Psalms 91:9-10

91:9 For you have taken refuge in the Lord,

my shelter, the sovereign One. ¹ 

91:10 No harm will overtake ²  you;

no illness ³  will come near your home. ⁴ 

Job 5:19-27

5:19 He will deliver you ⁵  from six calamities;

yes, in seven ⁶  no evil will touch you.

5:20 In time of famine ⁷  he will redeem you from death,

and in time of war from the power of the sword. ⁸ 

5:21 You will be protected ⁹  from malicious gossip, ¹⁰ 

and will not be afraid of the destruction ¹¹  when it comes.

5:22 You will laugh at destruction and famine ¹² 

and need not ¹³  be afraid of the beasts of the earth.

5:23 For you will have a pact with the stones ¹⁴  of the field,

and the wild animals ¹⁵  will be at peace ¹⁶  with you.

5:24 And ¹⁷  you will know ¹⁸  that your home ¹⁹ 

will be secure, ²⁰ 

and when you inspect ²¹  your domains,

you will not be missing ²²  anything.

5:25 You will also know that your children ²³  will be numerous,

and your descendants ²⁴  like the grass of the earth.

5:26 You will come to your grave in a full age, ²⁵ 

As stacks of grain are harvested in their season.

5:27 Look, we have investigated this, so it is true.

Hear it, ²⁶  and apply it for your own ²⁷  good.” ²⁸ 

Proverbs 12:21

12:21 The righteous do not encounter ²⁹  any harm, ³⁰ 

but the wicked are filled with calamity. ³¹ 

Matthew 6:13

6:13 And do not lead us into temptation, ³²  but deliver us from the evil one. ³³ 

Romans 8:28

8:28 And we know that all things work together ³⁴  for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose,

Romans 8:35-39

8:35 Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will trouble, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? ³⁵  8:36 As it is written, “For your sake we encounter death all day long; we were considered as sheep to be slaughtered.” ³⁶  8:37 No, in all these things we have complete victory ³⁷  through him ³⁸  who loved us! 8:38 For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor heavenly rulers, ³⁹  nor things that are present, nor things to come, nor powers, 8:39 nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Romans 8:2

8:2 For the law of the life-giving Spirit ⁴⁰  in Christ Jesus has set you ⁴¹  free from the law of sin and death.

Romans 4:18

4:18 Against hope Abraham ⁴²  believed ⁴³  in hope with the result that he became the father of many nations ⁴⁴  according to the pronouncement, ⁴⁵  “so will your descendants be.” ⁴⁶ 

[91:9]  ¹ tn Heb “for you, the Lord, my shelter, the Most High, you have made your dwelling place.”

[91:10]  ² tn Or “confront.”

[91:10]  ³ tn For this sense of the Hebrew term נגע see Ps 38:11.

[91:10]  ⁴ tn Heb “your tent.”

[5:19]  ⁵ tn The verb is the Hiphil imperfect of נָצַל (natsal, “deliver”). These verbs might have been treated as habitual imperfects if it were not for the use of the numerical images – “six calamities…in seven.” So the nuance is specific future instead.

[5:19]  ⁶ tn The use of a numerical ladder as we have here – “six // seven” is frequent in wisdom literature to show completeness. See Prov 6:16; Amos 1:3, Mic 5:5. A number that seems to be sufficient for the point is increased by one, as if to say there is always one more. By using this Eliphaz simply means “in all troubles” (see H. H. Rowley, Job [NCBC], 56).

[5:20]  ⁷ sn Targum Job here sees an allusion to the famine of Egypt and the war with Amalek.

[5:20]  ⁸ tn Heb “from the hand of the sword.” This is idiomatic for “the power of the sword.” The expression is also metonymical, meaning from the effect of the sword, which is death.

[5:21]  ⁹ tn The Hebrew verb essentially means “you will be hidden.” In the Niphal the verb means “to be hidden, to be in a hiding place,” and protected (Ps 31:20).

[5:21]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “from the lash [i.e., whip] of the tongue.” Sir 26:9 and 51:2 show usages of these kinds of expressions: “the lash of the tongue” or “the blow of the tongue.” The expression indicates that a malicious gossip is more painful than a blow.

