1 Samuel 15:13

15:13 When Samuel came to him, ¹  Saul said to him, “May the Lord bless you! I have done what the Lord said.”

Ayub 33:9

33:9 ² ‘I am pure, without transgression;

I am clean ³  and have no iniquity.

Ayub 34:5

34:5 For Job says, ‘I am innocent, ⁴ 

but God turns away my right.

Ayub 35:2

35:2 “Do you think this to be ⁵  just:

when ⁶  you say, ‘My right before God.’ ⁷ 

Ayub 40:8

40:8 Would you indeed annul ⁸  my justice?

Would you declare me guilty so that you might be right?

Matius 19:20

19:20 The young man said to him, “I have wholeheartedly obeyed ⁹  all these laws. ¹⁰  What do I still lack?”

Lukas 10:29

10:29 But the expert, ¹¹  wanting to justify ¹²  himself, said to Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”

Lukas 18:11

18:11 The Pharisee stood and prayed about himself like this: ¹³  ‘God, I thank ¹⁴  you that I am not like other people: ¹⁵  extortionists, ¹⁶  unrighteous people, ¹⁷  adulterers – or even like this tax collector. ¹⁸ 

Roma 10:3

10:3 For ignoring the righteousness that comes from God, and seeking instead to establish their own righteousness, they did not submit to God’s righteousness.

[15:13]  ¹ tn Heb “to Saul.”

[33:9]  ² sn See Job 9:21; 10:7; 23:7; 27:4; ch. 31.

[33:9]  ³ tn The word is a hapax legomenon; hap is from חָפַף (khafaf). It is used in New Hebrew in expressions like “to wash” the head. Cognates in Syriac and Akkadian support the meaning “to wash; to clean.”

[34:5]  ⁴ tn Heb “righteous,” but in this context it means to be innocent or in the right.

[35:2]  ⁵ tn The line could be read as “do you reckon this for justice? Here “to be” is understood.

[35:2]  ⁶ tn The word “when” is not in the Hebrew text, but is implied.

[35:2]  ⁷ tn The brief line could be interpreted in a number of ways. The MT simply has “my right from God.” It could be “I am right before God,” “I am more just/right than God” (identifying the preposition as a comparative min (מִן); cf. J. E. Hartley, Job [NICOT], 463), “I will be right before God,” or “My just cause against God.”

[40:8]  ⁸ tn The verb פָּרַר (parar) means “to annul; to break; to frustrate.” It was one thing for Job to claim his own integrity, but it was another matter altogether to nullify God’s righteousness in the process.

[19:20]  ⁹ tn Grk “kept.” The implication of this verb is that the man has obeyed the commandments without fail, so the adverb “wholeheartedly” has been added to the translation to bring out this nuance.

[19:20]  ¹⁰ tn Grk “these things.” The referent of the pronoun (the laws mentioned by Jesus) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[19:20]  sn While the rich man was probably being sincere when he insisted I have wholeheartedly obeyed all these laws, he had confined his righteousness to external obedience. The rich man’s response to Jesus’ command – to give away all he had – revealed that internally he loved money more than God.

[10:29]  ¹¹ tn Grk “And he”; the referent (the expert in religious law, shortened here to “the expert”) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[10:29]  ¹² tn Or “vindicate.”

[10:29]  sn The expert in religious law picked up on the remark about the neighbor and sought to limit his responsibility for loving. Some believed this obligation would only be required toward the righteous (Sir 12:1-4). The lawyer was trying to see if that was right and thus confidently establish his righteousness (wanting to justify himself).

[18:11]  ¹³ tn Or “stood by himself and prayed like this.” The prepositional phrase πρὸς ἑαυτόν (pros eauton, “to/about himself”) could go with either the aorist participle σταθείς (staqeis, “stood”) or with the imperfect verb προσηύχετο (proshuceto, “he prayed”). If taken with the participle, then the meaning would seem at first glance to be: “stood ‘by himself’,” or “stood ‘alone’.” Now it is true that πρός can mean “by” or “with” when used with intransitive verbs such as ἵστημι ({isthmi, “I stand”; cf. BDAG 874 s.v. πρός 2.a), but πρὸς ἑαυτόν together never means “by himself” or “alone” in biblical Greek. On the other hand, if πρὸς ἑαυτόν is taken with the verb, then two different nuances emerge, both of which highlight in different ways the principal point Jesus seems to be making about the arrogance of this religious leader: (1) “prayed to himself,” but not necessarily silently, or (2) “prayed about himself,” with the connotation that he prayed out loud, for all to hear. Since his prayer is really a review of his moral résumé, directed both at advertising his own righteousness and exposing the perversion of the tax collector, whom he actually mentions in his prayer, the latter option seems preferable. If this is the case, then the Pharisee’s mention of God is really nothing more than a formality.

[18:11]  ¹⁴ sn The Pharisee’s prayer started out as a thanksgiving psalm to God, but the praise ended up not being about God.

[18:11]  ¹⁵ tn Here the plural Greek term ἀνθρώπων (anqrwpwn) is used as a generic and can refer to both men and women (NASB, NRSV, “people”; NLT, “everyone else”; NAB, “the rest of humanity”).

[18:11]  ¹⁶ tn Or “swindlers” (BDAG 134 s.v. ἅρπαξ 2); see also Isa 10:2; Josephus, J. W. 6.3.4 [6.203].

[18:11]  ¹⁷ sn A general category for “sinners” (1 Cor 6:9; Lev 19:3).

[18:11]  ¹⁸ sn Note what the Pharisee assumes about the righteousness of this tax collector by grouping him with extortionists, unrighteous people, and adulterers.