1 Raja-raja 8:46

8:46 “The time will come when your people ¹  will sin against you (for there is no one who is sinless!) and you will be angry with them and deliver them over to their enemies, who will take them as prisoners to their own land, ²  whether far away or close by.

Ayub 11:12

11:12 But an empty man will become wise,

when a wild donkey’s colt is born a human being. ³ 

Ayub 15:14

15:14 What is man that he should be pure,

or one born of woman, that he should be righteous?

Mazmur 143:2

143:2 Do not sit in judgment on ⁴  your servant,

for no one alive is innocent before you. ⁵ 

Mazmur 7:1

Psalm 7 ⁶ 

A musical composition ⁷  by David, which he sang to the Lord concerning ⁸  a Benjaminite named Cush. ⁹ 

7:1 O Lord my God, in you I have taken shelter. ¹⁰ 

Deliver me from all who chase me! Rescue me!

Yeremia 9:5

9:5 One friend deceives another

and no one tells the truth.

These people have trained themselves ¹¹  to tell lies.

They do wrong and are unable to repent.

Yeremia 13:23

13:23 But there is little hope for you ever doing good,

you who are so accustomed to doing evil.

Can an Ethiopian ¹²  change the color of his skin?

Can a leopard remove its spots? ¹³ 

Yeremia 17:9

17:9 The human mind is more deceitful than anything else.

It is incurably bad. ¹⁴  Who can understand it?

Roma 3:9

The Condemnation of the World

3:9 What then? Are we better off? Certainly not, for we have already charged that Jews and Greeks alike are all under sin,

Efesus 2:3

2:3 among whom ¹⁵  all of us ¹⁶  also ¹⁷  formerly lived out our lives in the cravings of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath ¹⁸  even as the rest… ¹⁹ 

[8:46]  ¹ tn Heb “they”; the referent (your people) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[8:46]  ² tn Heb “the land of the enemy.”

[11:12]  ³ tn As A. B. Davidson (Job, 84) says, the one thing will happen when the other happens – which is never. The word “empty” נָבוּב (navuv) means “hollow; witless,” and “become wise” (יִלָּבֵב, yillavev) is “will get heart” (not to “lack heart” as Driver suggested”). Many commentators do not like the last line of the verse, and so offer even more emendations. E. F. Sutcliffe wanted to change פֶּרֶא (pere’, “donkey”) to פֶּרֶד (pered, “stallion”), rendering “a witless wight may get wit when a mule is born a stallion” (“Notes on Job, textual and exegetical,” Bib 30 [1949]: 70-71); and others approached the verse by changing the verb from יִוָּלֵד (yivvaled, “is born”) to יִלָּמֵד (yillamed, “is taught”), resulting in “a hollow man may get understanding, and a wild donkey’s colt may be taught [= tamed]” (cf. NAB).

[143:2]  ⁴ tn Heb “do not enter into judgment with.”

[143:2]  ⁵ tn Heb “for no one living is innocent before you.”

[7:1]  ⁶ sn Psalm 7. The psalmist asks the Lord to intervene and deliver him from his enemies. He protests his innocence and declares his confidence in God’s justice.

[7:1]  ⁷ tn The precise meaning of the Hebrew term שִׁגָּיוֹן (shiggayon; translated here “musical composition”) is uncertain. Some derive the noun from the verbal root שָׁגָה (shagah, “swerve, reel”) and understand it as referring to a “wild, passionate song, with rapid changes of rhythm” (see BDB 993 s.v. שִׁגָּיוֹן). But this proposal is purely speculative. The only other appearance of the noun is in Hab 3:1, where it occurs in the plural.

[7:1]  ⁸ tn Or “on account of.”

[7:1]  ⁹ sn Apparently this individual named Cush was one of David’s enemies.

[7:1]  ¹⁰ tn The Hebrew perfect verbal form probably refers here to a completed action with continuing results.

[9:5]  ¹¹ tn Heb “their tongues.” However, this is probably not a natural idiom in contemporary English and the tongue may stand as a part for the whole anyway.

[13:23]  ¹² tn This is a common proverb in English coming from this biblical passage. For cultures where it is not proverbial perhaps it would be better to translate “Can black people change the color of their skin?” Strictly speaking these are “Cushites” inhabitants of a region along the upper Nile south of Egypt. The Greek text is responsible for the identification with Ethiopia. The term in Greek is actually a epithet = “burnt face.”

[13:23]  ¹³ tn Heb “Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard his spots? [Then] you also will be able to do good who are accustomed to do evil.” The English sentence has been restructured and rephrased in an attempt to produce some of the same rhetorical force the Hebrew original has in this context.

[17:9]  ¹⁴ tn Or “incurably deceitful”; Heb “It is incurable.” For the word “deceitful” compare the usage of the verb in Gen 27:36 and a related noun in 2 Kgs 10:19. For the adjective “incurable” compare the usage in Jer 15:18. It is most commonly used with reference to wounds or of pain. In Jer 17:16 it is used metaphorically for a “woeful day” (i.e., day of irreparable devastation).

[17:9]  sn The background for this verse is Deut 29:18-19 (29:17-18 HT) and Deut 30:17.

[2:3]  ¹⁵ sn Among whom. The relative pronoun phrase that begins v. 3 is identical, except for gender, to the one that begins v. 2 (ἐν αἵς [en Jais], ἐν οἵς [en Jois]). By the structure, the author is building an argument for our hopeless condition: We lived in sin and we lived among sinful people. Our doom looked to be sealed as well in v. 2: Both the external environment (kingdom of the air) and our internal motivation and attitude (the spirit that is now energizing) were under the devil’s thumb (cf. 2 Cor 4:4).

[2:3]  ¹⁶ tn Grk “we all.”

[2:3]  ¹⁷ tn Or “even.”

[2:3]  ¹⁸ sn Children of wrath is a Semitic idiom which may mean either “people characterized by wrath” or “people destined for wrath.”

[2:3]  ¹⁹ sn Eph 2:1-3. The translation of vv. 1-3 is very literal, even to the point of retaining the awkward syntax of the original. See note on the word dead in 2:1.