Psalms 86:5

86:5 Certainly ¹  O Lord, you are kind ²  and forgiving,

and show great faithfulness to all who cry out to you.

Psalms 106:1

Psalm 106 ³ 

106:1 Praise the Lord!

Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good,

and his loyal love endures! ⁴ 

Psalms 107:1

Book 5
(Psalms 107-150)

Psalm 107 ⁵ 

107:1 Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good,

and his loyal love endures! ⁶ 

Psalms 145:7-9

145:7 They will talk about the fame of your great kindness, ⁷ 

and sing about your justice. ⁸ 

145:8 The Lord is merciful and compassionate;

he is patient ⁹  and demonstrates great loyal love. ¹⁰ 

145:9 The Lord is good to all,

and has compassion on all he has made. ¹¹ 

Exodus 33:18-19

33:18 And Moses ¹²  said, “Show me your glory.” ¹³ 

33:19 And the Lord ¹⁴  said, “I will make all my goodness ¹⁵  pass before your face, and I will proclaim the Lord by name ¹⁶  before you; I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, I will show mercy to whom I will show mercy.” ¹⁷ 

Exodus 34:6-7

34:6 The Lord passed by before him and proclaimed: ¹⁸  “The Lord, the Lord, ¹⁹  the compassionate and gracious ²⁰  God, slow to anger, ²¹  and abounding in loyal love and faithfulness, ²²  34:7 keeping loyal love for thousands, ²³  forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin. But he by no means leaves the guilty unpunished, responding to the transgression ²⁴  of fathers by dealing with children and children’s children, to the third and fourth generation.”

Isaiah 63:7

A Prayer for Divine Intervention

63:7 I will tell of the faithful acts of the Lord,

of the Lord’s praiseworthy deeds.

I will tell about all ²⁵  the Lord did for us,

the many good things he did for the family of Israel, ²⁶ 

because of ²⁷  his compassion and great faithfulness.

Matthew 5:45

5:45 so that you may be like ²⁸  your Father in heaven, since he causes the sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.

Matthew 19:17

19:17 He said to him, “Why do you ask me about what is good? There is only one who is good. But if you want to enter into life, keep the commandments.”

Mark 10:18

10:18 Jesus said to him, “Why do you call me good? ²⁹  No one is good except God alone.

Luke 18:19

18:19 Jesus ³⁰  said to him, “Why do you call me good? ³¹  No one is good except God alone.

[86:5]  ¹ tn Or “for.”

[86:5]  ² tn Heb “good.”

[106:1]  ³ sn Psalm 106. The psalmist recalls Israel’s long history of rebellion against God, despite his mighty saving deeds on their behalf.

[106:1]  ⁴ tn Heb “for forever [is] his loyal love.”

[107:1]  ⁵ sn Psalm 107. The psalmist praises God for his kindness to his exiled people.

[107:1]  ⁶ tn Heb “for forever [is] his loyal love.”

[145:7]  ⁷ tn Heb “the fame of the greatness of your goodness.”

[145:7]  ⁸ tn The prefixed verbal forms in v. 7 are understood as imperfects, indicating how the psalmist expects his audience to respond to his praise. Another option is to take the forms as jussives, indicating the psalmist’s wish, “may they talk…and sing.”

[145:8]  ⁹ tn Heb “slow to anger” (see Pss 86:15; 103:8).

[145:8]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “and great of loyal love” (see Pss 86:15; 103:8).

[145:9]  ¹¹ tn Heb “and his compassion is over all his works.”

[33:18]  ¹² tn Heb “and he said”; the referent (Moses) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[33:18]  ¹³ sn Moses now wanted to see the glory of Yahweh, more than what he had already seen and experienced. He wanted to see God in all his majesty. The LXX chose to translate this without a word for “glory” or “honor”; instead they used the pronoun seautou, “yourself” – show me the real You. God tells him that he cannot see it fully, but in part. It will be enough for Moses to disclose to him the reality of the divine presence as well as God’s moral nature. It would be impossible for Moses to comprehend all of the nature of God, for there is a boundary between God and man. But God would let him see his goodness, the sum of his nature, pass by in a flash. B. Jacob (Exodus, 972) says that the glory refers to God’s majesty, might, and glory, as manifested in nature, in his providence, his laws, and his judgments. He adds that this glory should and would be made visible to man – that was its purpose in the world.

[33:19]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “and he said”; the referent (the Lord) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[33:19]  ¹⁵ sn The word “goodness” refers to the divine appearance in summary fashion.

