Numbers 22:18

22:18 Balaam replied ¹  to the servants of Balak, “Even if Balak would give me his palace full of silver and gold, I could not transgress the commandment ²  of the Lord my God ³  to do less or more.

Psalms 33:10

33:10 The Lord frustrates ⁴  the decisions of the nations;

he nullifies the plans ⁵  of the peoples.

Psalms 76:10

76:10 Certainly ⁶  your angry judgment upon men will bring you praise; ⁷ 

you reveal your anger in full measure. ⁸ 

Proverbs 19:21

19:21 There are many plans ⁹  in a person’s mind, ¹⁰ 

but it ¹¹  is the counsel ¹²  of the Lord which will stand.

Isaiah 44:25

44:25 who frustrates the omens of the empty talkers ¹³ 

and humiliates ¹⁴  the omen readers,

who overturns the counsel of the wise men ¹⁵ 

and makes their advice ¹⁶  seem foolish,

Isaiah 46:10

46:10 who announces the end from the beginning

and reveals beforehand ¹⁷  what has not yet occurred,

who says, ‘My plan will be realized,

I will accomplish what I desire,’

Isaiah 47:12

47:12 Persist ¹⁸  in trusting ¹⁹  your amulets

and your many incantations,

which you have faithfully recited ²⁰  since your youth!

Maybe you will be successful ²¹  –

maybe you will scare away disaster. ²² 

[22:18]  ¹ tn Heb “answered and said.”

[22:18]  ² tn Heb “mouth.”

[22:18]  ³ sn In the light of subsequent events one should not take too seriously that Balaam referred to Yahweh as his God. He is referring properly to the deity for which he is acting as the agent.

[33:10]  ⁴ tn Heb “breaks” or “destroys.” The Hebrew perfect verbal forms here and in the next line generalize about the Lord’s activity.

[33:10]  ⁵ tn Heb “thoughts.”

[76:10]  ⁶ tn Or “for.”

[76:10]  ⁷ tn Heb “the anger of men will praise you.” This could mean that men’s anger (subjective genitive), when punished by God, will bring him praise, but this interpretation does not harmonize well with the next line. The translation assumes that God’s anger is in view here (see v. 7) and that “men” is an objective genitive. God’s angry judgment against men brings him praise because it reveals his power and majesty (see vv. 1-4).

[76:10]  ⁸ tn Heb “the rest of anger you put on.” The meaning of the statement is not entirely clear. Perhaps the idea is that God, as he prepares for battle, girds himself with every last ounce of his anger, as if it were a weapon.

[19:21]  ⁹ sn The plans (from the Hebrew verb חָשַׁב [khashav], “to think; to reckon; to devise”) in the human heart are many. But only those which God approves will succeed.

[19:21]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “in the heart of a man” (cf. NAB, NIV). Here “heart” is used for the seat of thoughts, plans, and reasoning, so the translation uses “mind.” In contemporary English “heart” is more often associated with the seat of emotion than with the seat of planning and reasoning.

[19:21]  ¹¹ tn Heb “but the counsel of the Lord, it will stand.” The construction draws attention to the “counsel of the Lord”; it is an independent nominative absolute, and the resumptive independent pronoun is the formal subject of the verb.

[19:21]  ¹² tn The antithetical parallelism pairs “counsel” with “plans.” “Counsel of the Lord” (עֲצַת יְהוָה, ’atsat yehvah) is literally “advice” or “counsel” with the connotation of “plan” in this context (cf. NIV, NRSV, NLT “purpose”; NCV “plan”; TEV “the Lord’s will”).

[44:25]  ¹³ tc The Hebrew text has בַּדִּים (baddim), perhaps meaning “empty talkers” (BDB 95 s.v. III בַּד). In the four other occurrences of this word (Job 11:3; Isa 16:6; Jer 48:30; 50:36) the context does not make the meaning of the term very clear. Its primary point appears to be that the words spoken are meaningless or false. In light of its parallelism with “omen readers,” some have proposed an emendation to בָּרִים (barim, “seers”). The Mesopotamian baru-priests were divination specialists who played an important role in court life. See R. Wilson, Prophecy and Society in Ancient Israel, 93-98. Rather than supporting an emendation, J. N. Oswalt (Isaiah [NICOT], 2:189, n. 79) suggests that Isaiah used בַּדִּים purposively as a derisive wordplay on the Akkadian word baru (in light of the close similarity of the d and r consonants).

[44:25]  ¹⁴ tn Or “makes fools of” (NIV, NRSV); NAB and NASB both similar.

[44:25]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “who turns back the wise” (so NRSV); NIV “overthrows the learning of the wise”; TEV “The words of the wise I refute.”

[44:25]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “their knowledge” (so KJV, NAB, NASB, NRSV).

[46:10]  ¹⁷ tn Or “from long ago”; KJV, NASB, NIV, NRSV “from ancient times.”

[47:12]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “stand” (so KJV, ASV); NASB, NRSV “Stand fast.”

[47:12]  ¹⁹ tn The word “trusting” is supplied in the translation for clarification. See v. 9.

[47:12]  ²⁰ tn Heb “in that which you have toiled.”

[47:12]  ²¹ tn Heb “maybe you will be able to profit.”

[47:12]  ²² tn Heb “maybe you will cause to tremble.” The object “disaster” is supplied in the translation for clarification. See the note at v. 9.