Matthew 10:41-42

10:41 Whoever receives a prophet in the name of a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward. Whoever ¹  receives a righteous person in the name of a righteous person will receive a righteous person’s reward. 10:42 And whoever gives only a cup of cold water to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple, I tell you the truth, ²  he will never lose his reward.”

Job 34:11

34:11 For he repays a person for his work, ³ 

and according to the conduct of a person,

he causes the consequences to find him. ⁴ 

Psalms 62:12

62:12 and you, O Lord, demonstrate loyal love. ⁵ 

For you repay men for what they do. ⁶ 

Proverbs 24:12

24:12 If you say, “But we did not know about this,”

does not the one who evaluates ⁷  hearts consider?

Does not the one who guards your life know?

Will he not repay each person according to his deeds? ⁸ 

Isaiah 3:10-11

3:10 Tell the innocent ⁹  it will go well with them, ¹⁰ 

for they will be rewarded for what they have done. ¹¹ 

3:11 Too bad for the wicked sinners!

For they will get exactly what they deserve. ¹² 

Jeremiah 17:10

17:10 I, the Lord, probe into people’s minds.

I examine people’s hearts. ¹³ 

I deal with each person according to how he has behaved.

I give them what they deserve based on what they have done.

Jeremiah 32:19

32:19 You plan great things and you do mighty deeds. ¹⁴  You see everything people do. ¹⁵  You reward each of them for the way they live and for the things they do. ¹⁶ 

Ezekiel 7:27

7:27 The king will mourn and the prince will be clothed with shuddering; the hands of the people of the land will tremble. Based on their behavior I will deal with them, and by their standard of justice ¹⁷  I will judge them. Then they will know that I am the Lord!”

Romans 2:6

2:6 He ¹⁸  will reward ¹⁹  each one according to his works: ²⁰ 

Romans 2:1

The Condemnation of the Moralist

2:1 ²¹ Therefore ²²  you are without excuse, ²³  whoever you are, ²⁴  when you judge someone else. ²⁵  For on whatever grounds ²⁶  you judge another, you condemn yourself, because you who judge practice the same things.

Colossians 1:8

1:8 who also told us of your love in the Spirit.

Colossians 1:2

1:2 to the saints, the faithful ²⁷  brothers and sisters ²⁸  in Christ, at Colossae. Grace and peace to you ²⁹  from God our Father! ³⁰ 

Colossians 1:10

1:10 so that you may live ³¹  worthily of the Lord and please him in all respects ³²  – bearing fruit in every good deed, growing in the knowledge of God,

Ephesians 6:8

6:8 because you know that each person, whether slave or free, if he does something good, this ³³  will be rewarded by the Lord.

Ephesians 6:1

6:1 Children, ³⁴  obey your parents in the Lord ³⁵  for this is right.

Ephesians 1:17

1:17 I pray that ³⁶  the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, ³⁷  may give you spiritual wisdom and revelation ³⁸  in your growing knowledge of him, ³⁹ 

Revelation 2:23

2:23 Furthermore, I will strike her followers ⁴⁰  with a deadly disease, ⁴¹  and then all the churches will know that I am the one who searches minds and hearts. I will repay ⁴²  each one of you ⁴³  what your deeds deserve. ⁴⁴ 

Revelation 22:12-15

22:12 (Look! I am coming soon,

and my reward is with me to pay ⁴⁵  each one according to what he has done!

22:13 I am the Alpha and the Omega,

the first and the last,

the beginning and the end!) ⁴⁶ 

22:14 Blessed are those who wash their robes so they can have access ⁴⁷  to the tree of life and can enter into the city by the gates. 22:15 Outside are the dogs and the sorcerers ⁴⁸  and the sexually immoral, and the murderers, and the idolaters and everyone who loves and practices falsehood! ⁴⁹ 

[10:41]  ¹ tn Grk “And whoever.” Here καί (kai) has not been translated.

[10:42]  ² tn Grk “Truly (ἀμήν, amhn), I say to you.”

[34:11]  ³ tn Heb “for the work of man, he [= God] repays him.”

[34:11]  ⁴ tn Heb “he causes it to find him.” The text means that God will cause a man to find (or receive) the consequences of his actions.

[62:12]  ⁵ tn Heb “and to you, O Master, [is] loyal love.”

[62:12]  ⁶ tn Heb “for you pay back to a man according to his deed.” Another option is to understand vv. 11b and 12a as the first principle and v. 12b as the second. In this case one might translate, “God has declared one principle, two principles I have heard, namely, that God is strong, and you, O Lord, demonstrate loyal love, and that you repay men for what they do.”

[24:12]  ⁷ tn Heb “weighs” (so NASB, NIV, NRSV) meaning “tests” or “evaluates.”