[33:19]  ¹⁶ tn The expression “make proclamation in the name of Yahweh” (here a perfect tense with vav [ו] consecutive for future) means to declare, reveal, or otherwise make proclamation of who Yahweh is. The “name of Yahweh” (rendered “the name of the Lord” throughout) refers to his divine attributes revealed to his people, either in word or deed. What will be focused on first will be his grace and compassion.

[33:19]  ¹⁷ sn God declares his mercy and grace in similar terms to his earlier self-revelation (“I am that I am”): “I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious.” In other words, the grace and mercy of God are bound up in his own will. Obviously, in this passage the recipients of that favor are the penitent Israelites who were forgiven through Moses’ intercession. The two words are at the heart of God’s dealings with people. The first is חָנַן (khanan, “to be gracious, show favor”). It means to grant favor or grace to someone, grace meaning unmerited favor. All of God’s dealings are gracious, but especially in forgiving sins and granting salvation it is critical. Parallel to this is רָחַם (rakham), a word that means “show compassion, tender mercy.” It is a word that is related to the noun “womb,” the connection being in providing care and protection for that which is helpless and dependent – a motherly quality. In both of these constructions the verbs simply express what God will do, without explaining why. See further, J. R. Lundbom, “God’s Use of the Idem per idem to Terminate Debate,” HTR 71 (1978): 193-201; and J. Piper, “Prolegomena to Understanding Romans 9:14-15: An Interpretation of Exodus 33:19,” JETS 22 (1979): 203-16.

[34:6]  ¹⁸ tn Here is one of the clearest examples of what it means “to call on the name of the Lord,” as that clause has been translated traditionally (וַיִּקְרָא בְשֵׁם יְהוָה, vayyiqra’ vÿshem yÿhvah). It seems more likely that it means “to make proclamation of Yahweh by name.” Yahweh came down and made a proclamation – and the next verses give the content of what he said. This cannot be prayer or praise; it is a proclamation of the nature or attributes of God (which is what his “name” means throughout the Bible). Attempts to make Moses the subject of the verb are awkward, for the verb is repeated in v. 6 with Yahweh clearly doing the proclaiming.

[34:6]  ¹⁹ sn U. Cassuto (Exodus, 439) suggests that these two names be written as a sentence: “Yahweh, He is Yahweh.” In this manner it reflects “I am that I am.” It is impossible to define his name in any other way than to make this affirmation and then show what it means.

[34:6]  ²⁰ tn See Exod 33:19.

[34:6]  ²¹ sn This is literally “long of anger.” His anger prolongs itself, allowing for people to repent before punishment is inflicted.

[34:6]  ²² sn These two words (“loyal love” and “truth”) are often found together, occasionally in a hendiadys construction. If that is the interpretation here, then it means “faithful covenant love.” Even if they are left separate, they are dual elements of a single quality. The first word is God’s faithful covenant love; the second word is God’s reliability and faithfulness.

[34:7]  ²³ tn That is, “for thousands of generations.”

[34:7]  ²⁴ sn As in the ten commandments (20:5-6), this expression shows that the iniquity and its punishment will continue in the family if left unchecked. This does not go on as long as the outcomes for good (thousands versus third or fourth generations), and it is limited to those who hate God.

[63:7]  ²⁵ tn Heb “according to all which.”

[63:7]  ²⁶ tn Heb “greatness of goodness to the house of Israel which he did for them.”

[63:7]  ²⁷ tn Heb “according to.”

[5:45]  ²⁸ tn Grk “be sons of your Father in heaven.” Here, however, the focus is not on attaining a relationship (becoming a child of God) but rather on being the kind of person who shares the characteristics of God himself (a frequent meaning of the Semitic idiom “son of”). See L&N 58.26.

[10:18]  ²⁹ sn Jesus’ response, Why do you call me good?, was designed to cause the young man to stop and think for a moment about who Jesus really was. The following statement No one is good except God alone seems to point the man in the direction of Jesus’ essential nature and the demands which logically follow on the man for having said it.

[18:19]  ³⁰ tn Grk “And Jesus.” Here καί (kai) has not been translated because of differences between Greek and English style.

[18:19]  ³¹ sn Jesus’ response, Why do you call me good?, was designed to cause the ruler to stop and think for a moment about who Jesus really was. The following statement No one is good except God alone seems to point the man in the direction of Jesus’ essential nature and the demands which logically follow on the man for having said it.