Yehezkiel 14:3

14:3 “Son of man, these men have erected their idols in their hearts and placed the obstacle leading to their iniquity ¹  right before their faces. Should I really allow them to seek ²  me?

Yehezkiel 20:3

20:3 “Son of man, speak to the elders of Israel, and tell them: ‘This is what the sovereign Lord says: Are you coming to seek me? As surely as I live, I will not allow you to seek me, ³  declares the sovereign Lord.’

Yehezkiel 20:31

20:31 When you present your sacrifices ⁴  – when you make your sons pass through the fire – you defile yourselves with all your idols to this very day. Will I allow you to seek me, ⁵  O house of Israel? As surely as I live, declares the sovereign Lord, I will not allow you to seek me! ⁶ 

Mazmur 10:17

10:17 Lord, you have heard ⁷  the request ⁸  of the oppressed;

you make them feel secure because you listen to their prayer. ⁹ 

Mazmur 102:17

102:17 when he responds to the prayer of the destitute, ¹⁰ 

and does not reject ¹¹  their request. ¹² 

Yesaya 55:6-7

55:6 Seek the Lord while he makes himself available; ¹³ 

call to him while he is nearby!

55:7 The wicked need to abandon their lifestyle ¹⁴ 

and sinful people their plans. ¹⁵ 

They should return ¹⁶  to the Lord, and he will show mercy to them, ¹⁷ 

and to their God, for he will freely forgive them. ¹⁸ 

Yeremia 29:11-13

29:11 For I know what I have planned for you,’ says the Lord. ¹⁹  ‘I have plans to prosper you, not to harm you. I have plans to give you ²⁰  a future filled with hope. ²¹  29:12 When you call out to me and come to me in prayer, ²²  I will hear your prayers. ²³  29:13 When you seek me in prayer and worship, you will find me available to you. If you seek me with all your heart and soul, ²⁴ 

Yeremia 50:4-5

50:4 “When that time comes,” says the Lord, ²⁵ 

“the people of Israel and Judah will return to the land together.

They will come back with tears of repentance

as they seek the Lord their God. ²⁶ 

50:5 They will ask the way to Zion;

they will turn their faces toward it.

They will come ²⁷  and bind themselves to the Lord

in a lasting covenant that will never be forgotten. ²⁸ 

Zakharia 10:6

10:6 “I (says the Lord) will strengthen the kingdom ²⁹  of Judah and deliver the people of Joseph ³⁰  and will bring them back ³¹  because of my compassion for them. They will be as though I had never rejected them, for I am the Lord their God and therefore I will hear them.

Zakharia 10:9

10:9 Though I scatter ³²  them among the nations, they will remember in far-off places – they and their children will sprout forth and return.

Zakharia 13:9

13:9 Then I will bring the remaining third into the fire;

I will refine them like silver is refined

and will test them like gold is tested.

They will call on my name and I will answer;

I will say, ‘These are my people,’

and they will say, ‘The Lord is my God.’” ³³ 

Matius 7:7-8

Ask, Seek, Knock

7:7 “Ask ³⁴  and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door ³⁵  will be opened for you. 7:8 For everyone who asks ³⁶  receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.

Filipi 4:6

4:6 Do not be anxious about anything. Instead, in every situation, through prayer and petition with thanksgiving, tell your requests to God.

Ibrani 4:16

4:16 Therefore let us confidently approach the throne of grace to receive mercy and find grace whenever we need help. ³⁷ 

Ibrani 10:21-22

10:21 and since we have a great priest ³⁸  over the house of God, 10:22 let us draw near with a sincere heart in the assurance that faith brings, ³⁹  because we have had our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience ⁴⁰  and our bodies washed in pure water.

Yakobus 4:2-3

4:2 You desire and you do not have; you murder and envy and you cannot obtain; you quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask; 4:3 you ask and do not receive because you ask wrongly, so you can spend it on your passions.