[5:21]  ¹¹ tn The word here is שׁוֹד (shod); it means “destruction,” but some commentators conjecture alternate readings: שׁוֹאָה (sho’ah, “desolation”); or שֵׁד (shed, “demon”). One argument for maintaining שׁוֹד (shod) is that it fits the assonance within the verse שׁוֹד…לָשׁוֹן…שׁוֹט (shot…lashon…shod).

[5:22]  ¹² tc The repetition of “destruction” and “famine” here has prompted some scholars to delete the whole verse. Others try to emend the text. The LXX renders them as “the unrighteous and the lawless.” But there is no difficulty in having the repetition of the words as found in the MT.

[5:22]  ¹³ tn The negated jussive is used here to express the conviction that something cannot or should not happen (GKC 322 §109.e).

[5:23]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “your covenant is with the stones of the field.” The line has been variously interpreted and translated. It is omitted in the LXX. It seems to mean there is a deep sympathy between man and nature. Some think it means that the boundaries will not be violated by enemies; Rashi thought it represented some species of beings, like genii of the field, and so read אֲדֹנֵי (’adone, “lords”) for אַבְנֵי (’avne, “stones”). Ball takes the word as בְּנֵי (bÿne, “sons”), as in “sons of the field,” to get the idea that the reference is to the beasts. E. Dhorme (Job, 71) rejects these ideas as too contrived; he says to have a pact with the stones of the field simply means the stones will not come and spoil the ground, making it less fertile.

[5:23]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “the beasts of the field.”

[5:23]  ¹⁶ tn This is the only occurrence of the Hophal of the verb שָׁלֵם (shalem, “to make or have peace” with someone). Compare Isa 11:6-9 and Ps 91:13. The verb form is the perfect; here it is the perfect consecutive following a noun clause (see GKC 494 §159.g).

[5:24]  ¹⁷ sn Verses 19-23 described the immunity from evil and trouble that Job would enjoy – if he were restored to peace with God. Now, v. 24 describes the safety and peace of the homestead and his possessions if he were right with God.

[5:24]  ¹⁸ tn The verb is again the perfect, but in sequence to the previous structure so that it is rendered as a future. This would be the case if Job were right with God.

[5:24]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “tent.”

[5:24]  ²⁰ tn The word שָׁלוֹם (shalom) means “peace; safety; security; wholeness.” The same use appears in 1 Sam 25:6; 2 Sam 20:9.

[5:24]  ²¹ tn The verb is פָּקַד (paqad, “to visit”). The idea here is “to gather together; to look over; to investigate,” or possibly even “to number” as it is used in the book of Numbers. The verb is the perfect with the vav consecutive; it may be subordinated to the imperfect verb that follows to form a temporal clause.

[5:24]  ²² tn The verb is usually rendered “to sin”; but in this context the more specific primary meaning of “to miss the mark” or “to fail to find something.” Neither Job’s tent nor his possessions will be lost.

[5:25]  ²³ tn Heb “your seed.”

[5:25]  ²⁴ tn The word means “your shoots” and is parallel to “your seed” in the first colon. It refers here (as in Isa 34:1 and 42:5) to the produce of the earth. Some commentators suggest that Eliphaz seems to have forgotten or was insensitive to Job’s loss of his children; H. H. Rowley (Job [NCBC], 57) says his conventional theology is untouched by human feeling.

[5:26]  ²⁵ tn The word translated “in a full age” has been given an array of meanings: “health; integrity”; “like a new blade of corn”; “in your strength [or vigor].” The numerical value of the letters in the word בְכֶלָח (bÿkhelakh, “in old age”) was 2, 20, 30, and 8, or 60. This led some of the commentators to say that at 60 one would enter the ripe old age (E. Dhorme, Job, 73).

[5:27]  ²⁶ tn To make a better parallelism, some commentators have replaced the imperative with another finite verb, “we have found it.”

[5:27]  ²⁷ tn The preposition with the suffix (referred to as the ethical dative) strengthens the imperative. An emphatic personal pronoun also precedes the imperative. The resulting force would be something like “and you had better apply it for your own good!”

[5:27]  ²⁸ sn With this the speech by Eliphaz comes to a close. His two mistakes with it are: (1) that the tone was too cold and (2) the argument did not fit Job’s case (see further, A. B. Davidson, Job, 42).

[12:21]  ²⁹ tn Heb “is not allowed to meet to the righteous.”