[24:12]  ⁸ sn The verse completes the saying by affirming that people will be judged responsible for helping those in mortal danger. The verse uses a series of rhetorical questions to affirm that God knows our hearts and we cannot plead ignorance.

[3:10]  ⁹ tn Or “the righteous” (KJV, NASB, NIV, TEV); NLT “those who are godly.”

[3:10]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “that it is good.”

[3:10]  ¹¹ tn Heb “for the fruit of their deeds they will eat.”

[3:11]  ¹² tn Heb “for the work of his hands will be done to him.”

[17:10]  ¹³ tn The term rendered “mind” here and in the previous verse is actually the Hebrew word for “heart.” However, in combination with the word rendered “heart” in the next line, which is the Hebrew for “kidneys,” it is best rendered “mind” because the “heart” was considered the center of intellect, conscience, and will and the “kidneys” the center of emotions.

[32:19]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “[you are] great in counsel and mighty in deed.”

[32:19]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “your eyes are open to the ways of the sons of men.”

[32:19]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “giving to each according to his way [= behavior/conduct] and according to the fruit of his deeds.”

[7:27]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “and by their judgments.”

[2:6]  ¹⁸ tn Grk “who.” The relative pronoun was converted to a personal pronoun and, because of the length and complexity of the Greek sentence, a new sentence was started here in the translation.

[2:6]  ¹⁹ tn Or “will render,” “will recompense.” In this context Paul is setting up a hypothetical situation, not stating that salvation is by works.

[2:6]  ²⁰ sn A quotation from Ps 62:12; Prov 24:12; a close approximation to Matt 16:27.

[2:1]  ²¹ sn Rom 2:1-29 presents unusual difficulties for the interpreter. There have been several major approaches to the chapter and the group(s) it refers to: (1) Rom 2:14 refers to Gentile Christians, not Gentiles who obey the Jewish law. (2) Paul in Rom 2 is presenting a hypothetical viewpoint: If anyone could obey the law, that person would be justified, but no one can. (3) The reference to “the ones who do the law” in 2:13 are those who “do” the law in the right way, on the basis of faith, not according to Jewish legalism. (4) Rom 2:13 only speaks about Christians being judged in the future, along with such texts as Rom 14:10 and 2 Cor 5:10. (5) Paul’s material in Rom 2 is drawn heavily from Diaspora Judaism, so that the treatment of the law presented here cannot be harmonized with other things Paul says about the law elsewhere (E. P. Sanders, Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People, 123); another who sees Rom 2 as an example of Paul’s inconsistency in his treatment of the law is H. Räisänen, Paul and the Law [WUNT], 101-9. (6) The list of blessings and curses in Deut 27–30 provide the background for Rom 2; the Gentiles of 2:14 are Gentile Christians, but the condemnation of Jews in 2:17-24 addresses the failure of Jews as a nation to keep the law as a whole (A. Ito, “Romans 2: A Deuteronomistic Reading,” JSNT 59 [1995]: 21-37).

[2:1]  ²² tn Some interpreters (e.g., C. K. Barrett, Romans [HNTC], 43) connect the inferential Διό (dio, “therefore”) with 1:32a, treating 1:32b as a parenthetical comment by Paul.

[2:1]  ²³ tn That is, “you have nothing to say in your own defense” (so translated by TCNT).

[2:1]  ²⁴ tn Grk “O man.”

[2:1]  ²⁵ tn Grk “Therefore, you are without excuse, O man, everyone [of you] who judges.”

[2:1]  ²⁶ tn Grk “in/by (that) which.”

[1:2]  ²⁷ tn Grk “and faithful.” The construction in Greek (as well as Paul’s style) suggests that the saints are identical to the faithful; hence, the καί (kai) is best left untranslated (cf. Eph 1:1). See ExSyn 281-82.

[1:2]  ²⁸ tn Grk “brothers,” but the Greek word may be used for “brothers and sisters” or “fellow Christians” as here (cf. BDAG 18 s.v. ἀδελφός 1, where considerable nonbiblical evidence for the plural ἀδελφοί [adelfoi] meaning “brothers and sisters” is cited).

[1:2]  ²⁹ tn Or “Grace to you and peace.”

[1:2]  ³⁰ tc Most witnesses, including some important ones (א A C F G I [P] 075 Ï it bo), read “and the Lord Jesus Christ” at the end of this verse, no doubt to conform the wording to the typical Pauline salutation. However, excellent and early witnesses (B D K L Ψ 33 81 1175 1505 1739 1881 al sa) lack this phrase. Since the omission is inexplicable as arising from the longer reading (otherwise, these mss would surely have deleted the phrase in the rest of the corpus Paulinum), it is surely authentic.

