Proverbs 15:33

15:33 The fear of the Lord provides wise instruction, ¹ 

and before honor comes humility. ² 

Job 42:6-17

42:6 Therefore I despise myself, ³ 

and I repent in dust and ashes!

VII. The Epilogue (42:7-17)

42:7 After the Lord had spoken these things to Job, he ⁴  said to Eliphaz the Temanite, “My anger is stirred up ⁵  against you and your two friends, because you have not spoken about me what is right, ⁶  as my servant Job has. 42:8 So now take ⁷  seven bulls and seven rams and go to my servant Job and offer a burnt offering for yourselves. And my servant Job will intercede ⁸  for you, and I will respect him, ⁹  so that I do not deal with you ¹⁰  according to your folly, ¹¹  because you have not spoken about me what is right, as my servant Job has.” ¹² 

42:9 So they went, Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite, and did just as the Lord had told them; and the Lord had respect for Job. ¹³ 

42:10 So the Lord ¹⁴  restored what Job had lost ¹⁵  after he prayed for his friends, ¹⁶  and the Lord doubled ¹⁷  all that had belonged to Job. 42:11 So they came to him, all his brothers and sisters and all who had known him before, and they dined ¹⁸  with him in his house. They comforted him and consoled him for all the trouble the Lord had brought on him, and each one gave him a piece of silver ¹⁹  and a gold ring. ²⁰ 

42:12 So the Lord blessed the second part of Job’s life more than the first. He had 14,000 sheep, 6,000 camels, 1,000 yoke of oxen, and 1,000 female donkeys. 42:13 And he also had seven sons ²¹  and three daughters. 42:14 The first daughter he named Jemimah, ²²  the second Keziah, ²³  and the third Keren-Happuch. ²⁴  42:15 Nowhere in all the land could women be found who were as beautiful as Job’s daughters, and their father granted them an inheritance alongside their brothers.

42:16 After this Job lived 140 years; he saw his children and their children to the fourth generation. 42:17 And so Job died, old and full of days.

Isaiah 6:5-13

6:5 I said, “Too bad for me! I am destroyed, ²⁵  for my lips are contaminated by sin, ²⁶  and I live among people whose lips are contaminated by sin. ²⁷  My eyes have seen the king, the Lord who commands armies.” ²⁸  6:6 But then one of the seraphs flew toward me. In his hand was a hot coal he had taken from the altar with tongs. 6:7 He touched my mouth with it and said, “Look, this coal has touched your lips. Your evil is removed; your sin is forgiven.” ²⁹  6:8 I heard the voice of the sovereign master say, “Whom will I send? Who will go on our behalf?” ³⁰  I answered, “Here I am, send me!” 6:9 He said, “Go and tell these people:

‘Listen continually, but don’t understand!

Look continually, but don’t perceive!’

6:10 Make the hearts of these people calloused;

make their ears deaf and their eyes blind!

Otherwise they might see with their eyes and hear with their ears,

their hearts might understand and they might repent and be healed.” ³¹ 

6:11 I replied, “How long, sovereign master?” He said,

“Until cities are in ruins and unpopulated,

and houses are uninhabited,

and the land is ruined and devastated,

6:12 and the Lord has sent the people off to a distant place,

and the very heart of the land is completely abandoned. ³² 

6:13 Even if only a tenth of the people remain in the land, it will again be destroyed, ³³  like one of the large sacred trees ³⁴  or an Asherah pole, when a sacred pillar on a high place is thrown down. ³⁵  That sacred pillar symbolizes the special chosen family.” ³⁶ 

Daniel 9:20

Gabriel Gives to Daniel a Prophecy of Seventy Weeks

9:20 While I was still speaking and praying, confessing my sin and the sin of my people Israel and presenting my request before the LORD my God concerning his holy mountain ³⁷  –

Daniel 9:23

9:23 At the beginning of your requests a message went out, and I have come to convey it to you, for you are of great value in God’s sight. ³⁸  Therefore consider the message and understand the vision: ³⁹ 

Luke 14:11

14:11 For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but ⁴⁰  the one who humbles ⁴¹  himself will be exalted.”

Luke 14:1

Healing Again on the Sabbath

14:1 Now ⁴²  one Sabbath when Jesus went to dine ⁴³  at the house of a leader ⁴⁴  of the Pharisees, ⁴⁵  they were watching ⁴⁶  him closely.

