB), 73-74.

[1:3]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “cut off.”

[1:4]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “I will stretch out my hand against,” is an idiom for hostile action.

[1:4]  ¹⁸ map For location see Map5 B1; Map6 F3; Map7 E2; Map8 F2; Map10 B3; JP1 F4; JP2 F4; JP3 F4; JP4 F4.

[1:4]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “cut off.”

[1:4]  ²⁰ tn Heb “the remnant of Baal.”

[1:4]  ²¹ tn Heb “name.” Here the “name” is figurative for the memory of those who bear it.

[1:4]  ²² tc Heb “of the pagan priests and priests.” The first word (כְּמָרִים, kÿmarim) refers to idolatrous priests in its two other appearances in the OT (2 Kgs 23:5, Hos 10:5), while the second word (כֹּהֲנִים, kohanim) is the normal term for “priest” and is used of both legitimate and illegitimate priests in the OT. It is likely that the second term, which is omitted in the LXX, is a later scribal addition to the Hebrew text, defining the extremely rare word that precedes (see J. J. M. Roberts, Nahum, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah [OTL], 167-68; cf. also NEB, NRSV). Some argue that both words are original; among the modern English versions that include both are NASB and NIV. Possibly the first word refers to outright pagan priests, while the second has in view once-legitimate priests of the Lord who had drifted into idolatrous practices. Another option is found in Adele Berlin, who translates, “the idolatrous priests among the priests,” understanding the second word as giving the general category of which the idolatrous priests are a part (Zephaniah [AB 25A], 75).

[1:5]  ²³ tn The words “I will remove” are repeated from v. 4b for stylistic reasons. In the Hebrew text vv. 4b-6 contain a long list of objects for the verb “I will remove” in v. 4b. In the present translation a new sentence was begun at the beginning of v. 5 in keeping with the tendency of contemporary English to use shorter sentences.

[1:5]  ²⁴ tn Heb “those who worship on their roofs the host of heaven.” The “host of heaven” included the sun, moon, planets, and stars, all of which were deified in the ancient Near East.

[1:5]  ²⁵ tc The MT reads, “those who worship, those who swear allegiance to the Lord.” The original form of the LXX omits the phrase “those who worship”; it may have been accidentally repeated from the preceding line. J. J. M. Roberts prefers to delete as secondary the phrase “those who swear allegiance” (J. J. M. Roberts, Nahum, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah [OTL], 168).

[1:5]  ²⁶ tn Heb “those who swear by.”

[1:5]  ²⁷ tn The referent of “their king” is unclear. It may refer sarcastically to a pagan god (perhaps Baal) worshiped by the people. Some English versions (cf. NEB, NASB, NRSV) prefer to emend the text to “Milcom,” the name of an Ammonite god (following some LXX mss, Syriac, and Vulgate) or “Molech,” a god to whom the Israelites offered their children (cf. NIV, NLT). For a discussion of the options, see Adele Berlin, Zephaniah (AB 25A), 75-77.

[1:6]  ²⁸ tn Heb “turn back from [following] after.”

[1:6]  ²⁹ tn Heb “who do not seek the Lord and do not inquire of him.” The present translation assumes the first verb refers to praying for divine help and the second to seeking his revealed will through an oracle. Note the usage of the two verbs in 2 Chr 20:3-4.

[10:38]  ³⁰ tn Grk “my soul.”

[10:38]  ³¹ sn A quotation from Hab 2:4.

[10:1]  ³² tn Grk “those who approach.”

[3:12]  ³³ tn Or “take care.”

[3:12]  ³⁴ tn Grk “brothers.” See note on the phrase “brothers and sisters” in 2:11.

[3:12]  ³⁵ tn Grk “that there not be in any of you.”

[3:12]  ³⁶ tn Or “deserts,” “rebels against.”

[3:12]  ³⁷ tn Grk “in forsaking the living God.”