Yakobus 4:1

Passions and Pride

4:1 Where do the conflicts and where ⁴¹  do the quarrels among you come from? Is it not from this, ⁴²  from your passions that battle inside you? ⁴³ 

Yohanes 5:14

5:14 After this Jesus found him at the temple and said to him, “Look, you have become well. Don’t sin any more, ⁴⁴  lest anything worse happen to you.”

[14:3]  ¹ tn Heb “the stumbling block of their iniquity.” This phrase is unique to the prophet Ezekiel.

[14:3]  ² tn Or “I will not reveal myself to them.” The Hebrew word is used in a technical sense here of seeking an oracle from a prophet (2 Kgs 1:16; 3:11; 8:8).

[20:3]  ³ tn Or “I will not reveal myself to you.”

[20:31]  ⁴ tn Or “gifts.”

[20:31]  ⁵ tn Or “Will I reveal myself to you?”

[20:31]  ⁶ tn Or “I will not reveal myself to you.”

[10:17]  ⁷ sn You have heard. The psalmist is confident that God has responded positively to his earlier petitions for divine intervention. The psalmist apparently prayed the words of vv. 16-18 after the reception of an oracle of deliverance (given in response to the confident petition of vv. 12-15) or after the Lord actually delivered him from his enemies.

[10:17]  ⁸ tn Heb “desire.”

[10:17]  ⁹ tn Heb “you make firm their heart, you cause your ear to listen.”

[102:17]  ¹⁰ tn The Hebrew adjective עַרְעָר (’arar, “destitute”) occurs only here in the OT. It is derived from the verbal root ערר (“to strip oneself”).

[102:17]  ¹¹ tn Heb “despise.”

[102:17]  ¹² tn The perfect verbal forms in vv. 16-17 are functioning as future perfects, indicating future actions that will precede the future developments described in v. 15.

[55:6]  ¹³ tn Heb “while he allows himself to be found.” The Niphal form has a tolerative force here.

[55:7]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “Let the wicked one abandon his way.” The singular is collective.

[55:7]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “and the man of evil his thoughts.” The singular is collective.

[55:7]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “let him return.” The singular is collective, meaning “let them.”

[55:7]  ¹⁷ tn The imperfect with vav (ו) conjunctive after the jussive indicates purpose/result.

[55:7]  ¹⁸ sn The appeal and promise of vv. 6-7 echoes the language of Deut 4:25-31; 30:1-10; and 1 Kgs 8:46-53, all of which anticipate the exile and speak of the prerequisites for restoration.

[29:11]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “Oracle of the Lord.”

[29:11]  ²⁰ tn Heb “I know the plans that I am planning for you, oracle of the Lord, plans of well-being and not for harm to give to you….”

[29:11]  ²¹ tn Or “the future you hope for”; Heb “a future and a hope.” This is a good example of hendiadys where two formally coordinated nouns (adjectives, verbs) convey a single idea where one of the terms functions as a qualifier of the other. For this figure see E. W. Bullinger, Figures of Speech, 658-72. This example is discussed on p. 661.

[29:12]  ²² tn Heb “come and pray to me.” This is an example of verbal hendiadys where two verb formally joined by “and” convey a main concept with the second verb functioning as an adverbial qualifier.

[29:12]  ²³ tn Or “You will call out to me and come to me in prayer and I will hear your prayers.” The verbs are vav consecutive perfects and can be taken either as unconditional futures or as contingent futures. See GKC 337 §112.kk and 494 §159.g and compare the usage in Gen 44:22 for the use of the vav consecutive perfects in contingent futures. The conditional clause in the middle of 29:13 and the deuteronomic theology reflected in both Deut 30:1-5 and 1 Kgs 8:46-48 suggest that the verbs are continent futures here. For the same demand for wholehearted seeking in these contexts which presuppose exile see especially Deut 30:2, 1 Kgs 8:48.

[29:13]  ²⁴ tn Or “If you wholeheartedly seek me”; Heb “You will seek me and find [me] because you will seek me with all your heart.” The translation attempts to reflect the theological nuances of “seeking” and “finding” and the psychological significance of “heart” which refers more to intellectual and volitional concerns in the OT than to emotional ones.

[50:4]  ²⁵ tn Heb “oracle of the Lord.”

