Ulangan 5:2-3

5:2 The Lord our God made a covenant with us at Horeb. 5:3 He ¹  did not make this covenant with our ancestors ²  but with us, we who are here today, all of us living now.

Keluaran 19:5-6

19:5 And now, if you will diligently listen to me ³  and keep ⁴  my covenant, then you will be my ⁵  special possession ⁶  out of all the nations, for all the earth is mine, 19:6 and you will be to me ⁷  a kingdom of priests ⁸  and a holy nation.’ ⁹  These are the words that you will speak to the Israelites.”

Yosua 24:25

24:25 That day Joshua drew up an agreement ¹⁰  for the people, and he established rules and regulations ¹¹  for them in Shechem.

Yosua 24:2

24:2 Joshua told all the people, “Here is what the Lord God of Israel says: ‘In the distant past your ancestors ¹²  lived beyond the Euphrates River, ¹³  including Terah the father of Abraham and Nahor. They worshiped ¹⁴  other gods,

Kisah Para Rasul 11:17

11:17 Therefore if God ¹⁵  gave them the same gift ¹⁶  as he also gave us after believing ¹⁷  in the Lord Jesus Christ, ¹⁸  who was I to hinder ¹⁹  God?”

Kisah Para Rasul 11:2

11:2 So when Peter went up to Jerusalem, ²⁰  the circumcised believers ²¹  took issue with ²²  him,

Kisah Para Rasul 15:12-15

15:12 The whole group kept quiet ²³  and listened to Barnabas and Paul while they explained all the miraculous signs ²⁴  and wonders God had done among the Gentiles through them. 15:13 After they stopped speaking, ²⁵  James replied, ²⁶  “Brothers, listen to me. 15:14 Simeon ²⁷  has explained ²⁸  how God first concerned himself ²⁹  to select ³⁰  from among the Gentiles ³¹  a people for his name. 15:15 The ³²  words of the prophets agree ³³  with this, as it is written,

[5:3]  ¹ tn Heb “the Lord.” The pronoun has been used in the translation for stylistic reasons to avoid redundancy.

[5:3]  ² tn Heb “fathers.”

[19:5]  ³ tn Heb “listen to my voice.” The construction uses the imperfect tense in the conditional clause, preceded by the infinitive absolute from the same verb. The idiom “listen to the voice of” implies obedience, not just mental awareness of sound.

[19:5]  ⁴ tn The verb is a perfect tense with vav (ו) consecutive; it continues the idea in the protasis of the sentence: “and [if you will] keep.”

[19:5]  ⁵ tn The lamed preposition expresses possession here: “to me” means “my.”

[19:5]  ⁶ tn The noun is סְגֻלָּה (sÿgullah), which means a special possession. Israel was to be God’s special possession, but the prophets will later narrow it to the faithful remnant. All the nations belong to God, but Israel was to stand in a place of special privilege and enormous responsibility. See Deut 7:6; 14:2; 26:18; Ps 135:4; and Mal 3:17. See M. Greenburg, “Hebrew sÿgulla: Akkadian sikiltu,” JAOS 71 (1951): 172ff.

[19:6]  ⁷ tn Or “for me” (NIV, NRSV), or, if the lamed (ל) preposition has a possessive use, “my kingdom” (so NCV).

[19:6]  ⁸ tn The construction “a kingdom of priests” means that the kingdom is made up of priests. W. C. Kaiser (“Exodus,” EBC 2:417) offers four possible renderings of the expression: 1) apposition, viz., “kings, that is, priests; 2) as a construct with a genitive of specification, “royal priesthood”; 3) as a construct with the genitive being the attribute, “priestly kingdom”; and 4) reading with an unexpressed “and” – “kings and priests.” He takes the latter view that they were to be kings and priests. (Other references are R. B. Y. Scott, “A Kingdom of Priests (Exodus xix. 6),” OTS 8 [1950]: 213-19; William L. Moran, “A Kingdom of Priests,” The Bible in Current Catholic Thought, 7-20). However, due to the parallelism of the next description which uses an adjective, this is probably a construct relationship. This kingdom of God will be composed of a priestly people. All the Israelites would be living wholly in God’s service and enjoying the right of access to him. And, as priests, they would have the duty of representing God to the nations, following what they perceived to be the duties of priests – proclaiming God’s word, interceding for people, and making provision for people to find God through atonement (see Deut 33:9,10).

[19:6]  ⁹ tn They are also to be “a holy nation.” They are to be a nation separate and distinct from the rest of the nations. Here is another aspect of their duty. It was one thing to be God’s special possession, but to be that they had to be priestly and holy. The duties of the covenant will specify what it would mean to be a holy nation. In short, they had to keep themselves free from everything that characterized pagan people (S. R. Driver, Exodus, 171). So it is a bilateral covenant: they received special privileges but they must provide special services by the special discipline. See also H. Kruse, “Exodus 19:5 and the Mission of Israel,” North East Asian Journal of Theology 24/25 (1980): 239-42.

[24:25]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “cut a covenant.”

[24:25]  ¹¹ tn Heb “a statute and a judgment.”

[24:2]  ¹² tn Heb “your fathers.”

[24:2]  ¹³ tn Heb “the river,” referring to the Euphrates. This has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[24:2]  ¹⁴ tn Or “served.”

