Psalms 25:1

Psalm 25 ¹ 

By David.

25:1 O Lord, I come before you in prayer. ² 

Psalms 143:8

143:8 May I hear about your loyal love in the morning, ³ 

for I trust in you.

Show me the way I should go, ⁴ 

because I long for you. ⁵ 

Deuteronomy 4:19

4:19 When you look up ⁶  to the sky ⁷  and see the sun, moon, and stars – the whole heavenly creation ⁸  – you must not be seduced to worship and serve them, ⁹  for the Lord your God has assigned ¹⁰  them to all the people ¹¹  of the world. ¹² 

Ezekiel 18:6

18:6 does not eat pagan sacrifices on the mountains ¹³  or pray to the idols ¹⁴  of the house of Israel, does not defile his neighbor’s wife, does not have sexual relations with a ¹⁵  woman during her period,

Ezekiel 18:15

18:15 He does not eat pagan sacrifices on the mountains, does not pray to the idols of the house of Israel, does not defile his neighbor’s wife,

Acts 14:15

14:15 “Men, why are you doing these things? We too are men, with human natures ¹⁶  just like you! We are proclaiming the good news to you, so that you should turn ¹⁷  from these worthless ¹⁸  things to the living God, who made the heaven, the earth, ¹⁹  the sea, and everything that is in them.

[25:1]  ¹ sn Psalm 25. The psalmist asks for divine protection, guidance and forgiveness as he affirms his loyalty to and trust in the Lord. This psalm is an acrostic; every verse begins with a successive letter of the Hebrew alphabet, except for v. 18, which, like v. 19, begins with ר (resh) instead of the expected ק (qof). The final verse, which begins with פ (pe), stands outside the acrostic scheme.

[25:1]  ² tn Heb “to you, O Lord, my life I lift up.” To “lift up” one’s “life” to the Lord means to express one’s trust in him through prayer. See Pss 86:4; 143:8.

[143:8]  ³ tn Heb “cause me to hear in the morning your loyal love.” Here “loyal love” probably stands metonymically for an oracle of assurance promising God’s intervention as an expression of his loyal love.

[143:8]  ⁴ sn The way probably refers here to God’s moral and ethical standards and requirements (see v. 10).

[143:8]  ⁵ tn Heb “for to you I lift up my life.” The Hebrew expression נָאָשׂ נֶפֶשׁ (na’as nefesh, “to lift up [one’s] life”) means “to desire; to long for” (see Deut 24:15; Prov 19:18; Jer 22:27; 44:14; Hos 4:8, as well as H. W. Wolff, Anthropology of the Old Testament, 16).

[4:19]  ⁶ tn Heb “lest you lift up your eyes.” In the Hebrew text vv. 16-19 are subordinated to “Be careful” in v. 15, but this makes for an unduly long sentence in English.

[4:19]  ⁷ tn Or “heavens.” The Hebrew term שָׁמַיִם (shamayim) may be translated “heaven(s)” or “sky” depending on the context.

[4:19]  ⁸ tn Heb “all the host of heaven.”

[4:19]  ⁹ tn In the Hebrew text the verbal sequence in v. 19 is “lest you look up…and see…and be seduced…and worship them…and serve them.” However, the first two actions are not prohibited in and of themselves. The prohibition pertains to the final three actions. The first two verbs describe actions that are logically subordinate to the following actions and can be treated as temporal or circumstantial: “lest, looking up…and seeing…, you are seduced.” See Joüon 2:635 §168.h.

[4:19]  ¹⁰ tn Or “allotted.”

[4:19]  ¹¹ tn Or “nations.”

[4:19]  ¹² tn Heb “under all the heaven.”

[18:6]  ¹³ tn Heb, “on the mountains he does not eat.” The mountains are often mentioned as the place where idolatrous sacrifices were eaten (Ezek 20:28; 22:9; 34:6).

[18:6]  ¹⁴ tn Heb, “does not lift up his eyes.” This refers to looking to idols for help.

[18:6]  ¹⁵ tn Heb, “does not draw near to.” “Draw near” is a euphemism for sexual intercourse (Lev 18:14; Deut 22:14; Isa 8:3).

[14:15]  ¹⁶ tn Grk “with the same kinds of feelings,” L&N 25.32. BDAG 706 s.v. ὁμοιοπαθής translates the phrase “with the same nature τινί as someone.” In the immediate context, the contrast is between human and divine nature, and the point is that Paul and Barnabas are mere mortals, not gods.

[14:15]  ¹⁷ tn Grk “in order that you should turn,” with ἐπιστρέφειν (epistrefein) as an infinitive of purpose, but this is somewhat awkward contemporary English. To translate the infinitive construction “proclaim the good news, that you should turn,” which is much smoother English, could give the impression that the infinitive clause is actually the content of the good news, which it is not. The somewhat less formal “to get you to turn” would work, but might convey to some readers manipulativeness on the part of the apostles. Thus “proclaim the good news, so that you should turn,” is used, to convey that the purpose of the proclamation of good news is the response by the hearers. The emphasis here is like 1 Thess 1:9-10.

[14:15]  ¹⁸ tn Or “useless,” “futile.” The reference is to idols and idolatry, worshiping the creation over the Creator (Rom 1:18-32). See also 1 Kgs 16:2, 13, 26; 2 Kgs 17:15; Jer 2:5; 8:19; 3 Macc 6:11.

[14:15]  ¹⁹ tn Grk “and the earth, and the sea,” but καί (kai) has not been translated before “the earth” and “the sea” since contemporary English normally uses a coordinating conjunction only between the last two elements in a series of three or more.