Numbers 16:3

16:3 And they assembled against Moses and Aaron, saying to them, “You take too much upon yourselves, ¹  seeing that the whole community is holy, every one of them, and the Lord is among them. Why then do you exalt yourselves above the community of the Lord?”

Isaiah 48:1-2

The Lord Appeals to the Exiles

48:1 Listen to this, O family of Jacob, ² 

you who are called by the name ‘Israel,’

and are descended from Judah, ³ 

who take oaths in the name of the Lord,

and invoke ⁴  the God of Israel –

but not in an honest and just manner. ⁵ 

48:2 Indeed, they live in the holy city; ⁶ 

they trust in ⁷  the God of Israel,

whose name is the Lord who commands armies.

Jeremiah 7:4

7:4 Stop putting your confidence in the false belief that says, ⁸  “We are safe! ⁹  The temple of the Lord is here! The temple of the Lord is here! The temple of the Lord is here!” ¹⁰ 

Jeremiah 7:9-12

7:9 You steal. ¹¹  You murder. You commit adultery. You lie when you swear on oath. You sacrifice to the god Baal. You pay allegiance to ¹²  other gods whom you have not previously known. 7:10 Then you come and stand in my presence in this temple I have claimed as my own ¹³  and say, “We are safe!” You think you are so safe that you go on doing all those hateful sins! ¹⁴  7:11 Do you think this temple I have claimed as my own ¹⁵  is to be a hideout for robbers? ¹⁶  You had better take note! ¹⁷  I have seen for myself what you have done! says the Lord. 7:12 So, go to the place in Shiloh where I allowed myself to be worshiped ¹⁸  in the early days. See what I did to it ¹⁹  because of the wicked things my people Israel did.

Ezekiel 7:20-24

7:20 They rendered the beauty of his ornaments into pride, ²⁰  and with it they made their abominable images – their detestable idols. Therefore I will render it filthy to them. 7:21 I will give it to foreigners as loot, to the world’s wicked ones as plunder, and they will desecrate it. 7:22 I will turn my face away from them and they will desecrate my treasured place. ²¹  Vandals will enter it and desecrate it. ²²  7:23 (Make the chain, ²³  because the land is full of murder ²⁴  and the city is full of violence.) 7:24 I will bring the most wicked of the nations and they will take possession of their houses. I will put an end to the arrogance of the strong, and their sanctuaries ²⁵  will be desecrated.

Ezekiel 24:21

24:21 Say to the house of Israel, ‘This is what the sovereign Lord says: Realize I am about to desecrate my sanctuary – the source of your confident pride, ²⁶  the object in which your eyes delight, ²⁷  and your life’s passion. ²⁸  Your very own sons and daughters whom you have left behind will die ²⁹  by the sword.

Micah 3:11

3:11 Her ³⁰  leaders take bribes when they decide legal cases, ³¹ 

her priests proclaim rulings for profit,

and her prophets read omens for pay.

Yet they claim to trust ³²  the Lord and say,

“The Lord is among us. ³³ 

Disaster will not overtake ³⁴  us!”

Matthew 3:9

3:9 and don’t think you can say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ For I tell you that God can raise up children for Abraham from these stones!

Romans 2:17

The Condemnation of the Jew

2:17 But if you call yourself a Jew and rely on the law ³⁵  and boast of your relationship to God ³⁶ 

[16:3]  ¹ tn The meaning of רַב־לָכֶם (rab-lakhem) is something like “you have assumed far too much authority.” It simply means “much to you,” perhaps “you have gone to far,” or “you are overreaching yourselves” (M. Noth, Numbers [OTL], 123). He is objecting to the exclusiveness of the system that Moses has been introducing.

[48:1]  ² tn Heb “house of Jacob”; TEV, CEV “people of Israel.”

[48:1]  ³ tc The Hebrew text reads literally “and from the waters of Judah came out.” מִמֵּי (mimme) could be a corruption of מִמְּעֵי (mimmÿ’e, “from the inner parts of”; cf. NASB, NIV, NLT, NRSV) as suggested in the above translation. Some translations (ESV, NKJV) retain the MT reading because the Qumran scroll 1QIsa^a, which corrects a similar form to “from inner parts of” in 39:7, does not do it here.

[48:1]  ⁴ tn Heb “cause to remember”; KJV, ASV “make mention of.”

[48:1]  ⁵ tn Heb “not in truth and not in righteousness.”

[48:2]  ⁶ tn Heb “they call themselves [or “are called”] from the holy city.” The precise meaning of the statement is uncertain. The Niphal of קָרָא (qara’) is combined with the preposition מִן (min) only here. When the Qal of קָרָא is used with מִן, the preposition often indicates the place from which one is summoned (see 46:11). So one could translate, “from the holy city they are summoned,” meaning that they reside there.

[48:2]  ⁷ tn Heb “lean on” (so NASB, NRSV); NAB, NIV “rely on.”

[7:4]  ⁸ tn Heb “Stop trusting in lying words which say.”

[7:4]  ⁹ tn The words “We are safe!” are not in the text but are supplied in the translation for clarity.

[7:4]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “The temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord are these (i.e., these buildings).” Elsewhere triple repetition seems to mark a kind of emphasis (cf. Isa 6:3; Jer 22:29; Ezek 21:27 [32 HT]). The triple repetition that follows seems to be Jeremiah’s way of mocking the (false) sense of security that people had in the invincibility of Jerusalem because God dwelt in the temple. They appeared to be treating the temple as some kind of magical charm. A similar feeling had grown up around the ark in the time of the judges (cf. 1 Sam 3:3) and the temple and city of Jerusalem in Micah’s day (cf. Mic 3:11). It is reflected also in some of the Psalms (cf., e.g., Ps 46, especially v. 5).

