Imamat 10:11

10:11 and to teach the Israelites all the statutes that the Lord has spoken to them through ¹  Moses.”

Ulangan 6:4-9

The Essence of the Covenant Principles

6:4 Listen, Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord is one! ²  6:5 You must love ³  the Lord your God with your whole mind, ⁴  your whole being, ⁵  and all your strength. ⁶ 

Exhortation to Teach the Covenant Principles

6:6 These words I am commanding you today must be kept in mind, 6:7 and you must teach ⁷  them to your children and speak of them as you sit in your house, as you walk along the road, ⁸  as you lie down, and as you get up. 6:8 You should tie them as a reminder on your forearm ⁹  and fasten them as symbols ¹⁰  on your forehead. 6:9 Inscribe them on the doorframes of your houses and gates. ¹¹ 

Ulangan 6:2

6:2 and that you may so revere the Lord your God that you will keep all his statutes and commandments ¹²  that I am giving ¹³  you – you, your children, and your grandchildren – all your lives, to prolong your days.

1 Tawarikh 19:4-11

19:4 So Hanun seized David’s servants and shaved their beards off. ¹⁴  He cut off the lower part of their robes so that their buttocks were exposed ¹⁵  and then sent them away. 19:5 Messengers ¹⁶  came and told David what had happened to the men, so he summoned them, for the men were thoroughly humiliated. The king said, “Stay in Jericho ¹⁷  until your beards grow again; then you may come back.”

19:6 When the Ammonites realized that David was disgusted with them, ¹⁸  Hanun and the Ammonites sent 1,000 talents ¹⁹  of silver to hire chariots and charioteers from Aram Naharaim, Aram Maacah, and Zobah. ²⁰  19:7 They hired 32,000 chariots, along with the king of Maacah and his army, who came and camped in front of Medeba. The Ammonites also assembled from their cities and marched out to do battle.

19:8 When David heard the news, he sent Joab and the entire army to meet them. ²¹  19:9 The Ammonites marched out and were deployed for battle at the entrance to the city, while the kings who had come were by themselves in the field. 19:10 When Joab saw that the battle would be fought on two fronts, he chose some of Israel’s best men and deployed them against the Arameans. ²²  19:11 He put his brother Abishai in charge of the rest of the army and they were deployed against the Ammonites.

1 Tawarikh 1:3

1:3 Enoch, Methuselah, Lamech,

Nehemia 8:8

8:8 They read from the book of God’s law, explaining it ²³  and imparting insight. Thus the people ²⁴  gained understanding from what was read.

Maleakhi 2:7

2:7 For the lips of a priest should preserve knowledge of sacred things, and people should seek instruction from him ²⁵  because he is the messenger of the Lord who rules over all.

[10:11]  ¹ tn Heb “by the hand of” (so KJV).

[6:4]  ² tn Heb “the Lord, our God, the Lord, one.” (1) One option is to translate: “The Lord is our God, the Lord alone” (cf. NAB, NRSV, NLT). This would be an affirmation that the Lord was the sole object of their devotion. This interpretation finds support from the appeals to loyalty that follow (vv. 5, 14). (2) Another option is to translate: “The Lord is our God, the Lord is unique.” In this case the text would be affirming the people’s allegiance to the Lord, as well as the Lord’s superiority to all other gods. It would also imply that he is the only one worthy of their worship. Support for this view comes from parallel texts such as Deut 7:9 and 10:17, as well as the use of “one” in Song 6:8-9, where the starstruck lover declares that his beloved is unique (literally, “one,” that is, “one of a kind”) when compared to all other women.

[6:4]  sn Verses 4-5 constitute the so-called Shema (after the first word שְׁמַע, shÿma’, “hear”), widely regarded as the very heart of Jewish confession and faith. When Jesus was asked what was the greatest commandment of all, he quoted this text (Matt 22:37-38).

[6:5]  ³ tn The verb אָהַב (’ahav, “to love”) in this setting communicates not so much an emotional idea as one of covenant commitment. To love the Lord is to be absolutely loyal and obedient to him in every respect, a truth Jesus himself taught (cf. John 14:15). See also the note on the word “loved” in Deut 4:37.

[6:5]  ⁴ tn Heb “heart.” In OT physiology the heart (לֵב, לֵבָב; levav, lev) was considered the seat of the mind or intellect, so that one could think with one’s heart. See A. Luc, NIDOTTE 2:749-54.

[6:5]  ⁵ tn Heb “soul”; “being.” Contrary to Hellenistic ideas of a soul that is discrete and separate from the body and spirit, OT anthropology equated the “soul” (נֶפֶשׁ, nefesh) with the person himself. It is therefore best in most cases to translate נֶפֶשׁ (nefesh) as “being” or the like. See H. W. Wolff, Anthropology of the Old Testament, 10-25; D. Fredericks, NIDOTTE 3:133-34.

[6:5]  ⁶ sn For NT variations on the Shema see Matt 22:37-39; Mark 12:29-30; Luke 10:27.

[6:7]  ⁷ tn Heb “repeat” (so NLT). If from the root I שָׁנַן (shanan), the verb means essentially to “engrave,” that is, “to teach incisively” (Piel); note NAB “Drill them into your children.” Cf. BDB 1041-42 s.v.

