Numbers 23:4

23:4 Then God met Balaam, who ¹  said to him, “I have prepared seven altars, and I have offered on each altar a bull and a ram.”

Micah 3:9-11

3:9 Listen to this, you leaders of the family ²  of Jacob,

you rulers of the nation ³  of Israel!

You ⁴  hate justice

and pervert all that is right.

3:10 You ⁵  build Zion through bloody crimes, ⁶ 

Jerusalem ⁷  through unjust violence.

3:11 Her ⁸  leaders take bribes when they decide legal cases, ⁹ 

her priests proclaim rulings for profit,

and her prophets read omens for pay.

Yet they claim to trust ¹⁰  the Lord and say,

“The Lord is among us. ¹¹ 

Disaster will not overtake ¹²  us!”

Zechariah 7:5-7

7:5 “Speak to all the people and priests of the land as follows: ‘When you fasted and lamented in the fifth and seventh ¹³  months through all these seventy years, did you truly fast for me – for me, indeed? 7:6 And now when you eat and drink, are you not doing so for yourselves?’” 7:7 Should you not have obeyed the words that the Lord cried out through the former prophets when Jerusalem ¹⁴  was peacefully inhabited and her surrounding cities, the Negev, and the Shephelah ¹⁵  were also populated?

Malachi 3:14

3:14 You have said, ‘It is useless to serve God. How have we been helped ¹⁶  by keeping his requirements and going about like mourners before the Lord who rules over all? ¹⁷ 

Matthew 20:11-12

20:11 When ¹⁸  they received it, they began to complain ¹⁹  against the landowner, 20:12 saying, ‘These last fellows worked one hour, and you have made them equal to us who bore the hardship and burning heat of the day.’

Luke 15:29

15:29 but he answered ²⁰  his father, ‘Look! These many years I have worked like a slave ²¹  for you, and I never disobeyed your commands. Yet ²²  you never gave me even a goat ²³  so that I could celebrate with my friends!

Luke 18:9-12

The Parable of the Pharisee and Tax Collector

18:9 Jesus ²⁴  also told this parable to some who were confident that they were righteous and looked down ²⁵  on everyone else. 18:10 “Two men went up ²⁶  to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee ²⁷  and the other a tax collector. ²⁸  18:11 The Pharisee stood and prayed about himself like this: ²⁹  ‘God, I thank ³⁰  you that I am not like other people: ³¹  extortionists, ³²  unrighteous people, ³³  adulterers – or even like this tax collector. ³⁴  18:12 I fast twice ³⁵  a week; I give a tenth ³⁶  of everything I get.’

[23:4]  ¹ tn The relative pronoun is added here in place of the conjunction to clarify that Balaam is speaking to God and not vice versa.

[3:9]  ² tn Heb “house.”

[3:9]  ³ tn Heb “house.”

[3:9]  ⁴ tn Heb “who.” A new sentence was begun here in the translation for stylistic reasons (also at the beginning of v. 10).

[3:10]  ⁵ tn Heb “who.”

[3:10]  ⁶ tn Heb “bloodshed” (so NAB, NASB, NIV); NLT “murder.”

[3:10]  ⁷ map For location see Map5 B1; Map6 F3; Map7 E2; Map8 F2; Map10 B3; JP1 F4; JP2 F4; JP3 F4; JP4 F4.

[3:11]  ⁸ sn The pronoun Her refers to Jerusalem (note the previous line).

[3:11]  ⁹ tn Heb “judge for a bribe.”

[3:11]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “they lean upon” (so KJV, NIV, NRSV); NAB “rely on.”

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

[3:11]  ¹² tn Or “come upon” (so many English versions); NCV “happen to us”; CEV “come to us.”

[7:5]  ¹³ tn The seventh month apparently refers to the anniversary of the assassination of Gedaliah, governor of Judah (Jer 40:13-14; 41:1), in approximately 581 b.c.

[7:7]  ¹⁴ map For location see Map5 B1; Map6 F3; Map7 E2; Map8 F2; Map10 B3; JP1 F4; JP2 F4; JP3 F4; JP4 F4.