[7:9]  ¹¹ tn Heb “Will you steal…then say, ‘We are safe’?” Verses 9-10 are one long sentence in the Hebrew text.

[7:9]  ¹² tn Heb “You go/follow after.” See the translator’s note at 2:5 for an explanation of the idiom involved here.

[7:10]  ¹³ tn Heb “over which my name is called.” For this nuance of this idiom cf. BDB 896 s.v. קָרָא Niph.2.d(4) and see the usage in 2 Sam 12:28.

[7:10]  ¹⁴ tn Or “‘We are safe!’ – safe, you think, to go on doing all those hateful things.” Verses 9-10 are all one long sentence in the Hebrew text. It has been broken up for English stylistic reasons. Somewhat literally it reads “Will you steal…then come and stand…and say, ‘We are safe’ so as to/in order to do…” The Hebrew of v. 9 has a series of infinitives which emphasize the bare action of the verb without the idea of time or agent. The effect is to place a kind of staccato like emphasis on the multitude of their sins all of which are violations of one of the Ten Commandments. The final clause in v. 8 expresses purpose or result (probably result) through another infinitive. This long sentence is introduced by a marker (ה interrogative in Hebrew) introducing a rhetorical question in which God expresses his incredulity that they could do these sins, come into the temple and claim the safety of his protection, and then go right back out and commit the same sins. J. Bright (Jeremiah [AB], 52) catches the force nicely: “What? You think you can steal, murder…and then come and stand…and say, ‘We are safe…’ just so that you can go right on…”

[7:11]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “over which my name is called.” For this nuance of this idiom cf. BDB 896 s.v. קָרָא Niph.2.d(4) and see the usage in 2 Sam 12:28.

[7:11]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “Is this house…a den/cave of robbers in your eyes?”

[7:11]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “Behold!”

[7:12]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “where I caused my name to dwell.” The translation does not adequately represent the theology of the Lord’s deliberate identification with a place where he chose to manifest his presence and desired to be worshiped (cf. Exod 20:25; Deut 16:2, 6, 11).

[7:12]  ¹⁹ sn The place in Shiloh…see what I did to it. This refers to the destruction of Shiloh by the Philistines circa 1050 b.c. (cf. Ps 78:60). The destruction of Shiloh is pertinent to the argument. The presence of the tabernacle and ark of the covenant did not prevent Shiloh from being destroyed when Israel sinned. The people of Israel used the ark as a magic charm but it did not prevent them from being defeated or the ark being captured (1 Sam 4:3, 11, 21-22).

[7:20]  ²⁰ tc The MT reads “he set up the beauty of his ornament as pride.” The verb may be repointed as plural without changing the consonantal text. The Syriac reads “their ornaments” (plural), implying עֶדְיָם (’edyam) rather than עֶדְיוֹ (’edyo) and meaning “they were proud of their beautiful ornaments.” This understands “ornaments” in the common sense of women’s jewelry, which then were used to make idols. The singular suffix “his ornaments” would refer to using items from the temple treasury to make idols. D. I. Block points out the foreshadowing of Ezek 16:17 which, with Rashi and the Targum, supports the understanding that this is a reference to temple items. See D. I. Block, Ezekiel (NICOT), 1:265.

[7:22]  ²¹ sn My treasured place probably refers to the temple (however, cf. NLT “my treasured land”).

[7:22]  ²² sn Since the pronouns “it” are both feminine, they do not refer to the masculine “my treasured place”; instead they probably refer to Jerusalem or the land, both of which are feminine in Hebrew.

[7:23]  ²³ tc The Hebrew word “the chain” occurs only here in the OT. The reading of the LXX (“and they will make carnage”) seems to imply a Hebrew text of ַהבַּתּוֹק (habbattoq, “disorder, slaughter”) instead of הָרַתּוֹק (haratoq, “the chain”). The LXX is also translating the verb as a third person plural future and taking this as the end of the preceding verse. As M. Greenberg (Ezekiel [AB], 1:154) notes, this may refer to a chain for a train of exiles but “the context does not speak of exile but of the city’s fall. The versions guess desperately and we can do little better.”

[7:23]  ²⁴ tn Heb “judgment for blood,” i.e., indictment or accountability for bloodshed. The word for “judgment” does not appear in the similar phrase in 9:9.

[7:24]  ²⁵ sn Or “their holy places” (KJV, ASV, NASB, NCV, NRSV).

[24:21]  ²⁶ tn Heb “the pride of your strength” means “your strong pride.”

[24:21]  ²⁷ sn Heb “the delight of your eyes.” Just as Ezekiel was deprived of his beloved wife (v. 16, the “desire” of his “eyes”) so the Lord would be forced to remove the object of his devotion, the temple, which symbolized his close relationship to his covenant people.

[24:21]  ²⁸ tn Heb “the object of compassion of your soul.” The accentuation in the traditional Hebrew text indicates that the descriptive phrases (“the source of your confident pride, the object in which your eyes delight, and your life’s passion”) modify the preceding “my sanctuary.”

[24:21]  ²⁹ tn Heb “fall.”

[3:11]  ³⁰ sn The pronoun Her refers to Jerusalem (note the previous line).

[3:11]  ³¹ tn Heb “judge for a bribe.”

[3:11]  ³² tn Heb “they lean upon” (so KJV, NIV, NRSV); NAB “rely on.”

[3:11]  ³³ tn Heb “Is not the Lord in our midst?” The rhetorical question expects the answer, “Of course he is!”

[3:11]  ³⁴ tn Or “come upon” (so many English versions); NCV “happen to us”; CEV “come to us.”

[2:17]  ³⁵ sn The law refers to the Mosaic law, described mainly in the OT books of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.

[2:17]  ³⁶ tn Grk “boast in God.” This may be an allusion to Jer 9:24.