[12:21]  ³⁰ tn Heb “all calamity.” The proper nuance of אָוֶן (’aven) is debated. It is normally understood metonymically (effect) as “harm; trouble,” that is, the result/effect of wickedness (e.g., Gen 50:20). Rashi, a Jewish scholar who lived a.d. 1040-1105, took it as “wickedness,” its primary meaning; “the righteous will not be caught up in wickedness.”

[12:21]  ³¹ tn The expression רָע מָלְאוּ (malÿ’u ra’, “to be full of evil”) means (1) the wicked do much evil or (2) the wicked experience much calamity (cf. NAB, NIV, NRSV, NLT).

[6:13]  ³² tn Or “into a time of testing.”

[6:13]  ³³ tc Most mss (L W Θ 0233 ˹³ 33 Ï sy sa Didache) read (though some with slight variation) ὅτι σοῦ ἐστιν ἡ βασιλεία καὶ ἡ δύναμις καὶ ἡ δόξα εἰς τοὺς αἰῶνας, ἀμήν (“for yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever, amen”) here. The reading without this sentence, though, is attested by generally better witnesses (א B D Z 0170 ˹ pc lat mae Or). The phrase was probably composed for the liturgy of the early church and most likely was based on 1 Chr 29:11-13; a scribe probably added the phrase at this point in the text for use in public scripture reading (see TCGNT 13-14). Both external and internal evidence argue for the shorter reading.

[8:28]  ³⁴ tc ὁ θεός (Jo qeos, “God”) is found after the verb συνεργεῖ (sunergei, “work”) in v. 28 by Ì⁴⁶ A B 81 sa; the shorter reading is found in א C D F G Ψ 33 1739 1881 Ï latt sy bo. Although the inclusion is supported by a significant early papyrus, the alliance of significant Alexandrian and Western witnesses favors the shorter reading. As well, the longer reading is evidently motivated by a need for clarification. Since ὁ θεός is textually suspect, it is better to read the text without it. This leaves two good translational options: either “he works all things together for good” or “all things work together for good.” In the first instance the subject is embedded in the verb and “God” is clearly implied (as in v. 29). In the second instance, πάντα (panta) becomes the subject of an intransitive verb. In either case, “What is expressed is a truly biblical confidence in the sovereignty of God” (C. E. B. Cranfield, Romans [ICC], 1:427).

[8:35]  ³⁵ tn Here “sword” is a metonymy that includes both threats of violence and acts of violence, even including death (although death is not necessarily the only thing in view here).

[8:36]  ³⁶ sn A quotation from Ps 44:22.

[8:37]  ³⁷ tn BDAG 1034 s.v. ὑπερνικάω states, “as a heightened form of νικᾶν prevail completely ὑπερνικῶμεν we are winning a most glorious victory Ro 8:37.”

[8:37]  ³⁸ tn Here the referent could be either God or Christ, but in v. 39 it is God’s love that is mentioned.

[8:38]  ³⁹ tn BDAG 138 s.v. ἀρχή 6 takes this term as a reference to angelic or transcendent powers (as opposed to merely human rulers). To clarify this, the adjective “heavenly” has been supplied in the translation. Some interpreters see this as a reference to fallen angels or demonic powers, and this view is reflected in some recent translations (NIV, NLT).

[8:2]  ⁴⁰ tn Grk “for the law of the Spirit of life.”

[8:2]  ⁴¹ tc Most mss read the first person singular pronoun με (me) here (A D 1739^c 1881 Ï lat sa). The second person singular pronoun σε (se) is superior because of external support (א B {F which reads σαι} G 1506* 1739*) and internal support (it is the harder reading since ch. 7 was narrated in the first person). At the same time, it could have arisen via dittography from the final syllable of the verb preceding it (ἠλευθέρωσεν, hleuqerwsen; “has set free”). But for this to happen in such early and diverse witnesses is unlikely, especially as it depends on various scribes repeatedly overlooking either the nu or the nu-bar at the end of the verb.

[4:18]  ⁴² tn Grk “he”; the referent (Abraham) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[4:18]  ⁴³ tn Grk “who against hope believed,” referring to Abraham. The relative pronoun was converted to a personal pronoun and, because of the length and complexity of the Greek sentence, a new sentence was started here in the translation.

[4:18]  ⁴⁴ sn A quotation from Gen 17:5.

[4:18]  ⁴⁵ tn Grk “according to that which had been spoken.”

[4:18]  ⁴⁶ sn A quotation from Gen 15:5.