Psalms 25:10

25:10 The Lord always proves faithful and reliable ¹ 

to those who follow the demands of his covenant. ² 

Psalms 132:12

132:12 If your sons keep my covenant

and the rules I teach them,

their sons will also sit on your throne forever.”

Genesis 17:9-10

17:9 Then God said to Abraham, “As for you, you must keep ³  the covenantal requirement ⁴  I am imposing on you and your descendants after you throughout their generations. 17:10 This is my requirement that you and your descendants after you must keep: ⁵  Every male among you must be circumcised. ⁶ 

Exodus 19:5

19:5 And now, if you will diligently listen to me ⁷  and keep ⁸  my covenant, then you will be my ⁹  special possession ¹⁰  out of all the nations, for all the earth is mine,

Exodus 24:8

24:8 So Moses took the blood and splashed it on ¹¹  the people and said, “This is the blood of the covenant ¹²  that the Lord has made with you in accordance with all these words.”

Deuteronomy 7:9

7:9 So realize that the Lord your God is the true God, ¹³  the faithful God who keeps covenant faithfully ¹⁴  with those who love him and keep his commandments, to a thousand generations,

Deuteronomy 7:2

7:2 and he ¹⁵  delivers them over to you and you attack them, you must utterly annihilate ¹⁶  them. Make no treaty ¹⁷  with them and show them no mercy!

Deuteronomy 34:1

The Death of Moses

34:1 Then Moses ascended from the deserts of Moab to Mount Nebo, to the summit of Pisgah, which is opposite Jericho. ¹⁸  The Lord showed him the whole land – Gilead to Dan,

Hebrews 8:6-13

8:6 But ¹⁹  now Jesus ²⁰  has obtained a superior ministry, since ²¹  the covenant that he mediates is also better and is enacted ²²  on better promises. ²³ 

8:7 For if that first covenant had been faultless, no one would have looked for a second one. ²⁴  8:8 But ²⁵  showing its fault, ²⁶  God ²⁷  says to them, ²⁸ 

“Look, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will complete a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah.

8:9 “It will not be like the covenant ²⁹  that I made with their fathers, on the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they did not continue in my covenant and I had no regard for them, says the Lord.

8:10 “For this is the covenant that I will establish with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord. I will put ³⁰  my laws in their minds ³¹  and I will inscribe them on their hearts. And I will be their God and they will be my people. ³² 

8:11 “And there will be no need at all ³³  for each one to teach his countryman or each one to teach his brother saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ since they will all know me, from the least to the greatest. ³⁴ 

8:12 “For I will be merciful toward their evil deeds, and their sins I will remember no longer.” ³⁵ 

8:13 When he speaks of a new covenant, ³⁶  he makes the first obsolete. Now what is growing obsolete and aging is about to disappear. ³⁷ 

[25:10]  ¹ tn Heb “all the paths of the Lord are faithful and trustworthy.” The Lord’s “paths” refer here to his characteristic actions.

[25:10]  ² tn Heb “to the ones who keep his covenant and his testimonies.”

[17:9]  ³ tn The imperfect tense could be translated “you shall keep” as a binding command; but the obligatory nuance (“must”) captures the binding sense better.

[17:9]  ⁴ tn Heb “my covenant.” The Hebrew word בְּרִית (bÿrit) can refer to (1) the agreement itself between two parties (see v. 7), (2) the promise made by one party to another (see vv. 2-3, 7), (3) an obligation placed by one party on another, or (4) a reminder of the agreement. In vv. 9-10 the word refers to a covenantal obligation which God gives to Abraham and his descendants.

[17:10]  ⁵ tn Heb “This is my covenant that you must keep between me and you and your descendants after you.”

[17:10]  ⁶ sn For a discussion of male circumcision as the sign of the covenant in this passage see M. V. Fox, “The Sign of the Covenant: Circumcision in the Light of the Priestly ‘ot Etiologies,” RB 81 (1974): 557-96.

[19:5]  ⁷ tn Heb “listen to my voice.” The construction uses the imperfect tense in the conditional clause, preceded by the infinitive absolute from the same verb. The idiom “listen to the voice of” implies obedience, not just mental awareness of sound.

[19:5]  ⁸ tn The verb is a perfect tense with vav (ו) consecutive; it continues the idea in the protasis of the sentence: “and [if you will] keep.”

[19:5]  ⁹ tn The lamed preposition expresses possession here: “to me” means “my.”

[19:5]  ¹⁰ tn The noun is סְגֻלָּה (sÿgullah), which means a special possession. Israel was to be God’s special possession, but the prophets will later narrow it to the faithful remnant. All the nations belong to God, but Israel was to stand in a place of special privilege and enormous responsibility. See Deut 7:6; 14:2; 26:18; Ps 135:4; and Mal 3:17. See M. Greenburg, “Hebrew sÿgulla: Akkadian sikiltu,” JAOS 71 (1951): 172ff.