[1:10]  ³¹ tn The infinitive περιπατῆσαι (peripathsai, “to walk, to live, to live one’s life”) is best taken as an infinitive of purpose related to “praying” (προσευχόμενοι, proseucomenoi) and “asking” (αἰτούμενοι, aitoumenoi) in v. 9 and is thus translated as “that you may live.”

[1:10]  ³² tn BDAG 129 s.v. ἀρεσκεία states that ἀρεσκείαν (areskeian) refers to a “desire to please εἰς πᾶσαν ἀ. to please (the Lord) in all respects Col 1:10.”

[6:8]  ³³ sn The pronoun “this” (τοῦτο, touto) stands first in its clause for emphasis, and stresses the fact that God will reward those, who in seeking him, do good.

[6:1]  ³⁴ tn The use of the article τά (ta) with τέκνα (tekna) functions in a generic way to distinguish this group from husbands, wives, fathers and slaves and is left, therefore, untranslated. The generic article is used with γύναῖκες (gunaikes) in 5:22, ἄνδρες (andres) in 5:25, δοῦλοι (douloi) in 6:5, and κύριοι (kurioi) in 6:9.

[6:1]  ³⁵ tc B D* F G as well as a few versional and patristic representatives lack “in the Lord” (ἐν κυρίῳ, en kuriw), while the phrase is well represented in Ì⁴⁶ א A D¹ I^vid Ψ 0278 0285 33 1739 1881 Ï sy co. Scribes may have thought that the phrase could be regarded a qualifier on the kind of parents a child should obey (viz., only Christian parents), and would thus be tempted to delete the phrase to counter such an interpretation. It is unlikely that the phrase would have been added, since the form used to express such sentiment in this Haustafel is ὡς τῷ κυρίῳ/Χριστῷ (Jw" tw kuriw/Cristw, “as to the Lord/Christ”; see 5:22; 6:5). Even though the witnesses for the omission are impressive, it is more likely that the phrase was deleted than added by scribal activity.

[1:17]  ³⁶ tn The words “I pray” are not in the Greek text, but have been supplied to clarify the meaning; v. 17 is a subordinate clause to v. 16 (“I pray” in v. 17 is implied from v. 16). Eph 1:15-23 constitutes one sentence in Greek, but a new sentence was started here in the translation in light of contemporary English usage.

[1:17]  ³⁷ tn Or “glorious Father.” The genitive phrase “of glory” is most likely an attributive genitive. The literal translation “Father of glory” has been retained because of the parallelism with the first line of the verse: “the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory.”

[1:17]  ³⁸ tn Or “the Spirit of wisdom and revelation,” or “a spirit of wisdom and revelation.” Verse 17 involves a complex exegetical problem revolving around the Greek term πνεῦμα (pneuma). Some take it to mean “the Spirit,” others “a spirit,” and still others “spiritual.” (1) If “the Spirit” is meant, the idea must be a metonymy of cause for effect, because the author had just indicated in vv. 13-14 that the Spirit was already given (hence, there is no need for him to pray that he be given again). But the effect of the Spirit is wisdom and revelation. (2) If “a spirit” is meant, the idea may be that the readers will have the ability to gain wisdom and insight as they read Paul’s letters, but the exact meaning of “a spirit” remains ambiguous. (3) To take the genitives following πνεῦμα as attributed genitives (see ExSyn 89-91), in which the head noun (“S/spirit”) functions semantically like an adjective (“spiritual”) is both grammatically probable and exegetically consistent.

[1:17]  ³⁹ tn Grk “in the knowledge of him.”

[2:23]  ⁴⁰ tn Grk “her children,” but in this context a reference to this woman’s followers or disciples is more likely meant.

[2:23]  ⁴¹ tn Grk “I will kill with death.” θάνατος (qanatos) can in particular contexts refer to a manner of death, specifically a contagious disease (see BDAG 443 s.v. 3; L&N 23.158).

[2:23]  ⁴² tn Grk “I will give.” The sense of δίδωμι (didwmi) in this context is more “repay” than “give.”

[2:23]  ⁴³ sn This pronoun and the following one are plural in the Greek text.

[2:23]  ⁴⁴ tn Grk “each one of you according to your works.”

[22:12]  ⁴⁵ tn The Greek term may be translated either “pay” or “pay back” and has something of a double meaning here. However, because of the mention of “wages” (“reward,” another wordplay with two meanings) in the previous clause, the translation “pay” for ἀποδοῦναι (apodounai) was used here.

[22:13]  ⁴⁶ sn These lines are parenthetical, forming an aside to the narrative. The speaker here is the Lord Jesus Christ himself rather than the narrator.

[22:14]  ⁴⁷ tn Grk “so that there will be to them authority over the tree of life.”

[22:15]  ⁴⁸ tn On the term φάρμακοι (farmakoi) see L&N 53.101.

[22:15]  ⁴⁹ tn Or “lying,” “deceit.”