Psalms 10:14

10:14 You have taken notice, ¹ 

for ²  you always see ³  one who inflicts pain and suffering. ⁴ 

The unfortunate victim entrusts his cause to you; ⁵ 

you deliver ⁶  the fatherless. ⁷ 

Psalms 11:2

11:2 For look, the wicked ⁸  prepare ⁹  their bows, ¹⁰ 

they put their arrows on the strings,

to shoot in the darkness ¹¹  at the morally upright. ¹² 

Psalms 36:4

36:4 He plans ways to sin while he lies in bed;

he is committed to a sinful lifestyle; ¹³ 

he does not reject what is evil. ¹⁴ 

Psalms 52:2

52:2 Your tongue carries out your destructive plans; ¹⁵ 

it is as effective as a sharp razor, O deceiver. ¹⁶ 

Psalms 55:9-11

55:9 Confuse them, ¹⁷  O Lord!

Frustrate their plans! ¹⁸ 

For I see violence and conflict in the city.

55:10 Day and night they walk around on its walls, ¹⁹ 

while wickedness and destruction ²⁰  are within it.

55:11 Disaster is within it;

violence ²¹  and deceit do not depart from its public square.

Proverbs 1:16

1:16 for they ²²  are eager ²³  to inflict harm, ²⁴ 

and they hasten ²⁵  to shed blood. ²⁶ 

Proverbs 4:16

4:16 For they cannot sleep unless they cause harm; ²⁷ 

they are robbed of sleep ²⁸  until they make someone stumble. ²⁹ 

Micah 2:1-3

Land Robbers Will Lose their Land

2:1 Those who devise sinful plans are as good as dead, ³⁰ 

those who dream about doing evil as they lie in bed. ³¹ 

As soon as morning dawns they carry out their plans, ³² 

because they have the power to do so.

2:2 They confiscate the fields they desire,

and seize the houses they want. ³³ 

They defraud people of their homes, ³⁴ 

and deprive people of the land they have inherited. ³⁵ 

2:3 Therefore the Lord says this: “Look, I am devising disaster for this nation! ³⁶ 

It will be like a yoke from which you cannot free your neck. ³⁷ 

You will no longer ³⁸  walk proudly,

for it will be a time of catastrophe.

Matthew 26:3-4

26:3 Then the chief priests and the elders of the people met together in the palace of the high priest, who was named Caiaphas. 26:4 They ³⁹  planned to arrest Jesus by stealth and kill him.

Acts 23:12

The Plot to Kill Paul

23:12 When morning came, ⁴⁰  the Jews formed ⁴¹  a conspiracy ⁴²  and bound themselves with an oath ⁴³  not to eat or drink anything ⁴⁴  until they had killed Paul.

[10:14]  ¹ tn Heb “you see.” One could translate the perfect as generalizing, “you do take notice.”

[10:14]  ² tn If the preceding perfect is taken as generalizing, then one might understand כִּי (ki) as asseverative: “indeed, certainly.”

[10:14]  ³ tn Here the imperfect emphasizes God’s typical behavior.

[10:14]  ⁴ tn Heb “destruction and suffering,” which here refers metonymically to the wicked, who dish out pain and suffering to their victims.

[10:14]  ⁵ tn Heb “to give into your hand, upon you, he abandons, [the] unfortunate [one].” The syntax is awkward and the meaning unclear. It is uncertain who or what is being given into God’s hand. Elsewhere the idiom “give into the hand” means to deliver into one’s possession. If “to give” goes with what precedes (as the accentuation of the Hebrew text suggests), then this may refer to the wicked man being delivered over to God for judgment. The present translation assumes that “to give” goes with what follows (cf. NEB, NIV, NRSV). The verb יַעֲזֹב (ya’azov) here has the nuance “entrust” (see Gen 39:6; Job 39:11); the direct object (“[his] cause”) is implied.

[10:14]  ⁶ tn Or “help.”

[10:14]  ⁷ tn Heb “[for] one who is fatherless, you are a deliverer.” The noun יָתוֹם (yatom) refers to one who has lost his father (not necessarily his mother, see Ps 109:9).

[11:2]  ⁸ tn In the psalms the “wicked” (רְשָׁעִים, rÿsha’im) are typically proud, practical atheists (Ps 10:2, 4, 11) who hate God’s commands, commit sinful deeds, speak lies and slander (Ps 50:16-20), and cheat others (Ps 37:21). They oppose God and threaten his people (Ps 3:8).

[11:2]  ⁹ tn The Hebrew imperfect verbal form depicts the enemies’ hostile action as underway.

[11:2]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “a bow.”

[11:2]  ¹¹ sn In the darkness. The enemies’ attack, the precise form of which is not indicated, is compared here to a night ambush by archers; the psalmist is defenseless against this deadly attack.

[11:2]  ¹² tn Heb “pure of heart.” The “heart” is here viewed as the seat of one’s moral character and motives. The “pure of heart” are God’s faithful followers who trust in and love the Lord and, as a result, experience his deliverance (see Pss 7:10; 32:11; 36:10; 64:10; 94:15; 97:11).

[36:4]  ¹³ tn Heb “he takes a stand in a way [that is] not good.” The word “way” here refers metaphorically to behavior or life style.

[36:4]  ¹⁴ tn The three imperfect verbal forms in v. 4 highlight the characteristic behavior of the typical evildoer.

