Psalms 104:14-35

104:14 He provides grass ¹  for the cattle,

and crops for people to cultivate, ² 

so they can produce food from the ground, ³ 

104:15 as well as wine that makes people feel so good, ⁴ 

and so they can have oil to make their faces shine, ⁵ 

as well as food that sustains people’s lives. ⁶ 

104:16 The trees of the Lord ⁷  receive all the rain they need, ⁸ 

the cedars of Lebanon which he planted,

104:17 where the birds make nests,

near the evergreens in which the herons live. ⁹ 

104:18 The wild goats live in the high mountains; ¹⁰ 

the rock badgers find safety in the cliffs.

104:19 He made the moon to mark the months, ¹¹ 

and the sun sets according to a regular schedule. ¹² 

104:20 You make it dark and night comes, ¹³ 

during which all the beasts of the forest prowl around.

104:21 The lions roar for prey,

seeking their food from God. ¹⁴ 

104:22 When the sun rises, they withdraw

and sleep ¹⁵  in their dens.

104:23 Men then go out to do their work,

and labor away until evening. ¹⁶ 

104:24 How many living things you have made, O Lord! ¹⁷ 

You have exhibited great skill in making all of them; ¹⁸ 

the earth is full of the living things you have made.

104:25 Over here is the deep, wide sea, ¹⁹ 

which teems with innumerable swimming creatures, ²⁰ 

living things both small and large.

104:26 The ships travel there,

and over here swims the whale ²¹  you made to play in it.

104:27 All of your creatures ²²  wait for you

to provide them with food on a regular basis. ²³ 

104:28 You give food to them and they receive it;

you open your hand and they are filled with food. ²⁴ 

104:29 When you ignore them, they panic. ²⁵ 

When you take away their life’s breath, they die

and return to dust.

104:30 When you send your life-giving breath, they are created,

and you replenish the surface of the ground.

104:31 May the splendor of the Lord endure! ²⁶ 

May the Lord find pleasure in the living things he has made! ²⁷ 

104:32 He looks down on the earth and it shakes;

he touches the mountains and they start to smolder.

104:33 I will sing to the Lord as long as I live;

I will sing praise to my God as long as I exist! ²⁸ 

104:34 May my thoughts ²⁹  be pleasing to him!

I will rejoice in the Lord.

104:35 May sinners disappear ³⁰  from the earth,

and the wicked vanish!

Praise the Lord, O my soul!

Praise the Lord!

Psalms 145:9

145:9 The Lord is good to all,

and has compassion on all he has made. ³¹ 

Psalms 147:9

147:9 He gives food to the animals,

and to the young ravens when they chirp. ³² 

Job 7:20

7:20 If ³³  I have sinned – what have I done to you, ³⁴ 

O watcher of men? ³⁵ 

Why have you set me as your target? ³⁶ 

Have I become a burden to you? ³⁷ 

Jonah 4:11

4:11 Should I ³⁸  not be even more ³⁹  concerned ⁴⁰  about Nineveh, this enormous city? ⁴¹  There are more than one hundred twenty thousand people in it who do not know right from wrong, ⁴²  as well as many animals!” ⁴³ 

Matthew 10:29-30

10:29 Aren’t two sparrows sold for a penny? ⁴⁴  Yet not one of them falls to the ground apart from your Father’s will. ⁴⁵  10:30 Even all the hairs on your head are numbered.

Matthew 10:1

Sending Out the Twelve Apostles

10:1 Jesus ⁴⁶  called his twelve disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits ⁴⁷  so they could cast them out and heal every kind of disease and sickness. ⁴⁸ 

Matthew 4:10

4:10 Then Jesus said to him, “Go away, ⁴⁹  Satan! For it is written: ‘You are to worship the Lord your God and serve only him.’” ⁵⁰ 

[104:14]  ¹ tn Heb “causes the grass to sprout up.”

[104:14]  ² tn Heb “for the service of man” (see Gen 2:5).

[104:14]  ³ tn Heb “to cause food to come out from the earth.”