[50:4]  ²⁶ tn Heb “and the children of Israel will come, they and the children of Judah together. They shall go, weeping as they go, and they will seek the Lord their God.” The concept of “seeking” the Lord often has to do with seeking the Lord in worship (by sacrifice [Hos 5:6; 2 Chr 11:16]; prayer [Zech 8:21, 22; 2 Sam 12:16; Isa 65:1; 2 Chr 15:4]). In Hos 7:10 it is in parallel with returning to the Lord. In Ps 69:6 it is in parallel with hoping in or trusting in the Lord. Perhaps the most helpful parallels here, however, are Hos 3:5 (in comparison with Jer 30:9) and 2 Chr 15:15 where it is in the context of a covenant commitment to be loyal to the Lord which is similar to the context here (see the next verse). The translation is admittedly paraphrastic but “seeking the Lord” does not mean here looking for God as though he were merely a person to be found.

[50:5]  ²⁷ tc The translation here assumes that the Hebrew בֹּאוּ (bo’u; a Qal imperative masculine plural) should be read בָּאוּ (ba’u; a Qal perfect third plural). This reading is presupposed by the Greek version of Aquila, the Latin version, and the Targum (see BHS note a, which mistakenly assumes that the form must be imperfect).

[50:5]  ²⁸ sn See Jer 32:40 and the study note there for the nature of this lasting agreement.

[10:6]  ²⁹ tn Heb “the house.”

[10:6]  ³⁰ tn Or “the kingdom of Israel”; Heb “the house of Joseph.”

[10:6]  sn Joseph is mentioned here instead of the usual Israel (but see 2 Sam 19:20; Ps 78:67; 80:1; 81:5; Ezek 37:16; Amos 5:6, 15; 6:6) because of the exodus motif that follows in vv. 8-11.

[10:6]  ³¹ tc The anomalous MT reading וְחוֹשְׁבוֹתִים (vÿkhoshÿvotim) should probably be וַהֲשִׁי בוֹתִם (vahashi votim), the Hiphil perfect consecutive of שׁוּב (shuv), “return” (cf. Jer 12:15).

[10:9]  ³² tn Or “sow” (so KJV, ASV). The imagery is taken from the sowing of seed by hand.

[13:9]  ³³ sn The expression I will say ‘It is my people,’ and they will say ‘the Lord is my God’ is reminiscent of the restoration of Israel predicted by Hosea, who said that those who had been rejected as God’s people would be reclaimed and once more become his sons and daughters (Hos 2:23).

[7:7]  ³⁴ sn The three present imperatives in this verse (Ask…seek…knock) are probably intended to call for a repeated or continual approach before God.

[7:7]  ³⁵ tn Grk “it”; the referent (a door) is implied by the context and has been specified in the translation here and in v. 8 for clarity.

[7:8]  ³⁶ sn The actions of asking, seeking, and knocking are repeated here from v. 7 with the encouragement that God does respond.

[4:16]  ³⁷ tn Grk “for timely help.”

[10:21]  ³⁸ tn Grk “and a great priest,” continuing the construction begun in v. 19.

[10:22]  ³⁹ tn Grk “in assurance of faith.”

[10:22]  ⁴⁰ sn The phrase our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience combines the OT imagery of the sprinkling with blood to give ritual purity with the emphasis on the interior cleansing provided by the new covenant: It is the heart that is cleansed and the conscience made perfect (cf. Heb 8:10; 9:9, 14; 10:2, 16).

[4:1]  ⁴¹ tn The word “where” is repeated in Greek for emphasis.

[4:1]  ⁴² tn Grk “from here.”

[4:1]  ⁴³ tn Grk “in your members [i.e., parts of the body].”

[5:14]  ⁴⁴ tn Since this is a prohibition with a present imperative, the translation “stop sinning” is sometimes suggested. This is not likely, however, since the present tense is normally used in prohibitions involving a general condition (as here) while the aorist tense is normally used in specific instances. Only when used opposite the normal usage (the present tense in a specific instance, for example) would the meaning “stop doing what you are doing” be appropriate.