Discovery BoxPsalms 18:20
Context18:20 The Lord repaid 1 me for my godly deeds; 2
he rewarded 3 my blameless behavior. 4
Psalms 26:6
Context26:6 I maintain a pure lifestyle, 5
so I can appear before your altar, 6 O Lord,
Job 9:30
Context9:30 If I wash myself with snow water, 7
and make my hands clean with lye, 8
Job 17:9
Context17:9 But the righteous man holds to his way,
and the one with clean hands grows stronger. 9
Isaiah 1:15-16
Context1:15 When you spread out your hands in prayer,
I look the other way; 10
when you offer your many prayers,
I do not listen,
because your hands are covered with blood. 11
1:16 12 Wash! Cleanse yourselves!
Remove your sinful deeds 13
from my sight.
Stop sinning!
Isaiah 33:15-16
Context33:15 The one who lives 14 uprightly 15
and speaks honestly;
the one who refuses to profit from oppressive measures
and rejects a bribe; 16
the one who does not plot violent crimes 17
and does not seek to harm others 18 –
33:16 This is the person who will live in a secure place; 19
he will find safety in the rocky, mountain strongholds; 20
he will have food
and a constant supply of water.
Isaiah 33:1
Context33:1 The destroyer is as good as dead, 21
you who have not been destroyed!
The deceitful one is as good as dead, 22
the one whom others have not deceived!
When you are through destroying, you will be destroyed;
when you finish 23 deceiving, others will deceive you!
Isaiah 2:8
Context2:8 Their land is full of worthless idols;
they worship 24 the product of their own hands,
what their own fingers have fashioned.
James 4:8
Context4:8 Draw near to God and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and make your hearts pure, you double-minded. 25
[18:20] 1 tn In this poetic narrative context the prefixed verbal form is best understood as a preterite indicating past tense, not imperfect.
[18:20] 2 tn Heb “according to my righteousness.” As vv. 22-24 make clear, the psalmist refers here to his unwavering obedience to God’s commands. In these verses the psalmist explains that the
[18:20] 3 tn The unreduced Hiphil prefixed verbal form appears to be an imperfect, in which case the psalmist would be generalizing. However, both the preceding and following contexts (see especially v. 24) suggest he is narrating his experience. Despite its unreduced form, the verb is better taken as a preterite. For other examples of unreduced Hiphil preterites, see Pss 55:14a; 68:9a, 10b; 80:8a; 89:43a; 107:38b; 116:6b.
[18:20] 4 tn Heb “according to the purity of my hands he repaid to me.” “Hands” suggest activity and behavior.
[26:6] 5 tn Heb “I wash my hands in innocence.” The psalmist uses an image from cultic ritual to picture his moral lifestyle. The imperfect verbal emphasizes that this is his habit.
[26:6] 6 tn Heb “so I can go around your altar” (probably in ritual procession). Following the imperfect of the preceding line, the cohortative with vav (ו) conjunctive indicates purpose or result.
[9:30] 7 tn The Syriac and Targum Job read with the Qere “with water of [בְמֵי, bÿme] snow.” The Kethib simply has “in [בְמוֹ, bÿmo] snow.” In Ps 51:9 and Isa 1:18 snow forms a simile for purification. Some protest that snow water is not necessarily clean; but if fresh melting snow is meant, then the runoff would be very clear. The image would work well here. Nevertheless, others have followed the later Hebrew meaning for שֶׁלֶג (sheleg) – “soap” (so NIV, NRSV, NLT). Even though that makes a nice parallelism, it is uncertain whether that meaning was in use at the time this text was written.
[9:30] 8 tn The word בֹּר (bor, “lye, potash”) does not refer to purity (Syriac, KJV, ASV), but refers to the ingredient used to make the hands pure or clean. It has the same meaning as בֹּרִית (borit), the alkali or soda made from the ashes of certain plants.
[17:9] 9 tn The last two words are the imperfect verb יֹסִיף (yosif) which means “he adds,” and the abstract noun “energy, strength.” This noun is not found elsewhere; its Piel verb occurs in Job 4:4 and 16:5. “he increases strength.”
[1:15] 10 tn Heb “I close my eyes from you.”
[1:15] 11 sn This does not just refer to the blood of sacrificial animals, but also the blood, as it were, of their innocent victims. By depriving the poor and destitute of proper legal recourse and adequate access to the economic system, the oppressors have, for all intents and purposes, “killed” their victims.
[1:16] 12 sn Having demonstrated the people’s guilt, the Lord calls them to repentance, which will involve concrete action in the socio-economic realm, not mere emotion.
[1:16] 13 sn This phrase refers to Israel’s covenant treachery (cf. Deut 28:10; Jer 4:4; 21:12; 23:2, 22; 25:5; 26:3; 44:22; Hos 9:15; Ps 28:4). In general, the noun ַמעַלְלֵיכֶם (ma’alleykhem) can simply be a reference to deeds, whether good or bad. However, Isaiah always uses it with a negative connotation (cf. 3:8, 10).
[33:15] 14 tn Heb “walks” (so NASB, NIV).
[33:15] 15 tn Or, possibly, “justly”; NAB “who practices virtue.”
[33:15] 16 tn Heb “[who] shakes off his hands from grabbing hold of a bribe.”
[33:15] 17 tn Heb “[who] shuts his ear from listening to bloodshed.”
[33:15] 18 tn Heb “[who] closes his eyes from seeing evil.”
[33:16] 19 tn Heb “he [in the] exalted places will live.”
[33:16] 20 tn Heb “mountain strongholds, cliffs [will be] his elevated place.”
[33:1] 21 tn Heb “Woe [to] the destroyer.”
[33:1] 22 tn Heb “and the deceitful one”; NAB, NIV “O traitor”; NRSV “you treacherous one.” In the parallel structure הוֹי (hoy, “woe [to]”) does double duty.
[33:1] 23 tc The form in the Hebrew text appears to derive from an otherwise unattested verb נָלָה (nalah). The translation follows the Qumran scroll 1QIsaa in reading ככלתך, a Piel infinitival form from the verbal root כָּלָה (kalah), meaning “finish.”
[2:8] 24 tn Or “bow down to” (NIV, NRSV).
[4:8] 25 tn Or “two-minded” (the same description used in 1:8).