Luke 5:5

5:5 Simon ⁴⁷  answered, ⁴⁸  “Master, ⁴⁹  we worked hard all night and caught nothing! But at your word ⁵⁰  I will lower ⁵¹  the nets.”

[15:33]  ¹ tn Heb “[is] instruction of wisdom” (KJV and NASB similar). The noun translated “wisdom” is an attributive genitive: “wise instruction.”

[15:33]  ² tn Heb “[is] humility” (so KJV). The second clause is a parallel idea in that it stresses how one thing leads to another – humility to honor. Humble submission in faith to the Lord brings wisdom and honor.

[42:6]  ³ tn Or “despise what I said.” There is no object on the verb; Job could be despising himself or the things he said (see L. J. Kuyper, “Repentance of Job,” VT 9 [1959]: 91-94).

[42:7]  ⁴ tn Heb “the Lord.” The title has been replaced by the pronoun (“he”) in the translation for stylistic reasons.

[42:7]  ⁵ tn Heb “is kindled.”

[42:7]  ⁶ tn The form נְכוֹנָה (nÿkhonah) is from כּוּן (kun, “to be firm; to be fixed; to be established”). Here it means “the right thing” or “truth.” The Akkadian word kenu (from כּוּן, kun) connotes justice and truth.

[42:8]  ⁷ tn The imperatives in this verse are plural, so all three had to do this together.

[42:8]  ⁸ tn The verb “pray” is the Hitpael from the root פָּלַל (palal). That root has the main idea of arbitration; so in this stem it means “to seek arbitration [for oneself],” or “to pray,” or “to intercede.”

[42:8]  ⁹ tn Heb “I will lift up his face,” meaning, “I will regard him.”

[42:8]  ¹⁰ tn This clause is a result clause, using the negated infinitive construct.

[42:8]  ¹¹ tn The word “folly” can also be taken in the sense of “disgrace.” If the latter is chosen, the word serves as the direct object. If the former, then it is an adverbial accusative.

[42:8]  ¹² sn The difference between what they said and what Job said, therefore, has to do with truth. Job was honest, spoke the truth, poured out his complaints, but never blasphemed God. For his words God said he told the truth. He did so with incomplete understanding, and with all the impatience and frustration one might expect. Now the friends, however, did not tell what was right about God. They were not honest; rather, they were self-righteous and condescending. They were saying what they thought should be said, but it was wrong.

[42:9]  ¹³ tn The expression “had respect for Job” means God answered his prayer.

[42:10]  ¹⁴ tn The paragraph begins with the disjunctive vav, “Now as for the Lord, he….”

[42:10]  ¹⁵ sn The expression here is interesting: “he returned the captivity of Job,” a clause used elsewhere in the Bible of Israel (see e.g., Ps 126). Here it must mean “the fortunes of Job,” i.e., what he had lost. There is a good deal of literature on this; for example, see R. Borger, “Zu sub sb(i)t,” ZAW 25 (1954): 315-16; and E. Baumann, ZAW 6 (1929): 17ff.

[42:10]  ¹⁶ tn This is a temporal clause, using the infinitive construct with the subject genitive suffix. By this it seems that this act of Job was also something of a prerequisite for restoration – to pray for them.

[42:10]  ¹⁷ tn The construction uses the verb “and he added” with the word “repeat” (or “twice”).

[42:11]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “ate bread.”

[42:11]  ¹⁹ tn The Hebrew word קְשִׂיטָה (qÿsitah) is generally understood to refer to a unit of money, but the value is unknown.

[42:11]  ²⁰ sn This gold ring was worn by women in the nose, or men and women in the ear.

[42:13]  ²¹ tn The word for “seven” is spelled in an unusual way. From this some have thought it means “twice seven,” or fourteen sons. Several commentators take this view; but it is probably not warranted.

[42:14]  ²² sn The Hebrew name Jemimah means “dove.”

[42:14]  ²³ sn The Hebrew name Keziah means “cassia.”

[42:14]  ²⁴ sn The Hebrew name Keren-Happuch means “horn of eye-paint.”

[6:5]  ²⁵ tn Isaiah uses the suffixed (perfect) form of the verb for rhetorical purposes. In this way his destruction is described as occurring or as already completed. Rather than understanding the verb as derived from דָּמַה (damah, “be destroyed”), some take it from a proposed homonymic root דמה, which would mean “be silent.” In this case, one might translate, “I must be silent.”