[6:7]  ⁸ tn Or “as you are away on a journey” (cf. NRSV, TEV, NLT); NAB “at home and abroad.”

[6:8]  ⁹ sn Tie them as a sign on your forearm. Later Jewish tradition referred to the little leather containers tied to the forearms and foreheads as tefillin. They were to contain the following passages from the Torah: Exod 13:1-10, 11-16; Deut 6:5-9; 11:13-21. The purpose was to serve as a “sign” of covenant relationship and obedience.

[6:8]  ¹⁰ sn Fasten them as symbols on your forehead. These were also known later as tefillin (see previous note) or phylacteries (from the Greek term). These box-like containers, like those on the forearms, held the same scraps of the Torah. It was the hypocritical practice of wearing these without heartfelt sincerity that caused Jesus to speak scathingly about them (cf. Matt 23:5).

[6:9]  ¹¹ sn The Hebrew term מְזוּזֹת (mÿzuzot) refers both to the door frames and to small cases attached on them containing scripture texts (always Deut 6:4-9 and 11:13-21; and sometimes the decalogue; Exod 13:1-10, 11-16; and Num 10:35-36). See J. H. Tigay, Deuteronomy (JPSTC), 443-44.

[6:2]  ¹² tn Here the terms are not the usual חֻקִּים (khuqqim) and מִשְׁפָּטִים (mishpatim; as in v. 1) but חֻקֹּת (khuqqot, “statutes”) and מִצְוֹת (mitsot, “commandments”). It is clear that these terms are used interchangeably and that their technical precision ought not be overly stressed.

[6:2]  ¹³ tn Heb “commanding.” For stylistic reasons, to avoid redundancy, “giving” has been used in the translation.

[19:4]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “shaved them.” See v. 5.

[19:4]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “and he cut their robes in the middle unto the buttocks.”

[19:5]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “they.” The logical referent, though not specified in the Hebrew text, has been supplied in the translation for clarity.

[19:5]  ¹⁷ map For location see Map5 B2; Map6 E1; Map7 E1; Map8 E3; Map10 A2; Map11 A1.

[19:6]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “that they were a stench [i.e., disgusting] with David.”

[19:6]  ¹⁹ tn The Hebrew word כִּכַּר (kikar, “circle”) refers generally to something that is round. When used of metals it can refer to a disk-shaped weight made of the metal or, by extension, to a standard unit of weight. According to the older (Babylonian) standard the “talent” weighed 130 lbs. (58.9 kg), but later this was lowered to 108.3 lbs. (49.1 kg). More recent research suggests the “light” standard talent was 67.3 lbs. (30.6 kg). Using this as the standard for calculation, the Ammonites hired chariots and charioteers for about 33.7 tons (30,600 kg) of silver.

[19:6]  ²⁰ tn The parallel text of 2 Sam 10:6 has “Aram Beth Rehob and Aram Zobah.”

[19:8]  ²¹ tn The words “the news” and “to meet them” are added in the translation for stylistic reasons and for clarification.

[19:10]  ²² tc The parallel text of 2 Sam 10:10 has “the Ammonites” in place of “the Arameans” here.

[19:10]  tn Heb “and Joab saw that the face of the battle was to him before and behind and he chose from all the best in Israel and arranged to meet Aram.”

[8:8]  ²³ tn The exact meaning of the pual participle מְפֹרָשׁ (mÿforash) in this verse is uncertain. The basic sense of the Hebrew word seems to be “to make distinct.” The word may also have the sense of “to divide in parts,” “to interpret,” or “to translate.” The context of Neh 8:8 does not decisively clarify how the participle is to be understood here. It probably refers to the role of the Levites as those who explained or interpreted the portions of biblical text that had been publicly read on this occasion. A different option, however, is suggested by the translation distincte (“distinctly”) of the Vulgate (cf. KJV, ASV). If the Hebrew word means “distinctly” here, it would imply that the readers paid particular attention to such things as word-grouping and pronunciation so as to be sure that the listeners had every opportunity to understand the message that was being read. Yet another view is found in the Talmud, which understands translation of the Hebrew text into Aramaic to be what is in view here. The following explanation of Neh 8:8 is found in b. Megillah 3a: “‘And they read in the book, in the law of God’: this indicates the [Hebrew] text; ‘with an interpretation’: this indicates the targum; ‘and they gave the sense’: this indicates the verse stops; ‘and caused them to understand the reading’: this indicates the accentuation, or, according to another version, the Masoretic notes.” However, this ancient rabbinic view that the origins of the Targum are found in Neh 8:8 is debatable. It is not clear that the practice of paraphrasing the Hebrew biblical text into Aramaic in order to accommodate the needs of those Jews who were not at home in the Hebrew language developed this early. The translation of מְפֹרָשׁ adopted above (i.e., “explaining it”) understands the word to have in mind an explanatory function (cf. NAB, NCV, TEV, NLT) rather than one of translation.

[8:8]  ²⁴ tn Heb “they”; the referent (the people) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[2:7]  ²⁵ tn Heb “from his mouth” (so NAB, NASB, NRSV).