Ulangan 16:21

Examples of Legal Cases

16:21 You must not plant any kind of tree as a sacred Asherah pole ¹  near the altar of the Lord your God which you build for yourself.

Ulangan 16:1

The Passover-Unleavened Bread Festival

16:1 Observe the month Abib ²  and keep the Passover to the Lord your God, for in that month ³  he ⁴  brought you out of Egypt by night.

Kisah Para Rasul 14:23

14:23 When they had appointed elders ⁵  for them in the various churches, ⁶  with prayer and fasting ⁷  they entrusted them to the protection ⁸  of the Lord in whom they had believed.

Yeremia 17:2

17:2 Their children are always thinking about ⁹  their ¹⁰  altars

and their sacred poles dedicated to the goddess Asherah, ¹¹ 

set up beside the green trees on the high hills

[16:21]  ¹ tn Heb “an Asherah, any tree.”

[16:21]  sn Sacred Asherah pole. This refers to a tree (or wooden pole) dedicated to the worship of Asherah, wife/sister of El and goddess of fertility. See also Deut 7:5.

[16:1]  ² sn The month Abib, later called Nisan (Neh 2:1; Esth 3:7), corresponds to March-April in the modern calendar.

[16:1]  ³ tn Heb “in the month Abib.” The demonstrative “that” has been used in the translation for stylistic reasons.

[16:1]  ⁴ tn Heb “the Lord your God.” The pronoun has been used in the translation for stylistic reasons to avoid redundancy.

[14:23]  ⁵ sn Appointed elders. See Acts 20:17.

[14:23]  ⁶ tn The preposition κατά (kata) is used here in a distributive sense; see BDAG 512 s.v. κατά B.1.d.

[14:23]  ⁷ tn Literally with a finite verb (προσευξάμενοι, proseuxamenoi) rather than a noun, “praying with fasting,” but the combination “prayer and fasting” is so familiar in English that it is preferable to use it here.

[14:23]  ⁸ tn BDAG 772 s.v. παρατίθημι 3.b has “entrust someone to the care or protection of someone” for this phrase. The reference to persecution or suffering in the context (v. 22) suggests “protection” is a better translation here. This looks at God’s ultimate care for the church.

[17:2]  ⁹ tn It is difficult to convey in good English style the connection between this verse and the preceding. The text does not have a finite verb but a temporal preposition with an infinitive: Heb “while their children remember their altars…” It is also difficult to translate the verb “literally.” (i.e., what does “remember” their altars mean?). Hence it has been rendered “always think about.” Another possibility would be “have their altars…on their minds.”

[17:2]  sn There is possibly a sarcastic irony involved here as well. The Israelites were to remember the Lord and what he had done and were to commemorate certain days, e.g., the Passover and the Sabbath which recalled their deliverance. Instead they resorted to the pagan altars and kept them in mind.

[17:2]  ¹⁰ tc This reading follows many Hebrew mss and ancient versions. Many other Hebrew mss read “your” [masc. pl.].

[17:2]  ¹¹ sn Sacred poles dedicated to…Asherah. A leading deity of the Canaanite pantheon was Asherah, wife/sister of El and goddess of fertility. She was commonly worshiped at shrines in or near groves of evergreen trees, or, failing that, at places marked by wooden poles (Hebrew אֲשֵׁרִים [’asherim], plural). They were to be burned or cut down (Deut 7:5; 12:3; 16:21; Judg 6:25, 28, 30; 2 Kgs 18:4).