2 Tawarikh 28:2-4

28:2 He followed in the footsteps of ¹  the kings of Israel; he also made images of the Baals. 28:3 He offered sacrifices in the Valley of Ben-Hinnom and passed his sons through the fire, ²  a horrible sin practiced by the nations ³  whom the Lord drove out before the Israelites. 28:4 He offered sacrifices and burned incense on the high places, on the hills, and under every green tree.

2 Tawarikh 28:23-25

28:23 He offered sacrifices to the gods of Damascus whom he thought had defeated him. ⁴  He reasoned, ⁵  “Since the gods of the kings of Damascus helped them, I will sacrifice to them so they will help me.” But they caused him and all Israel to stumble. 28:24 Ahaz gathered the items in God’s temple and removed them. He shut the doors of the Lord’s temple and erected altars on every street corner in Jerusalem. 28:25 In every city throughout Judah he set up high places to offer sacrifices to other gods. He angered the Lord God of his ancestors.

2 Tawarikh 34:21

34:21 “Go, seek an oracle from ⁶  the Lord for me and those who remain in Israel and Judah. Find out about ⁷  the words of this scroll that has been discovered. For the Lord’s fury has been ignited against us, ⁸  because our ancestors ⁹  have not obeyed the word of the Lord by doing all that this scroll instructs!” ¹⁰ 

Ezra 5:12

5:12 But after our ancestors ¹¹  angered the God of heaven, he delivered them into the hands ¹²  of King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, the Chaldean, who destroyed this temple and exiled the people to Babylon. ¹³ 

Ezra 9:7

9:7 From the days of our fathers until this very day our guilt has been great. Because of our iniquities we, along with our kings and ¹⁴  priests, have been delivered over by the local kings ¹⁵  to sword, captivity, plunder, and embarrassment – right up to the present time.

Nehemia 9:16

9:16 “But they – our ancestors ¹⁶  – behaved presumptuously; they rebelled ¹⁷  and did not obey your commandments.

Nehemia 9:32

9:32 “So now, our God – the great, powerful, and awesome God, who keeps covenant fidelity ¹⁸  – do not regard as inconsequential ¹⁹  all the hardship that has befallen us – our kings, our leaders, our priests, our prophets, our ancestors, and all your people – from the days of the kings of Assyria until this very day!

Yeremia 16:19

16:19 Then I said, ²⁰ 

“Lord, you give me strength and protect me.

You are the one I can run to for safety when I am in trouble. ²¹ 

Nations from all over the earth

will come to you and say,

‘Our ancestors had nothing but false gods –

worthless idols that could not help them at all. ²² 

Yeremia 44:21

44:21 “The Lord did indeed remember and call to mind what you did! He remembered the sacrifices you and your ancestors, your kings, your leaders, and all the rest of the people of the land offered to other gods ²³  in the towns of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem. ²⁴ 

Ratapan 5:7

5:7 Our forefathers ²⁵  sinned and are dead, ²⁶ 

but we ²⁷  suffer ²⁸  their punishment. ²⁹ 

Daniel 9:16

9:16 O Lord, according to all your justice, ³⁰  please turn your raging anger ³¹  away from your city Jerusalem, your holy mountain. For due to our sins and the iniquities of our ancestors, Jerusalem and your people are mocked by all our neighbors.

Matius 10:37

10:37 “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.

Matius 23:30-32

23:30 And you say, ‘If we had lived in the days of our ancestors, ³²  we would not have participated with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.’ 23:31 By saying this you testify against yourselves that you are descendants of those who murdered the prophets. 23:32 Fill up then the measure of your ancestors!

[28:2]  ¹ tn Heb “he walked in the ways of.”

[28:3]  ² sn This may refer to child sacrifice, though some interpret it as a less drastic cultic practice (NEB “burnt his sons in the fire”; NASB “burned his sons in the fire”; NIV “sacrificed his sons in the fire”; NRSV “made his sons pass through fire”). For discussion see M. Cogan and H. Tadmor, II Kings (AB), 266-67.

[28:3]  ³ tn Heb “like the abominable practices of the nations.”

[28:23]  ⁴ tn Heb “the gods of Damascus, the ones who had defeated him.” The words “he thought” are supplied in the translation for clarification. The perspective is that of Ahaz, not the narrator! Another option is that “the kings” has been accidentally omitted after “gods of.” See v. 23b.

[28:23]  ⁵ tn Heb “said.”

[34:21]  ⁶ tn Or “inquire of.”

[34:21]  ⁷ tn Heb “concerning.”

[34:21]  ⁸ tn Heb “for great is the anger of the Lord which has been ignited against us.”

[34:21]  ⁹ tn Heb “fathers” (also in vv. 32, 33).

