Yesaya 60:6-7

60:6 Camel caravans will cover your roads, ¹ 

young camels from Midian and Ephah.

All the merchants of Sheba ²  will come,

bringing gold and incense

and singing praises to the Lord. ³ 

60:7 All the sheep of Kedar will be gathered to you;

the rams of Nebaioth will be available to you as sacrifices. ⁴ 

They will go up on my altar acceptably, ⁵ 

and I will bestow honor on my majestic temple.

Maleakhi 1:11

1:11 For from the east to the west my name will be great among the nations. Incense and pure offerings will be offered in my name everywhere, for my name will be great among the nations,” ⁶  says the Lord who rules over all.

Roma 12:1

Consecration of the Believer’s Life

12:1 Therefore I exhort you, brothers and sisters, ⁷  by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a sacrifice – alive, holy, and pleasing to God ⁸  – which is your reasonable service.

Roma 15:16

15:16 to be a minister of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles. I serve ⁹  the gospel of God ¹⁰  like a priest, so that the Gentiles may become an acceptable offering, ¹¹  sanctified by the Holy Spirit.

Filipi 2:17

2:17 But even if I am being poured out like a drink offering on the sacrifice and service of your faith, I am glad and rejoice together with all of you.

Filipi 4:18

4:18 For I have received everything, and I have plenty. I have all I need because I received from Epaphroditus what you sent – a fragrant offering, an acceptable sacrifice, very pleasing to God.

Ibrani 13:13

13:13 We must go out to him, then, outside the camp, bearing the abuse he experienced. ¹² 

Ibrani 13:15-16

13:15 Through him then let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of our lips, acknowledging his name. 13:16 And do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, ¹³  for God is pleased with such sacrifices.

Ibrani 13:1

Final Exhortations

13:1 Brotherly love must continue.

Pengkhotbah 2:5

2:5 I designed ¹⁴  royal gardens ¹⁵  and parks ¹⁶  for myself,

and I planted all kinds of fruit trees in them.

Wahyu 8:3-4

8:3 Another ¹⁷  angel holding ¹⁸  a golden censer ¹⁹  came and was stationed ²⁰  at the altar. A ²¹  large amount of incense was given to him to offer up, with the prayers of all the saints, on the golden altar that is before the throne. 8:4 The ²²  smoke coming from the incense, ²³  along with the prayers of the saints, ascended before God from the angel’s hand.

[60:6]  ¹ tn Heb “an abundance of camels will cover you.”

[60:6]  ² tn Heb “all of them, from Sheba.”

[60:6]  ³ tn Heb “and they will announce the praises of the Lord.”

[60:7]  ⁴ tn Heb “will serve you,” i.e., be available as sacrifices (see the next line). Another option is to understood these “rams” as symbolic of leaders who will be subject to the people of Zion. See v. 10.

[60:7]  ⁵ tc Heb “they will go up on acceptance [on] my altar.” Some have suggested that the preposition עַל (’al) is dittographic (note the preceding יַעֲלוּ [ya’alu]). Consequently, the form should be emended to לְרָצוֹן (lÿratson, “acceptably”; see BDB 953 s.v. רָצוֹן). However, the Qumran scroll 1QIsa^a has both לרצון followed by the preposition על, which would argue against deleted the preposition. As the above translation seeks to demonstrate, the preposition עַל (’al) indicates a norm (“in accordance with acceptance” or “acceptably”; IBHS 218 §11.2.13e, n. 111) and the “altar” functions as an objective accusative with a verb of motion (cf. Gen 49:4; Lev 2:2; Num 13:17; J. N. Oswalt, Isaiah [NICOT], 2:534, n. 14).

[1:11]  ⁶ sn My name will be great among the nations. In what is clearly a strongly ironic shift of thought, the Lord contrasts the unbelief and virtual paganism of the postexilic community with the conversion and obedience of the nations that will one day worship the God of Israel.

