Numbers 33:55

33:55 But if you do not drive out the inhabitants of the land before you, then those whom you allow to remain will be irritants in your eyes and thorns in your side, and will cause you trouble in the land where you will be living.

Joshua 23:13

23:13 know for certain that the Lord our God will no longer drive out these nations from before you. They will trap and ensnare you; ¹  they will be a whip that tears ²  your sides and thorns that blind ³  your eyes until you disappear ⁴  from this good land the Lord your God gave you.

Jude 1:3

Condemnation of the False Teachers

1:3 Dear friends, although I have been eager to write to you ⁵  about our common salvation, I now feel compelled ⁶  instead to write to encourage ⁷  you to contend earnestly ⁸  for the faith ⁹  that was once for all ¹⁰  entrusted to the saints. ¹¹ 

Isaiah 35:9

35:9 No lions will be there,

no ferocious wild animals will be on it ¹²  –

they will not be found there.

Those delivered from bondage will travel on it,

Isaiah 55:13

55:13 Evergreens will grow in place of thorn bushes,

firs will grow in place of nettles;

they will be a monument to the Lord, ¹³ 

a permanent reminder that will remain. ¹⁴ 

Jeremiah 12:14

12:14 “I, the Lord, also have something to say concerning ¹⁵  the wicked nations who surround my land ¹⁶  and have attacked and plundered ¹⁷  the land that I gave to my people as a permanent possession. ¹⁸  I say: ‘I will uproot the people of those nations from their lands and I will free the people of Judah who have been taken there. ¹⁹ 

Micah 7:4

7:4 The best of them is like a thorn;

the most godly among them are more dangerous than a row of thorn bushes. ²⁰ 

The day you try to avoid by posting watchmen –

your appointed time of punishment – is on the way, ²¹ 

and then you will experience confusion. ²² 

Micah 7:2

7:2 Faithful men have disappeared ²³  from the land;

there are no godly men left. ²⁴ 

They all wait in ambush so they can shed blood; ²⁵ 

they hunt their own brother with a net. ²⁶ 

Colossians 1:7

1:7 You learned the gospel ²⁷  from Epaphras, our dear fellow slave ²⁸  – a ²⁹  faithful minister of Christ on our ³⁰  behalf –

Revelation 21:4

21:4 He ³¹  will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death will not exist any more – or mourning, or crying, or pain, for the former things have ceased to exist.” ³² 

[23:13]  ¹ tn Heb “be a trap and a snare to you.”

[23:13]  ² tn Heb “in.”

[23:13]  ³ tn Heb “thorns in your eyes.”

[23:13]  ⁴ tn Or “perish.”

[1:3]  ⁵ tn Grk “while being quite diligent to write to you,” or “while making all haste to write to you.” Two issues are at stake: (1) whether σπουδή (spoudh) here means diligence, eagerness, or haste; (2) whether ποιούμενος γράφειν (poioumeno" grafein) is to be taken conatively (“I was about to write”) or progressively (“I was writing”). Without knowing more of the background, it is difficult to tell which option is to be preferred.

[1:3]  ⁶ tn Grk “I had the necessity.” The term ἀνάγκη (anankh, “necessity”) often connotes urgency or distress. In this context, Jude is indicating that the more comprehensive treatment about the faith shared between himself and his readers was not nearly as urgent as the letter he found it now necessary to write.

[1:3]  ⁷ tn Grk “encouraging.” Παρακαλῶν (parakalwn) is most likely a telic participle. In keeping with other participles of purpose, it is present tense and occurs after the main verb.

[1:3]  ⁸ tn the verb ἐπαγωνίζομαι (epagwnizomai) is an intensive form of ἀγωνίζομαι (agwnizomai). As such, the notion of struggling, fighting, contending, etc. is heightened.

[1:3]  ⁹ tn Τῇ πίστει (th pistei) here is taken as a dative of advantage (“on behalf of the faith”). Though rare (see BDAG 820 s.v. 3), it is not unexampled and must have this meaning here.

[1:3]  ¹⁰ sn The adverb once for all (ἅπαξ, Japax) seems to indicate that the doctrinal convictions of the early church had been substantially codified. That is to say, Jude could appeal to written documents of the Christian faith in his arguments with the false teachers. Most likely, these documents were the letters of Paul and perhaps one or more gospels. First and Second Peter may also have been among the documents Jude has in mind (see also the note on the phrase entrusted to the saints in this verse).

[1:3]  ¹¹ sn I now feel compelled instead…saints. Apparently news of some crisis has reached Jude, prompting him to write a different letter than what he had originally planned. A plausible scenario (assuming authenticity of 2 Peter or at least that there are authentic Petrine snippets in it) is that after Peter’s death, Jude intended to write to the same Gentile readers that Peter had written to (essentially, Paul’s churches). Jude starts by affirming that the gospel the Gentiles had received from Paul was the same as the one the Jewish Christians had received from the other apostles (our common salvation). But in the midst of writing this letter, Jude felt that the present crisis deserved another, shorter piece. The crisis, as the letter reveals, is that the false teachers whom Peter prophesied have now infiltrated the church. The letter of Jude is thus an ad hoc letter, intended to confirm the truth of Peter’s letter and encourage the saints to ground their faith in the written documents of the nascent church, rather than listen to the twisted gospel of the false teachers. In large measure, the letter of Jude illustrates the necessity of clinging to the authority of scripture as opposed to those who claim to be prophets.