[24:8]  ¹¹ tn Given the size of the congregation, the preposition might be rendered here “toward the people” rather than on them (all).

[24:8]  ¹² sn The construct relationship “the blood of the covenant” means “the blood by which the covenant is ratified” (S. R. Driver, Exodus, 254). The parallel with the inauguration of the new covenant in the blood of Christ is striking (see, e.g., Matt 26:28, 1 Cor 11:25). When Jesus was inaugurating the new covenant, he was bringing to an end the old.

[7:9]  ¹³ tn Heb “the God.” The article here expresses uniqueness; cf. TEV “is the only God”; NLT “is indeed God.”

[7:9]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “who keeps covenant and loyalty.” The syndetic construction of בְּרִית (bÿrit) and חֶסֶד (khesed) should be understood not as “covenant” plus “loyalty” but as an adverbial construction in which חֶסֶד (“loyalty”) modifies the verb שָׁמַר (shamar, “keeps”).

[7:2]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “the Lord your God.” The pronoun has been used in the translation for stylistic reasons to avoid redundancy.

[7:2]  ¹⁶ tn In the Hebrew text the infinitive absolute before the finite verb emphasizes the statement. The imperfect has an obligatory nuance here. Cf. ASV “shalt (must NRSV) utterly destroy them”; CEV “must destroy them without mercy.”

[7:2]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “covenant” (so NASB, NRSV); TEV “alliance.”

[34:1]  ¹⁸ sn For the geography involved, see note on the term “Pisgah” in Deut 3:17.

[8:6]  ¹⁹ sn The Greek text indicates a contrast between vv. 4-5 and v. 6 that is difficult to render in English: Jesus’ status in the old order of priests (vv. 4-5) versus his superior ministry (v. 6).

[8:6]  ²⁰ tn Grk “he”; in the translation the referent (Jesus) has been specified for clarity.

[8:6]  ²¹ tn Grk “to the degree that.”

[8:6]  ²² tn Grk “which is enacted.”

[8:6]  ²³ sn This linkage of the change in priesthood with a change in the law or the covenant goes back to Heb 7:12, 22 and is picked up again in Heb 9:6-15 and 10:1-18.

[8:7]  ²⁴ tn Grk “no occasion for a second one would have been sought.”

[8:8]  ²⁵ tn Grk “for,” but providing an explanation of the God-intended limitation of the first covenant from v. 7.

[8:8]  ²⁶ sn The “fault” or limitation in the first covenant was not in its inherent righteousness, but in its design from God himself. It was never intended to be his final revelation or provision for mankind; it was provisional, always pointing toward the fulfillment to come in Christ.

[8:8]  ²⁷ tn Grk “he”; the referent (God) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[8:8]  ²⁸ tc ‡ Several witnesses (א* A D* I K P Ψ 33 81 326 365 1505 2464 al latt co Cyr) have αὐτούς (autous) here, “[in finding fault with] them, [he says],” alluding to Israel’s failings mentioned in v. 9b. (The verb μέμφομαι [memfomai, “to find fault with”] can take an accusative or dative direct object.) The reading behind the text above (αὐτοίς, autoi"), supported by Ì⁴⁶ א² B D² 0278 1739 1881 Ï, is perhaps a harder reading theologically, and is more ambiguous in meaning. If αὐτοίς goes with μεμφόμενος (memfomeno", here translated “showing its fault”), the clause could be translated “in finding fault with them” or “in showing [its] faults to them.” If αὐτοίς goes with the following λέγει (legei, “he says”), the clause is best translated, “in finding/showing [its] faults, he says to them.” The accusative pronoun suffers no such ambiguity, for it must be the object of μεμφόμενος rather than λέγει. Although a decision is difficult, the dative form of the pronoun best explains the rise of the other reading and is thus more likely to be original.

[8:9]  ²⁹ tn Grk “not like the covenant,” continuing the description of v. 8b.

[8:10]  ³⁰ tn Grk “putting…I will inscribe.”

[8:10]  ³¹ tn Grk “mind.”

[8:10]  ³² tn Grk “I will be to them for a God and they will be to me for a people,” following the Hebrew constructions of Jer 31.

[8:11]  ³³ tn Grk “they will not teach, each one his fellow citizen…” The Greek makes this negation emphatic: “they will certainly not teach.”

[8:11]  ³⁴ tn Grk “from the small to the great.”

[8:12]  ³⁵ sn A quotation from Jer 31:31-34.

[8:13]  ³⁶ tn Grk “when he says, ‘new,’” (referring to the covenant).

[8:13]  ³⁷ tn Grk “near to disappearing.”