[104:15]  ⁴ tn Heb “and wine [that] makes the heart of man happy.”

[104:15]  ⁵ tn Heb “to make [the] face shine from oil.” The Hebrew verb צָהַל (tsahal, “to shine”) occurs only here in the OT. It appears to be an alternate form of צָהַר (tsahar), a derivative from צָהָרִים (tsaharim, “noon”).

[104:15]  ⁶ tn Heb “and food [that] sustains the heart of man.”

[104:16]  ⁷ sn The trees of the Lord are the cedars of Lebanon (see the next line), which are viewed as special because of their great size and grandeur. The Lebanon forest was viewed elsewhere in the OT as the “garden of God” (see Ezek 31:8).

[104:16]  ⁸ tn Heb “are satisfied,” which means here that they receive abundant rain (see v. 13).

[104:17]  ⁹ tn Heb “[the] heron [in the] evergreens [is] its home.”

[104:18]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “the high mountains [are] for the goats.”

[104:19]  ¹¹ tn Heb “he made [the] moon for appointed times.” The phrase “appointed times” probably refers to the months of the Hebrew lunar calendar.

[104:19]  ¹² tn Heb more metaphorically, “knows its setting.”

[104:20]  ¹³ tn Heb “you make darkness, so that it might be night.”

[104:21]  ¹⁴ sn The lions’ roaring is viewed as a request for food from God.

[104:22]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “lie down.”

[104:23]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “man goes out to his work, and to his labor until evening.”

[104:24]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “How many [are] your works, O Lord.” In this case the Lord’s “works” are the creatures he has made, as the preceding and following contexts make clear.

[104:24]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “all of them with wisdom you have made.”

[104:25]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “this [is] the sea, great and broad of hands [i.e., “sides” or “shores”].”

[104:25]  ²⁰ tn Heb “where [there are] swimming things, and without number.”

[104:26]  ²¹ tn Heb “[and] this Leviathan, [which] you formed to play in it.” Elsewhere Leviathan is a multiheaded sea monster that symbolizes forces hostile to God (see Ps 74:14; Isa 27:1), but here it appears to be an actual marine creature created by God, probably some type of whale.

[104:27]  ²² tn Heb “All of them.” The pronoun “them” refers not just to the sea creatures mentioned in vv. 25-26, but to all living things (see v. 24). This has been specified in the translation as “all of your creatures” for clarity.

[104:27]  ²³ tn Heb “to give their food in its time.”

[104:28]  ²⁴ tn Heb “they are satisfied [with] good.”

[104:29]  ²⁵ tn Heb “you hide your face, they are terrified.”

[104:31]  ²⁶ tn Heb “be forever.”

[104:31]  ²⁷ tn Or “rejoice in his works.”

[104:33]  ²⁸ tn Heb “in my duration.”

[104:34]  ²⁹ tn That is, the psalmist’s thoughts as expressed in his songs of praise.

[104:35]  ³⁰ tn Or “be destroyed.”

[145:9]  ³¹ tn Heb “and his compassion is over all his works.”

[147:9]  ³² tn Heb “which cry out.”

[7:20]  ³³ tn The simple perfect verb can be used in a conditional sentence without a conditional particle present (see GKC 494 §159.h).

[7:20]  ³⁴ sn Job is not here saying that he has sinned; rather, he is posing the hypothetical condition – if he had sinned, what would that do to God? In other words, he has not really injured God.

[7:20]  ³⁵ sn In the Bible God is often described as watching over people to protect them from danger (see Deut 32:10; Ps 31:23). However, here it is a hostile sense, for God may detect sin and bring it to judgment.

[7:20]  ³⁶ tn This word is a hapax legomenon from the verb פָּגָע (paga’, “meet, encounter”); it would describe what is hit or struck (as nouns of this pattern can indicate the place of the action) – the target.

[7:20]  ³⁷ tn In the prepositional phrase עָלַי (’alay) the results of a scribal change is found (these changes were called tiqqune sopherim, “corrections of the scribes” made to avoid using improper language about God). The prepositional phrase would have been עָלֶךָ (’alekha, “to you,” as in the LXX). But it offended the Jews to think of Job’s being burdensome to God. Job’s sin could have repercussions on him, but not on God.

