Psalms 18:3

18:3 I called ¹  to the Lord, who is worthy of praise, ² 

and I was delivered from my enemies.

Psalms 86:10

86:10 For you are great and do amazing things.

You alone are God.

Psalms 89:7

89:7 a God who is honored ³  in the great angelic assembly, ⁴ 

and more awesome than ⁵  all who surround him?

Psalms 145:3

145:3 The Lord is great and certainly worthy of praise!

No one can fathom his greatness! ⁶ 

Exodus 18:11

18:11 Now I know that the Lord is greater than all the gods, for in the thing in which they dealt proudly against them he has destroyed them.” ⁷ 

Exodus 18:1

The Advice of Jethro

18:1 ⁸ Jethro, the priest of Midian, Moses’ father-in-law, heard about all that God had done for Moses and for his people Israel, that ⁹  the Lord had brought Israel out of Egypt. ¹⁰ 

Exodus 4:8

4:8 “If ¹¹  they do not believe you or pay attention to ¹²  the former sign, then they may ¹³  believe the latter sign. ¹⁴ 

Nehemiah 9:5

9:5 The Levites – Jeshua, Kadmiel, Bani, Hashabneiah, Sherebiah, Hodiah, Shebaniah, and Pethahiah – said, “Stand up and bless the LORD your God!”

“May you be blessed, O LORD our God, from age to age. ¹⁵  May your glorious name ¹⁶  be blessed; may it be lifted up above all blessing and praise.

[18:3]  ¹ tn In this song of thanksgiving, where the psalmist recalls how the Lord delivered him, the prefixed verbal form is best understood as a preterite indicating past tense, not an imperfect.

[18:3]  ² tn Heb “worthy of praise, I cried out [to] the Lord.” Some take מְהֻלָּל (mÿhullal, “worthy of praise”) with what precedes and translate, “the praiseworthy one,” or “praiseworthy.” However, the various epithets in vv. 1-2 have the first person pronominal suffix, unlike מְהֻלָּל. If one follows the traditional verse division and takes מְהֻלָּל with what follows, it is best understood as substantival and as appositional to יְהוָה (yÿhvah): “[to the] praiseworthy one I cried out, [to the] Lord.”

[89:7]  ³ tn Heb “feared.”

[89:7]  ⁴ tn Heb “in the great assembly of the holy ones.”

[89:7]  ⁵ tn Or perhaps “feared by.”

[145:3]  ⁶ tn Heb “and concerning his greatness there is no searching.”

[18:11]  ⁷ tn The end of this sentence seems not to have been finished, or it is very elliptical. In the present translation the phrase “he has destroyed them” is supplied. Others take the last prepositional phrase to be the completion and supply only a verb: “[he was] above them.” U. Cassuto (Exodus, 216) takes the word “gods” to be the subject of the verb “act proudly,” giving the sense of “precisely (כִּי, ki) in respect of these things of which the gods of Egypt boasted – He is greater than they (עֲלֵיהֶם, ‘alehem).” He suggests rendering the clause, “excelling them in the very things to which they laid claim.”

[18:1]  ⁸ sn This chapter forms the transition to the Law. There has been the deliverance, the testing passages, the provision in the wilderness, and the warfare. Any God who can do all this for his people deserves their allegiance. In chap. 18 the Lawgiver is giving advice, using laws and rulings, but then he is given advice to organize the elders to assist. Thus, when the Law is fully revealed, a system will be in place to administer it. The point of the passage is that a great leader humbly accepts advice from other godly believers to delegate responsibility. He does not try to do it all himself; God does not want one individual to do it all. The chapter has three parts: vv. 1-12 tell how Jethro heard and came and worshiped and blessed; vv. 13-23 have the advice of Jethro, and then vv. 24-27 tell how Moses implemented the plan and Jethro went home. See further E. J. Runions, “Exodus Motifs in 1 Samuel 7 and 8,” EvQ 52 (1980): 130-31; and also see for another idea T. C. Butler, “An Anti-Moses Tradition,” JSOT 12 (1979): 9-15.

[18:1]  ⁹ tn This clause beginning with כִּי (ki) answers the question of what Jethro had heard; it provides a second, explanatory noun clause that is the object of the verb – “he heard (1) all that God had done… (2) that he had brought….” See R. J. Williams, Hebrew Syntax, 81, §490.

[18:1]  ¹⁰ sn This is an important report that Jethro has heard, for the claim of God that he brought Israel out of bondage in Egypt will be the foundation of the covenant stipulations (Exod 20).

[4:8]  ¹¹ tn Heb “and it will be if.”

[4:8]  ¹² tn Heb “listen to the voice of,” meaning listen so as to respond appropriately.

[4:8]  ¹³ tn The nuance of this perfect tense with a vav (ו) consecutive will be equal to the imperfect of possibility – “they may believe.”

[4:8]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “believe the voice of the latter sign,” so as to understand and accept the meaning of the event.

[9:5]  ¹⁵ tc The MT reads here only “from age to age,” without the preceding words “May you be blessed, O LORD our God” which are included in the present translation. But apparently something has dropped out of the text. This phrase occurs elsewhere in the OT as a description of the Lord (see Ps 41:13; 106:48), and it seems best to understand it here in that light. The LXX adds “And Ezra said” at the beginning of v. 6 as a transition: “And Ezra said, ‘You alone are the LORD.” Without this addition (which is not included by most modern English translations) the speakers of vv. 9:5b-10:1 continue to be the Levites of v. 5a.

[9:5]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “the name of your glory.”