[35:9]  ¹² tn Heb “will go up on it”; TEV “will pass that way.”

[55:13]  ¹³ tn Heb “to the Lord for a name.” For שֵׁם (shem) used in the sense of “monument,” see also 56:5, where it stands parallel to יָד (yad).

[55:13]  ¹⁴ tn Or, more literally, “a permanent sign that will not be cut off.”

[12:14]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “Thus says the Lord concerning….” This structure has been adopted to prevent a long dangling introduction to what the Lord has to say that does not begin until the middle of the verse in Hebrew. The first person address was adopted because the speaker is still the Lord as in vv. 7-13.

[12:14]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “my wicked neighbors.”

[12:14]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “touched.” For the nuance of this verb here see BDB 619 s.v. נָגַע Qal.3 and compare the usage in 1 Chr 16:22 where it is parallel to “do harm to” and Zech 2:8 where it is parallel to “plundered.”

[12:14]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “the inheritance which I caused my people Israel to inherit.” Compare 3:18.

[12:14]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “I will uproot the house of Judah from their midst.”

[7:4]  ²⁰ tn Heb “[the] godly from a row of thorn bushes.” The preposition מִן (min) is comparative and the comparative element (perhaps “sharper” is the idea) is omitted. See BDB 582 s.v. 6 and GKC 431 §133.e.

[7:4]  ²¹ tn Heb “the day of your watchmen, your appointed [time], is coming.” The present translation takes “watchmen” to refer to actual sentries. However, the “watchmen” could refer figuratively to the prophets who had warned Judah of approaching judgment. In this case one could translate, “The day your prophets warned about – your appointed time of punishment – is on the way.”

[7:4]  ²² tn Heb “and now will be their confusion.”

[7:2]  ²³ tn Or “have perished”; “have been destroyed.”

[7:2]  ²⁴ tn Heb “and an upright one among men there is not.”

[7:2]  ²⁵ tn Heb “for bloodshed” (so NASB); TEV “for a chance to commit murder.”

[7:2]  ²⁶ sn Micah compares these ungodly people to hunters trying to capture their prey with a net.

[1:7]  ²⁷ tn Or “learned it.” The Greek text simply has “you learned” without the reference to “the gospel,” but “the gospel” is supplied to clarify the sense of the clause. Direct objects were frequently omitted in Greek when clear from the context.

[1:7]  ²⁸ tn The Greek word translated “fellow slave” is σύνδουλος (sundoulo"); the σύν- prefix here denotes association. Though δοῦλος is normally translated “servant,” the word does not bear the connotation of a free individual serving another. BDAG notes that “‘servant’ for ‘slave’ is largely confined to Biblical transl. and early American times…in normal usage at the present time the two words are carefully distinguished” (BDAG 260 s.v.). The most accurate translation is “bondservant” (sometimes found in the ASV for δοῦλος), in that it often indicates one who sells himself into slavery to another. But as this is archaic, few today understand its force.

[1:7]  ²⁹ tn The Greek text has “who (ὅς, Jos) is a faithful minister.” The above translation conveys the antecedent of the relative pronoun quite well and avoids the redundancy with the following substantival participle of v. 8, namely, “who told” (ὁ δηλώσας, Jo dhlwsa").

[1:7]  ³⁰ tc ‡ Judging by the superior witnesses for the first person pronoun ἡμῶν (Jhmwn, “us”; Ì⁴⁶ א* A B D* F G 326* 1505 al) vs. the second person pronoun ὑμῶν (Jumwn, “you”; found in א² C D¹ Ψ 075 33 1739 1881 Ï lat sy co), ἡμῶν should be regarded as original. Although it is possible that ἡμῶν was an early alteration of ὑμῶν (either unintentionally, as dittography, since it comes seventeen letters after the previous ἡμῶν; or intentionally, to conform to the surrounding first person pronouns), this supposition is difficult to maintain in light of the varied and valuable witnesses for this reading. Further, the second person is both embedded in the verb ἐμάθετε (emaqete) and is explicit in v. 8 (ὑμῶν). Hence, the motivation to change to the first person pronoun is counterbalanced by such evidence. The second person pronoun may have been introduced unintentionally via homoioarcton with the ὑπέρ (Juper) that immediately precedes it. As well, the second person reading is somewhat harder for it seems to address Epaphras’ role only in relation to Paul and his colleagues, rather than in relation to the Colossians. Nevertheless, the decision must be based ultimately on external evidence (because the internal evidence can be variously interpreted), and this strongly supports ἡμῶν.

[21:4]  ³¹ tn Grk “God, and he.” Because of the length and complexity of the Greek sentence, a new sentence was started here in the translation. Here καί (kai) has not been translated.

[21:4]  ³² tn For the translation of ἀπέρχομαι (apercomai; here ἀπῆλθαν [aphlqan]) L&N 13.93 has “to go out of existence – ‘to cease to exist, to pass away, to cease.’”