[6:5]  ²⁶ tn Heb “a man unclean of lips am I.” Isaiah is not qualified to praise the king. His lips (the instruments of praise) are “unclean” because he has been contaminated by sin.

[6:5]  ²⁷ tn Heb “and among a nation unclean of lips I live.”

[6:5]  ²⁸ tn Perhaps in this context, the title has a less militaristic connotation and pictures the Lord as the ruler of the heavenly assembly. See the note at 1:9.

[6:7]  ²⁹ tn Or “ritually cleansed,” or “atoned for” (NIV).

[6:8]  ³⁰ tn Heb “for us.” The plural pronoun refers to the Lord, the seraphs, and the rest of the heavenly assembly.

[6:10]  ³¹ sn Do we take this commission at face value? Does the Lord really want to prevent his people from understanding, repenting, and being healed? Verse 9, which ostensibly records the content of Isaiah’s message, is clearly ironic. As far as we know, Isaiah did not literally proclaim these exact words. The Hebrew imperatival forms are employed rhetorically and anticipate the response Isaiah will receive. When all is said and done, Isaiah might as well preface and conclude every message with these ironic words, which, though imperatival in form, might be paraphrased as follows: “You continually hear, but don’t understand; you continually see, but don’t perceive.” Isaiah might as well command them to be spiritually insensitive, because, as the preceding and following chapters make clear, the people are bent on that anyway. (This ironic command is comparable to saying to a particularly recalcitrant individual, “Go ahead, be stubborn!”) Verse 10b is also clearly sarcastic. On the surface it seems to indicate Isaiah’s hardening ministry will prevent genuine repentance. But, as the surrounding chapters clearly reveal, the people were hardly ready or willing to repent. Therefore, Isaiah’s preaching was not needed to prevent repentance! Verse 10b reflects the people’s attitude and might be paraphrased accordingly: “Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their mind, repent, and be restored, and they certainly wouldn’t want that, would they?” Of course, this sarcastic statement may also reveal that the Lord himself is now bent on judgment, not reconciliation. Just as Pharaoh’s rejection of Yahweh’s ultimatum ignited judgment and foreclosed, at least temporarily, any opportunity for repentance, so the Lord may have come to the point where he has decreed to bring judgment before opening the door for repentance once more. The sarcastic statement in verse 10b would be an emphatic way of making this clear. (Perhaps we could expand our paraphrase: “Otherwise they might…repent, and be restored, and they certainly wouldn’t want that, would they? Besides, it’s too late for that!”) Within this sarcastic framework, verse 10a must also be seen as ironic. As in verse 9 the imperatival forms should be taken as rhetorical and as anticipating the people’s response. One might paraphrase: “Your preaching will desensitize the minds of these people, make their hearing dull, and blind their eyes.” From the outset the Lord might as well command Isaiah to harden the people, because his preaching will end up having that effect. Despite the use of irony, we should still view this as a genuine, albeit indirect, act of divine hardening. After all, God did not have to send Isaiah. By sending him, he drives the sinful people further from him, for Isaiah’s preaching, which focuses on the Lord’s covenantal demands and impending judgment upon covenantal rebellion, forces the people to confront their sin and then continues to desensitize them as they respond negatively to the message. As in the case of Pharaoh, Yahweh’s hardening is not arbitrarily imposed on a righteous or even morally neutral object. Rather his hardening is an element of his righteous judgment on recalcitrant sinners. Ironically, Israel’s rejection of prophetic preaching in turn expedites disciplinary punishment, and brings the battered people to a point where they might be ready for reconciliation. The prophesied judgment (cf. 6:11-13) was fulfilled by 701 b.c. when the Assyrians devastated the land (a situation presupposed by Isa 1:2-20; see especially vv. 4-9). At that time the divine hardening had run its course and Isaiah is able to issue an ultimatum (1:19-20), one which Hezekiah apparently took to heart, resulting in the sparing of Jerusalem (see Isa 36-39 and cf. Jer 26:18-19 with Mic 3:12).This interpretation, which holds in balance both Israel’s moral responsibility and the Lord’s sovereign work among his people, is consistent with other pertinent texts both within and outside the Book of Isaiah. Isa 3:9 declares that the people of Judah “have brought disaster upon themselves,” but Isa 29:9-10 indicates that the Lord was involved to some degree in desensitizing the people. Zech 7:11-12 looks back to the pre-exilic era (cf. v. 7) and observes that the earlier generations stubbornly hardened their hearts, but Ps 81:11-12, recalling this same period, states that the Lord “gave them over to their stubborn hearts.”

