Psalms 40:8

40:8 I want to do what pleases you, ¹  my God.

Your law dominates my thoughts.” ² 

Psalms 42:4

42:4 I will remember and weep! ³ 

For I was once walking along with the great throng to the temple of God,

shouting and giving thanks along with the crowd as we celebrated the holy festival. ⁴ 

Psalms 55:14

55:14 We would share personal thoughts with each other; ⁵ 

in God’s temple we would walk together among the crowd.

Isaiah 26:9

26:9 I ⁶  look for ⁷  you during the night,

my spirit within me seeks you at dawn,

for when your judgments come upon the earth,

those who live in the world learn about justice. ⁸ 

Jeremiah 31:33

31:33 “But I will make a new covenant with the whole nation of Israel ⁹  after I plant them back in the land,” ¹⁰  says the Lord. ¹¹  “I will ¹²  put my law within them ¹³  and write it on their hearts and minds. ¹⁴  I will be their God and they will be my people. ¹⁵ 

Jeremiah 50:4-5

50:4 “When that time comes,” says the Lord, ¹⁶ 

“the people of Israel and Judah will return to the land together.

They will come back with tears of repentance

as they seek the Lord their God. ¹⁷ 

50:5 They will ask the way to Zion;

they will turn their faces toward it.

They will come ¹⁸  and bind themselves to the Lord

in a lasting covenant that will never be forgotten. ¹⁹ 

Micah 4:2

4:2 Many nations will come, saying,

“Come on! Let’s go up to the Lord’s mountain,

to the temple ²⁰  of Jacob’s God,

so he can teach us his commands ²¹ 

and we can live by his laws.” ²² 

For Zion will be the source of instruction;

the Lord’s teachings will proceed from Jerusalem. ²³ 

[40:8]  ¹ tn Or “your will.”

[40:8]  ² tn Heb “your law [is] in the midst of my inner parts.” The “inner parts” are viewed here as the seat of the psalmist’s thought life and moral decision making.

[42:4]  ³ tn Heb “These things I will remember and I will pour out upon myself my soul.” “These things” are identified in the second half of the verse as those times when the psalmist worshiped in the Lord’s temple. The two cohortative forms indicate the psalmist’s resolve to remember and weep. The expression “pour out upon myself my soul” refers to mourning (see Job 30:16).

[42:4]  ⁴ tc Heb “for I was passing by with the throng [?], I was walking with [?] them to the house of God; with a voice of a ringing shout and thanksgiving a multitude was observing a festival.” The Hebrew phrase בַּסָּךְ אֶדַּדֵּם (bassakh ’eddaddem, “with the throng [?] I was walking with [?]”) is particularly problematic. The noun סָךְ (sakh) occurs only here. If it corresponds to הָמוֹן (hamon, “multitude”) then one can propose a meaning “throng.” The present translation assumes this reading (cf. NIV, NRSV). The form אֶדַּדֵּם (“I will walk with [?]”) is also very problematic. The form can be taken as a Hitpael from דָּדָה (dadah; this verb possibly appears in Isa 38:15), but the pronominal suffix is problematic. For this reason many emend the form to ם[י]אַדִּרִ (’adirim, “nobles”) or ם-רִ[י]אַדִ (’adirim, “great,” with enclitic mem [ם]). The present translation understands the latter and takes the adjective “great” as modifying “throng.” If one emends סָךְ (sakh, “throng [?]”) to סֹךְ (sokh, “shelter”; see the Qere of Ps 27:5), then ר[י]אַדִּ (’addir) could be taken as a divine epithet, “[in the shelter of] the majestic one,” a reading which may find support in the LXX and Syriac Peshitta.

[55:14]  ⁵ tn Heb “who together we would make counsel sweet.” The imperfect verbal forms here and in the next line draw attention to the ongoing nature of the actions (the so-called customary use of the imperfect). Their relationship was characterized by such intimacy and friendship. See IBHS 502-3 §31.2b.

[26:9]  ⁶ tn Heb “with my soul I.” This is a figure for the speaker himself (“I”).

[26:9]  ⁷ tn Or “long for, desire.” The speaker acknowledges that he is eager to see God come in judgment (see vv. 8, 9b).

[26:9]  ⁸ tn The translation understands צֶדֶק (tsedeq) in the sense of “justice,” but it is possible that it carries the nuance “righteousness,” in which case one might translate, “those who live in the world learn to live in a righteous manner” (cf. NCV).

[31:33]  ⁹ tn Heb “with the house of Israel.” All commentators agree that the term here refers to both the whole nation which was divided into the house of Israel and the house of Judah in v. 30.

[31:33]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “after those days.” Commentators are generally agreed that this refers to the return from exile and the repopulation of the land referred to in vv. 27-28 and not to something subsequent to the time mentioned in v. 30. This is the sequencing that is also presupposed in other new covenant passages such as Deut 30:1-6; Ezek 11:17-20; 36:24-28.

[31:33]  ¹¹ tn Heb “Oracle of the Lord.”

[31:33]  ¹² tn Heb “‘But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after these days:’ says the Lord, ‘I will….’” The sentence has been reworded and restructured to avoid the awkwardness of the original style.

[31:33]  ¹³ tn Heb “in their inward parts.” The Hebrew word here refers to the seat of the thoughts, emotions, and decisions (Jer 9:8 [9:7 HT]). It is essentially synonymous with “heart” in Hebrew psychological terms.

[31:33]  ¹⁴ tn The words “and minds” is not in the text but is supplied in the translation to bring the English psychology more into line with the Hebrew where the “heart” is the center both of knowing/thinking/reflecting and deciding/willing.

[31:33]  ¹⁵ sn Compare Jer 24:7; 30:22; 31:1 and see the study note on 30:2.

[50:4]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “oracle of the Lord.”

[50:4]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “and the children of Israel will come, they and the children of Judah together. They shall go, weeping as they go, and they will seek the Lord their God.” The concept of “seeking” the Lord often has to do with seeking the Lord in worship (by sacrifice [Hos 5:6; 2 Chr 11:16]; prayer [Zech 8:21, 22; 2 Sam 12:16; Isa 65:1; 2 Chr 15:4]). In Hos 7:10 it is in parallel with returning to the Lord. In Ps 69:6 it is in parallel with hoping in or trusting in the Lord. Perhaps the most helpful parallels here, however, are Hos 3:5 (in comparison with Jer 30:9) and 2 Chr 15:15 where it is in the context of a covenant commitment to be loyal to the Lord which is similar to the context here (see the next verse). The translation is admittedly paraphrastic but “seeking the Lord” does not mean here looking for God as though he were merely a person to be found.

[50:5]  ¹⁸ tc The translation here assumes that the Hebrew בֹּאוּ (bo’u; a Qal imperative masculine plural) should be read בָּאוּ (ba’u; a Qal perfect third plural). This reading is presupposed by the Greek version of Aquila, the Latin version, and the Targum (see BHS note a, which mistakenly assumes that the form must be imperfect).

[50:5]  ¹⁹ sn See Jer 32:40 and the study note there for the nature of this lasting agreement.

[4:2]  ²⁰ tn Heb “house.”

[4:2]  ²¹ tn Heb “ways.”

[4:2]  ²² tn Heb “and we can walk in his paths.”

[4:2]  ²³ tn Heb “instruction [or, “law”] will go out from Zion, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.”