[52:2]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “destruction your tongue devises.”

[52:2]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “like a sharpened razor, doer of deceit.” The masculine participle עָשָׂה (’asah) is understood as a substantival vocative, addressed to the powerful man.

[55:9]  ¹⁷ tn Traditionally בַּלַּע (bala’) has been taken to mean “swallow” in the sense of “devour” or “destroy” (cf. KJV), but this may be a homonym meaning “confuse” (see BDB 118 s.v. בַּלַּע; HALOT 135 s.v. III *בֶּלַע). “Their tongue” is the understood object of the verb (see the next line).

[55:9]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “split their tongue,” which apparently means “confuse their speech,” or, more paraphrastically, “frustrate the plans they devise with their tongues.”

[55:10]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “day and night they surround it, upon its walls.” Personified “violence and conflict” are the likely subjects. They are compared to watchmen on the city’s walls.

[55:10]  ²⁰ sn Wickedness and destruction. These terms are also closely associated in Ps 7:14.

[55:11]  ²¹ tn Or “injury, harm.”

[1:16]  ²² tn Heb “their feet.” The term “feet” is a synecdoche of the part (= their feet) for the whole person (= they), stressing the eagerness of the robbers.

[1:16]  ²³ tn Heb “run.” The verb רוּץ (ruts, “run”) functions here as a metonymy of association, meaning “to be eager” to do something (BDB 930 s.v.).

[1:16]  ²⁴ tn Heb “to harm.” The noun רַע (ra’) has a four-fold range of meanings: (1) “pain, harm” (Prov 3:30), (2) “calamity, disaster” (13:21), (3) “distress, misery” (14:32) and (4) “moral evil” (8:13; see BDB 948-49 s.v.). The parallelism with “swift to shed blood” suggests it means “to inflict harm, injury.”

[1:16]  ²⁵ tn The imperfect tense verbs may be classified as habitual or progressive imperfects describing their ongoing continual activity.

[1:16]  ²⁶ tc The BHS editors suggest deleting this entire verse from MT because it does not appear in several versions (Codex B of the LXX, Coptic, Arabic) and is similar to Isa 59:7a. It is possible that it was a scribal gloss (intentional addition) copied into the margin from Isaiah. But this does not adequately explain the differences. It does fit the context well enough to be original.

[4:16]  ²⁷ sn The verb is רָעַע (ra’a’), which means “to do evil; to harm.” The verse is using the figure of hyperbole to stress the preoccupation of some people with causing trouble. R. L. Alden says, “How sick to find peace only at the price of another man’s misfortune” (Proverbs, 47).

[4:16]  ²⁸ sn Heb “their sleep is robbed/seized”; these expressions are metonymical for their restlessness in plotting evil.

[4:16]  ²⁹ sn The Hiphil imperfect (Kethib) means “cause to stumble.” This idiom (from hypocatastasis) means “bring injury/ruin to someone” (BDB 505-6 s.v. כָּשַׁל Hiph.1).

[2:1]  ³⁰ tn Heb “Woe to those who plan sin.” The Hebrew term הוֹי (hoy, “woe”; “ah”) was a cry used in mourning the dead.

[2:1]  ³¹ tn Heb “those who do evil upon their beds.”

[2:1]  ³² tn Heb “at the light of morning they do it.”

[2:2]  ³³ tn Heb “they desire fields and rob [them], and houses and take [them] away.”

[2:2]  ³⁴ tn Heb “and they oppress a man and his home.”

[2:2]  ³⁵ tn Heb “and a man and his inheritance.” The verb עָשַׁק (’ashaq, “to oppress”; “to wrong”) does double duty in the parallel structure and is understood by ellipsis in the second line.

[2:3]  ³⁶ tn Heb “clan” or “extended family.”

[2:3]  ³⁷ tn Heb “from which you will not remove your neck.” The words “It will be like a yoke” are supplied in the translation for clarification.

[2:3]  ³⁸ tn Or “you will not.”

[26:4]  ³⁹ tn Here καί (kai) has not been translated.

[23:12]  ⁴⁰ tn Grk “when it was day.”

[23:12]  ⁴¹ tn Grk “forming a conspiracy, bound.” The participle ποιήσαντες (poihsantes) has been translated as a finite verb due to requirements of contemporary English style.

[23:12]  ⁴² tn L&N 30.72 has ‘some Jews formed a conspiracy’ Ac 23:12”; BDAG 979 s.v. συστροφή 1 has “Judeans came together in a mob 23:12. But in the last pass. the word may also mean – 2. the product of a clandestine gathering, plot, conspiracy” (see also Amos 7:10; Ps 63:3).

[23:12]  ⁴³ tn Or “bound themselves under a curse.” BDAG 63 s.v. ἀναθεματίζω 1 has “trans. put under a curse τινά someone…pleonastically ἀναθέματι ἀ. ἑαυτόν Ac 23:14…ἀ. ἑαυτόν vss. 12, 21, 13 v.l.” On such oaths see m. Shevi’it 3:1-5. The participle λέγοντες (legontes) is redundant in English and has not been translated.

[23:12]  ⁴⁴ tn The word “anything” is not in the Greek text, but is implied. Direct objects were often omitted in Greek when clear from the context, but must be supplied for the modern English reader.