[4:11]  ³⁸ tn The emphatic use of the independent pronouns “you” and “I” (אַתָּה, ’attah, and אֲנִי, ’ani) in vv. 10 and 11 creates an ironic comparison and emphasizes the strong contrast between the attitudes of Jonah and the Lord.

[4:11]  ³⁹ tn Heb “You…Should I not spare…?” This is an a fortiori argument from lesser to greater. Since Jonah was “upset” (חוּס, khus) about such a trivial matter as the death of a little plant (the lesser), God had every right to “spare” (חוּס) the enormously populated city of Nineveh (the greater). The phrase “even more” does not appear in Hebrew but is implied by this a fortiori argument.

[4:11]  ⁴⁰ tn Heb “Should I not spare?”; or “Should I not show compassion?” The verb חוּס (khus) has a basic three-fold range of meanings: (1) “to be troubled about,” (2) “to look with compassion upon,” and (3) “to show pity, to spare (someone from death/judgment)” (HALOT 298 s.v. חוס; BDB 299 s.v. חוּס). In v. 10 it refers to Jonah’s lament over the death of his plant, meaning “to be upset about” or “to be troubled about” (HALOT 298 s.v. 1.c). However, here in v. 11 it means “to show pity, spare” from judgment (BDB 298 s.v. b; HALOT 298 s.v. 1.a; e.g., 1 Sam 24:11; Jer 21:7; Ezek 24:14). It is often used in contexts which contemplate whether God will or will not spare a sinful people from judgment (Ezek 5:11; 7:4, 9; 8:19; 9:5, 10; 20:17). So this repetition of the same verb but in a different sense creates a polysemantic wordplay in vv. 10-11. However, the wordplay is obscured by the appropriate translation for each usage – “be upset about” in v. 10 and “to spare” in v. 11 – therefore, the translation above attempts to bring out the wordplay in English: “to be [even more] concerned about.”

[4:11]  ⁴¹ tn Heb “the great city.”

[4:11]  ⁴² tn Heb “their right from their left.” Interpreters wonder exactly what deficiency is meant by the phrase “do not know their right from their left.” The expression does not appear elsewhere in biblical Hebrew. It probably does not mean, as sometimes suggested, that Nineveh had 120,000 small children (the term אָדָם, ’adam, “people,” does not seem to be used of children alone). In any case, it refers to a deficiency in discernment that Jonah and the initial readers of Jonah would no doubt have considered themselves free of. For partial parallels see 2 Sam 19:35; Eccl 10:2; Ezek 22:26; 44:23.

[4:11]  ⁴³ tn Heb “and many animals.”

[10:29]  ⁴⁴ sn The penny refers to an assarion, a small Roman copper coin. One of them was worth one-sixteenth of a denarius or less than a half hour’s average wage. Sparrows were the cheapest items sold in the market. God knows about even the most financially insignificant things; see Isa 49:15.

[10:29]  ⁴⁵ tn Or “to the ground without the knowledge and consent of your Father.”

[10:1]  ⁴⁶ tn Grk “And he.”

[10:1]  ⁴⁷ sn Unclean spirits refers to evil spirits.

[10:1]  ⁴⁸ tn Grk “and every [kind of] sickness.” Here “every” was not repeated in the translation for stylistic reasons.

[4:10]  ⁴⁹ tc The majority of later witnesses (C² D L Z 33 Ï) have “behind me” (ὀπίσω μου; opisw mou) after “Go away.” But since this is the wording in Matt 16:23, where the text is certain, scribes most likely added the words here to conform to the later passage. Further, the shorter reading has superior support (א B C*^vid K P W Δ 0233 Ë^1,13 565 579* 700 al). Thus, both externally and internally, the shorter reading is strongly preferred.

[4:10]  ⁵⁰ sn A quotation from Deut 6:13. The word “only” is an interpretive expansion not found in either the Hebrew or Greek (LXX) text of the OT.