[34:21]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “by doing according to all that is written on this scroll.”

[5:12]  ¹¹ tn Aram “fathers.”

[5:12]  ¹² tn Aram “hand” (singular).

[5:12]  ¹³ sn A reference to the catastrophic events of 586 b.c.

[9:7]  ¹⁴ tc The MT lacks “and” here, but see the LXX and Vulgate.

[9:7]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “the kings of the lands.”

[9:16]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “and our fathers.” The vav is explicative.

[9:16]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “they stiffened their neck” (so also in the following verse).

[9:32]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “the covenant and loyal love.” The expression is a hendiadys. The second noun retains its full nominal sense, while the first functions adjectivally: “the covenant and loyalty” = covenant fidelity.

[9:32]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “do not let it seem small in your sight.”

[16:19]  ²⁰ tn The words “Then I said” are not in the text. They are supplied in the translation to show the shift from God, who has been speaking to Jeremiah, to Jeremiah, who here addresses God.

[16:19]  sn The shift here is consistent with the interruptions that have taken place in chapters 14 and 15 and in Jeremiah’s response to God’s condemnation of the people of Judah’s idolatry in chapter 10 (note especially vv. 6-16).

[16:19]  ²¹ tn Heb “O Lord, my strength and my fortress, my refuge in the day of trouble. The literal which piles up attributes is of course more forceful than the predications. However, piling up poetic metaphors like this adds to the length of the English sentence and risks lack of understanding on the part of some readers. Some rhetorical force has been sacrificed for the sake of clarity.

[16:19]  ²² tn Once again the translation has sacrificed some of the rhetorical force for the sake of clarity and English style: Heb “Only falsehood did our ancestors possess, vanity and [things in which?] there was no one profiting in them.”

[16:19]  sn This passage offers some rather forceful contrasts. The Lord is Jeremiah’s source of strength, security, and protection. The idols are false gods, worthless idols, that can offer no help at all.

[44:21]  ²³ tn The words “to other gods” are not in the text but are implicit from the context (cf. v. 17). They are supplied in the translation for clarity. It was not the act of sacrifice that was wrong but the recipient.

[44:21]  ²⁴ tn Heb “The sacrifices which you sacrificed in the towns of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem, you and your fathers, your kings and your leaders and the people of the land, did not the Lord remember them and [did they not] come into his mind?” The question is again rhetorical and expects a positive answer. So it is rendered here as an affirmative statement for the sake of clarity and simplicity. An attempt has been made to shorten the long Hebrew sentence to better conform with contemporary English style.

[5:7]  ²⁵ tn Heb “fathers,” but here the term also refers to “forefathers,” i.e., more distant ancestors.

[5:7]  ²⁶ tn Heb “and are no more.”

[5:7]  ²⁷ tc The Kethib is written אֲנַחְנוּ (’anakhnu, “we”) but the Qere reads וַאֲנַחְנוּ (va’anakhnu, “but we”). The Qere is supported by many medieval Hebrew mss, as well as most of the ancient versions (Aramaic Targum, Syriac Peshitta, Latin Vulgate). The ו (vav) prefixed to וַאֲנַחְנוּ (va’anakhnu) functions either in a disjunctive sense (“but”) or resultant sense (“so”).

[5:7]  ²⁸ tn Heb “so we bear.”

[5:7]  ²⁹ tn Heb “their iniquities.” The noun עָוֹן (’avon) has a broad range of meanings, including: (1) iniquity, (2) guilt of iniquity, and (3) consequence or punishment for iniquity (cause-effect metonymical relation). The context suggests that “punishment for sin” is most appropriate here (e.g., Gen 4:13; 19:15; Exod 28:38, 43; Lev 5:1, 17; 7:18; 10:17; 16:22; 17:16; 19:8; 20:17, 19; 22:16; 26:39, 41, 43; Num 5:31; 14:34; 18:1, 23; 30:15; 1 Sam 25:24; 28:10; 2 Sam 14:9; 2 Kgs 7:9; Job 10:14; Pss 31:11; 69:28; 106:43; Prov 5:22; Isa 5:18; 30:13; 40:2; 53:6, 11; 64:5, 6; Jer 51:6; Lam 4:22; 5:7; Ezek 4:4-6, 17; 7:16; 14:10; 18:19-20; 21:30, 34; 24:23; 32:27; 35:5; 39:23; 44:10, 12).

[9:16]  ³⁰ tn Or “righteousness.”

[9:16]  ³¹ tn Heb “your anger and your rage.” The synonyms are joined here to emphasize the degree of God’s anger. This is best expressed in English by making one of the terms adjectival (cf. NLT “your furious anger”; CEV “terribly angry”).

[23:30]  ³² tn Grk “fathers” (so also in v. 32).