[11:17]  ¹⁵ tc Codex Bezae (D) and {a few other Western witnesses} here lack ὁ θεός (Jo qeo", “God”), perhaps because these scribes considered the Holy Spirit to be the gift of Christ rather than the gift of God; thus leaving the subject implicit would naturally draw the reader back to v. 16 to see the Lord Jesus as the bestower of the Spirit.

[11:17]  ¹⁶ sn That is, the same gift of the Holy Spirit.

[11:17]  ¹⁷ tn Or “gave us when we believed”; or “gave us after we believed”; or “gave us who believed”; or “gave them when they believed the same gift as he also gave us.” The aorist dative plural participle πιστεύσασιν (pisteusasin) can be understood in several different ways: (1) It could modify ἡμῖν (Jhmin, “us”) or αὐτοῖς (autois, “them”). Proximity (it immediately follows ἡμῖν) would suggest that it belongs with ἡμῖν, so the last option (“gave them when they believed the same gift he also gave us”) is less likely. (2) The participle could be either adverbial or adjectival, modifying ἡμῖν. This decision is primarily a contextual one. The point Peter made is not whether or not the Gentiles believed, since both groups (“us” and “they”) had believed in the Lord Jesus Christ. The point was whether or not the Gentiles received the Spirit when they believed, just as Jewish Christians had received the Spirit on the day of Pentecost when they believed. Translated as an adjectival participle, πιστεύσασιν only affirms the fact of belief, however, and raises somewhat of a theological problem if one realizes, “Would God have given the Gentiles the Spirit if they had not believed?” (In other words, belief in itself is a theological prerequisite for receiving the Spirit. As such, in the case of the Gentiles, it is assumed.) Thus in context it makes more sense to understand the participle πιστεύσασιν as adverbial, related to the time of belief in connection with the giving of the Spirit. (3) The participle πιστεύσασιν as a temporal participle can refer to action antecedent to the action of the main verb ἔδωκεν (edwken) or contemporaneous with it. Logically, at least, the gift of the Spirit followed belief in the case of the original Christians, who had believed before the day of Pentecost. In the case of Cornelius and his household, belief and the reception of the Spirit were virtually simultaneous. One can argue that Peter is “summarizing” the experience of Jewish Christians, and therefore the actions of belief and reception of the Spirit, while historically separate, have been “telescoped” into one (“gave them the same gift as he gave us when we believed”), but to be technically accurate the participle πιστεύσασιν should be translated “gave them the same gift as he also gave us after we believed.” A number of these problems can be avoided, however, by using a translation in English that maintains some of the ambiguity of the Greek original. Thus “if God gave them the same gift as he also gave us after believing” is used, where the phrase “after believing” can refer either to “them” or to “us,” or both.

[11:17]  ¹⁸ tn Or “Messiah”; both “Christ” (Greek) and “Messiah” (Hebrew and Aramaic) mean “one who has been anointed.”

[11:17]  ¹⁹ tn Or “prevent,” “forbid” (BDAG 580 s.v. κωλύω 1.a). Peter’s point is that he will not stand in the way of God.

[11:2]  ²⁰ map For location see Map5 B1; Map6 F3; Map7 E2; Map8 F2; Map10 B3; JP1 F4; JP2 F4; JP3 F4; JP4 F4.

[11:2]  ²¹ tn Or “the Jewish Christians”; Grk “those of the circumcision.” Within the larger group of Christians were some whose loyalties ran along ethnic-religious lines.

[11:2]  ²² tn Or “believers disputed with,” “believers criticized” (BDAG 231 s.v. διακρίνω 5.b).

[15:12]  ²³ tn BDAG 922 s.v. σιγάω 1.a lists this passage under the meaning “say nothing, keep still, keep silent.”

[15:12]  ²⁴ tn Here in connection with τέρατα (terata) the miraculous nature of these signs is indicated.

[15:13]  ²⁵ tn BDAG 922 s.v. σιγάω 1.b lists this passage under the meaning “stop speaking, become silent.”

[15:13]  ²⁶ tn Grk “answered, saying”; the redundant participle λέγων (legwn) has not been translated.

[15:14]  ²⁷ sn Simeon is a form of the apostle Peter’s Aramaic name. James uses Peter’s “Jewish” name here.

[15:14]  ²⁸ tn Or “reported,” “described.”

[15:14]  ²⁹ tn BDAG 378 s.v. ἐπισκέπτομαι 3 translates this phrase in Acts 15:14, “God concerned himself about winning a people fr. among the nations.”

[15:14]  ³⁰ tn Grk “to take,” but in the sense of selecting or choosing (accompanied by the preposition ἐκ [ek] plus a genitive specifying the group selected from) see Heb 5:1; also BDAG 584 s.v. λαμβάνω 6.

[15:14]  ³¹ sn In the Greek text the expression “from among the Gentiles” is in emphatic position.

[15:15]  ³² tn Grk “And the.” Because of the difference between Greek style, which often begins sentences or clauses with “and,” and English style, which generally does not, καί (kai) has not been translated here.

[15:15]  ³³ sn The term agree means “match” or “harmonize with.” James’ point in the introduction argues that many of the OT prophets taught this. He gives one example (which follows).