Ulangan 32:17

32:17 They sacrificed to demons, not God,

to gods they had not known;

to new gods who had recently come along,

gods your ancestors ¹  had not known about.

Ulangan 32:1

Invocation of Witnesses

32:1 Listen, O heavens, and I will speak;

hear, O earth, the words of my mouth.

1 Raja-raja 16:13

16:13 This happened because of all the sins which Baasha and his son Elah committed and which they made Israel commit. They angered the Lord God of Israel with their worthless idols. ² 

1 Raja-raja 16:26

16:26 He followed in the footsteps of Jeroboam son of Nebat and encouraged Israel to sin; ³  they angered the Lord God of Israel with their worthless idols. ⁴ 

1 Raja-raja 16:2

16:2 “I raised you up ⁵  from the dust and made you ruler over my people Israel. Yet you followed in Jeroboam’s footsteps ⁶  and encouraged my people Israel to sin; their sins have made me angry. ⁷ 

1 Raja-raja 17:15

17:15 She went and did as Elijah told her; there was always enough food for Elijah and for her and her family. ⁸ 

Mazmur 31:7

31:7 I will be happy and rejoice in your faithfulness,

because you notice my pain

and you are aware of how distressed I am. ⁹ 

Yeremia 2:5

2:5 This is what the Lord says:

“What fault could your ancestors ¹⁰  have possibly found in me

that they strayed so far from me? ¹¹ 

They paid allegiance to ¹²  worthless idols, and so became worthless to me. ¹³ 

¹ tn Heb “your fathers.”

² tn Heb “angering the Lord God of Israel with their empty things.”

³ tn Heb “walked in all the way of Jeroboam son of Nebat and in his sin which he made Israel sin.”

⁴ tn Heb “angering the Lord God of Israel with their empty things.”

⁵ tn The Hebrew text has “because” at the beginning of the sentence. In the Hebrew text vv. 2-3 are one sentence comprised of a causal clause giving the reason for divine punishment (v. 2) and the main clause announcing the punishment (v. 3). The translation divides this sentence for stylistic reasons.

⁶ tn Heb “walked in the way of Jeroboam.”

⁷ tn Heb “angering me by their sins.”

⁸ tn Heb “and she ate, she and he and her house [for] days.”

⁹ tn Heb “you know the distresses of my life.”

¹⁰ tn Heb “fathers.”

¹¹ tn Or “I did not wrong your ancestors in any way. Yet they went far astray from me.” Both translations are an attempt to render the rhetorical question which demands a negative answer.

¹² tn Heb “They went/followed after.” This idiom is found most often in Deuteronomy or covenant contexts. It refers to loyalty to God and to his covenant or his commandments (e.g., 1 Kgs 14:8; 2 Chr 34:31) with the metaphor of a path or way underlying it (e.g., Deut 11:28; 28:14). To “follow other gods” was to abandon this way and this loyalty (i.e., to “abandon” or “forget” God, Judg 2:12; Hos 2:13) and to follow the customs or religious traditions of the pagan nations (e.g., 2 Kgs 17:15). The classic text on “following” God or another god is 1 Kgs 18:18, 21 where Elijah taunts the people with “halting between two opinions” whether the Lord was the true God or Baal was. The idiom is often found followed by “to serve and to worship” or “they served and worshiped” such and such a god or entity (see, e.g., Jer 8:2; 11:10; 13:10; 16:11; 25:6; 35:15).

¹³ tn The words “to me” are not in the Hebrew text but are implicit from the context: Heb “they followed after the worthless thing/things and became worthless.” There is an obvious wordplay on the verb “became worthless” and the noun “worthless thing,” which is probably to be understood collectively and to refer to idols as it does in Jer 8:19; 10:8; 14:22; Jonah 2:8.