[12:1]  ⁷ tn Grk “brothers.” See note on the phrase “brothers and sisters” in 1:13.

[12:1]  ⁸ tn The participle and two adjectives “alive, holy, and pleasing to God” are taken as predicates in relation to “sacrifice,” making the exhortation more emphatic. See ExSyn 618-19.

[12:1]  sn Taken as predicate adjectives, the terms alive, holy, and pleasing are showing how unusual is the sacrifice that believers can now offer, for OT sacrifices were dead. As has often been quipped about this text, “The problem with living sacrifices is that they keep crawling off the altar.”

[15:16]  ⁹ tn Grk “serving.” This is a continuation of the previous sentence in the Greek text, but in keeping with contemporary English style, a new sentence was started here in the translation.

[15:16]  ¹⁰ tn The genitive in the phrase τὸ εὐαγγέλιον τοῦ θεοῦ (to euangelion tou qeou, “the gospel of God”) could be translated as either a subjective genitive (“the gospel which God brings”) or an objective genitive (“the gospel about God”). Either is grammatically possible. This is possibly an instance of a plenary genitive (see ExSyn 119-21; M. Zerwick, Biblical Greek, §§36-39). If so, an interplay between the two concepts is intended: The gospel which God brings is in fact the gospel about himself.

[15:16]  ¹¹ tn Grk “so that the offering of the Gentiles may become acceptable.” This could be understood to refer to an offering belonging to the Gentiles (a possessive genitive) or made by the Gentiles (subjective genitive), but more likely the phrase should be understood as an appositive genitive, with the Gentiles themselves consisting of the offering (so J. D. G. Dunn, Romans [WBC 38], 2:860). The latter view is reflected in the translation “so that the Gentiles may become an acceptable offering.”

[13:13]  ¹² tn Grk “his abuse.”

[13:16]  ¹³ tn Grk “neglect doing good and fellowship.”

[2:5]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “made.”

[2:5]  ¹⁵ tn The term does not refer here to vegetable gardens, but to orchards (cf. the next line). In the same way the so-called “garden” of Eden was actually an orchard filled with fruit trees. See Gen 2:8-9.

[2:5]  ¹⁶ tn The noun פַּרְדֵּס (pardes, “garden, parkland, forest”) is a foreign loanword that occurs only 3 times in biblical Hebrew (Song 4:13; Eccl 2:5; Neh 2:8). The original Old Persian term pairidaeza designated the enclosed parks and pleasure-grounds that were the exclusive domain of the Persian kings and nobility (HALOT 963 s.v. פַּרְדֵּס; LSJ 1308 s.v παράδεισος). The related Babylonian term pardesu “marvelous garden” referred to the enclosed parks of the kings (AHw 2:833 and 3:1582). The term passed into Greek as παράδεισος (paradeisos, “enclosed park, pleasure-ground”), referring to the enclosed parks and gardens of the Persian kings (LSJ 1308). The Greek term has been transliterated into English as “paradise.”

[8:3]  ¹⁷ tn Here καί (kai) has not been translated because of differences between Greek and English style.

[8:3]  ¹⁸ tn Grk “having.”

[8:3]  ¹⁹ sn A golden censer was a bowl in which incense was burned. The imagery suggests the OT role of the priest.

[8:3]  ²⁰ tn The verb “to station” was used to translate ἑστάθη (Jestaqh) because it connotes the idea of purposeful arrangement in English, which seems to be the idea in the Greek.

[8:3]  ²¹ tn Because of the length and complexity of the Greek sentence, a new sentence was started here in the translation. Here καί (kai) has not been translated because of differences between Greek and English style.

[8:4]  ²² tn Here καί (kai) has not been translated because of differences between Greek and English style.

[8:4]  ²³ tn The expression τῶν θυμιαμάτων (twn qumiamatwn) is taken as a “genitive of producer,” i.e., the noun in the genitive produces the head noun.