Mazmur 119:150

119:150 Those who are eager to do ¹  wrong draw near;

they are far from your law.

Yesaya 48:1

The Lord Appeals to the Exiles

48:1 Listen to this, O family of Jacob, ² 

you who are called by the name ‘Israel,’

and are descended from Judah, ³ 

who take oaths in the name of the Lord,

and invoke ⁴  the God of Israel –

but not in an honest and just manner. ⁵ 

Yeremia 2:5

2:5 This is what the Lord says:

“What fault could your ancestors ⁶  have possibly found in me

that they strayed so far from me? ⁷ 

They paid allegiance to ⁸  worthless idols, and so became worthless to me. ⁹ 

[119:150]  ¹ tn Heb “those who pursue.”

[48:1]  ² tn Heb “house of Jacob”; TEV, CEV “people of Israel.”

[48:1]  ³ tc The Hebrew text reads literally “and from the waters of Judah came out.” מִמֵּי (mimme) could be a corruption of מִמְּעֵי (mimmÿ’e, “from the inner parts of”; cf. NASB, NIV, NLT, NRSV) as suggested in the above translation. Some translations (ESV, NKJV) retain the MT reading because the Qumran scroll 1QIsa^a, which corrects a similar form to “from inner parts of” in 39:7, does not do it here.

[48:1]  ⁴ tn Heb “cause to remember”; KJV, ASV “make mention of.”

[48:1]  ⁵ tn Heb “not in truth and not in righteousness.”

[2:5]  ⁶ tn Heb “fathers.”

[2:5]  ⁷ tn Or “I did not wrong your ancestors in any way. Yet they went far astray from me.” Both translations are an attempt to render the rhetorical question which demands a negative answer.

[2:5]  ⁸ tn Heb “They went/followed after.” This idiom is found most often in Deuteronomy or covenant contexts. It refers to loyalty to God and to his covenant or his commandments (e.g., 1 Kgs 14:8; 2 Chr 34:31) with the metaphor of a path or way underlying it (e.g., Deut 11:28; 28:14). To “follow other gods” was to abandon this way and this loyalty (i.e., to “abandon” or “forget” God, Judg 2:12; Hos 2:13) and to follow the customs or religious traditions of the pagan nations (e.g., 2 Kgs 17:15). The classic text on “following” God or another god is 1 Kgs 18:18, 21 where Elijah taunts the people with “halting between two opinions” whether the Lord was the true God or Baal was. The idiom is often found followed by “to serve and to worship” or “they served and worshiped” such and such a god or entity (see, e.g., Jer 8:2; 11:10; 13:10; 16:11; 25:6; 35:15).

[2:5]  ⁹ tn The words “to me” are not in the Hebrew text but are implicit from the context: Heb “they followed after the worthless thing/things and became worthless.” There is an obvious wordplay on the verb “became worthless” and the noun “worthless thing,” which is probably to be understood collectively and to refer to idols as it does in Jer 8:19; 10:8; 14:22; Jonah 2:8.