[7:7]  ¹⁵ sn The Shephelah is the geographical region between the Mediterranean coastal plain and the Judean hill country. The Hebrew term can be translated “lowlands” (cf. ASV), “foothills” (NAB, NASB, NLT), or “steppes.”

[3:14]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “What [is the] profit”; NIV “What did we gain.”

[3:14]  ¹⁷ sn The people’s public display of self-effacing piety has gone unrewarded by the Lord. The reason, of course, is that it was blatantly hypocritical.

[20:11]  ¹⁸ tn Here δέ (de) has not been translated.

[20:11]  ¹⁹ tn The imperfect verb ἐγόγγυζον (egonguzon) has been translated ingressively.

[15:29]  ²⁰ tn Grk “but answering, he said.” This is somewhat redundant in contemporary English and has been simplified to “but he answered.”

[15:29]  ²¹ tn Or simply, “have served,” but in the emotional context of the older son’s outburst the translation given is closer to the point.

[15:29]  ²² tn Here καί (kai) has been translated as “yet” to bring out the contrast indicated by the context.

[15:29]  ²³ sn You never gave me even a goat. The older son’s complaint was that the generous treatment of the younger son was not fair: “I can’t get even a little celebration with a basic food staple like a goat!”

[18:9]  ²⁴ tn Grk “He”; the referent has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[18:9]  ²⁵ tn Grk “and despised.” This is a second parable with an explanatory introduction.

[18:10]  ²⁶ sn The temple is on a hill in Jerusalem, so one would go up to enter its precincts.

[18:10]  ²⁷ sn See the note on Pharisees in 5:17.

[18:10]  ²⁸ sn See the note on tax collectors in 3:12.

[18:11]  ²⁹ tn Or “stood by himself and prayed like this.” The prepositional phrase πρὸς ἑαυτόν (pros eauton, “to/about himself”) could go with either the aorist participle σταθείς (staqeis, “stood”) or with the imperfect verb προσηύχετο (proshuceto, “he prayed”). If taken with the participle, then the meaning would seem at first glance to be: “stood ‘by himself’,” or “stood ‘alone’.” Now it is true that πρός can mean “by” or “with” when used with intransitive verbs such as ἵστημι ({isthmi, “I stand”; cf. BDAG 874 s.v. πρός 2.a), but πρὸς ἑαυτόν together never means “by himself” or “alone” in biblical Greek. On the other hand, if πρὸς ἑαυτόν is taken with the verb, then two different nuances emerge, both of which highlight in different ways the principal point Jesus seems to be making about the arrogance of this religious leader: (1) “prayed to himself,” but not necessarily silently, or (2) “prayed about himself,” with the connotation that he prayed out loud, for all to hear. Since his prayer is really a review of his moral résumé, directed both at advertising his own righteousness and exposing the perversion of the tax collector, whom he actually mentions in his prayer, the latter option seems preferable. If this is the case, then the Pharisee’s mention of God is really nothing more than a formality.

[18:11]  ³⁰ sn The Pharisee’s prayer started out as a thanksgiving psalm to God, but the praise ended up not being about God.

[18:11]  ³¹ tn Here the plural Greek term ἀνθρώπων (anqrwpwn) is used as a generic and can refer to both men and women (NASB, NRSV, “people”; NLT, “everyone else”; NAB, “the rest of humanity”).

[18:11]  ³² tn Or “swindlers” (BDAG 134 s.v. ἅρπαξ 2); see also Isa 10:2; Josephus, J. W. 6.3.4 [6.203].

[18:11]  ³³ sn A general category for “sinners” (1 Cor 6:9; Lev 19:3).

[18:11]  ³⁴ sn Note what the Pharisee assumes about the righteousness of this tax collector by grouping him with extortionists, unrighteous people, and adulterers.

[18:12]  ³⁵ sn The law only required fasting on the Day of Atonement. Such voluntary fasting as this practiced twice a week by the Pharisee normally took place on Monday and Thursday.

[18:12]  ³⁶ tn Or “I tithe.”