[6:12]  ³² tn Heb “and great is the abandonment in the midst of the land.”

[6:13]  ³³ tn Or “be burned” (NRSV); NIV “laid waste.”

[6:13]  ³⁴ tn Heb “like a massive tree or like a big tree” (perhaps, “like a terebinth or like an oak”).

[6:13]  ³⁵ tn The Hebrew text has “which in the felling, a sacred pillar in them.” Some take מַצֶּבֶת (matsevet) as “stump,” and translate, “which, when chopped down, have a stump remaining in them.” But elsewhere מַצֶּבֶת refers to a memorial pillar (2 Sam 18:18) and the word resembles מַצֶּבָה (matsevah, “sacred pillar”). בָּם (bam, “in them”) may be a corruption of בָּמָה (bamah, “high place”; the Qumran scroll 1QIsa^a has במה). אֳשֶׁר (’asher, “which”) becomes a problem in this case, but one might emend the form to וּכְּאֲשֵׁרָה (ukÿ’asherah, “or like an Asherah pole”) and translate, “like one of the large sacred trees or an Asherah pole.” Though the text is difficult, the references to sacred trees and a sacred pillar suggest that the destruction of a high place is in view, an apt metaphor for the judgment of idolatrous Judah.

[6:13]  ³⁶ tn Heb “a holy offspring [is] its sacred pillar.” If מַצֶּבֶת (matsevet) is taken as “stump,” one can see in this statement a brief glimpse of hope. The tree (the nation) is chopped down, but the stump (a righteous remnant) remains from which God can restore the nation. However, if מַצֶּבֶת is taken as “sacred pillar” (מַצֶּבָה, matsevah; see the previous note), it is much more difficult to take the final statement in a positive sense. In this case “holy offspring” alludes to God’s ideal for his covenant people, the offspring of the patriarchs. Ironically that “holy” nation is more like a “sacred pillar” and it will be thrown down like a sacred pillar from a high place and its land destroyed like the sacred trees located at such shrines. Understood in this way, the ironic statement is entirely negative in tone, just like the rest of the preceding announcement of judgment. It also reminds the people of their failure; they did not oppose pagan religion, instead they embraced it. Now they will be destroyed in the same way they should have destroyed paganism.

[9:20]  ³⁷ tn Heb “the holy mountain of my God.”

[9:23]  ³⁸ tn Or “a precious treasure”; KJV “greatly beloved”; NASB, NIV “highly esteemed.”

[9:23]  ³⁹ tn This sentence is perhaps a compound hendiadys (“give serious consideration to the revelatory vision”).

[14:11]  ⁴⁰ tn Here καί (kai) has been translated as “but” to indicate the contrast present in this context, which involves the reversal of expected roles.

[14:11]  ⁴¹ sn The point of the statement the one who humbles himself will be exalted is humility and the reversal imagery used to underline it is common: Luke 1:52-53; 6:21; 10:15; 18:14.

[14:1]  ⁴² tn Grk “Now it happened that one.” The introductory phrase ἐγένετο (egeneto, “it happened that”), common in Luke (69 times) and Acts (54 times), is redundant in contemporary English and has not been translated. Here καί (kai) has been translated as “now” to indicate the transition to a new topic.

[14:1]  ⁴³ tn Grk “to eat bread,” an idiom for participating in a meal.

[14:1]  ⁴⁴ tn Grk “a ruler of the Pharisees.” He was probably a synagogue official.

[14:1]  ⁴⁵ sn See the note on Pharisees in 5:17.

[14:1]  ⁴⁶ sn Watching…closely is a graphic term meaning to lurk and watch; see Luke 11:53-54.

[5:5]  ⁴⁷ tn Grk “And Simon.” Here καί (kai) has not been translated because of differences between Greek and English style.

[5:5]  ⁴⁸ tn Grk “answering, Simon said.” This is redundant in contemporary English and has been simplified in the translation to “Simon answered.”

[5:5]  ⁴⁹ tn The word ἐπιστάτης is a term of respect for a person of high status (see L&N 87.50).

[5:5]  ⁵⁰ tn The expression “at your word,” which shows Peter’s obedience, stands first in the Greek clause for emphasis.

[5:5]  ⁵¹ tn Or “let down.”