Mazmur 17:1

Psalm 17 ¹ 

A prayer of David.

17:1 Lord, consider my just cause! ² 

Pay attention to my cry for help!

Listen to the prayer

I sincerely offer! ³ 

Mazmur 119:2

119:2 How blessed are those who observe his rules,

and seek him with all their heart,

Amsal 15:8

15:8 The Lord abhors ⁴  the sacrifices ⁵  of the wicked, ⁶ 

but the prayer ⁷  of the upright pleases him. ⁸ 

Yesaya 1:15-16

1:15 When you spread out your hands in prayer,

I look the other way; ⁹ 

when you offer your many prayers,

I do not listen,

because your hands are covered with blood. ¹⁰ 

1:16 ¹¹ Wash! Cleanse yourselves!

Remove your sinful deeds ¹² 

from my sight.

Stop sinning!

Yeremia 29:12-13

29:12 When you call out to me and come to me in prayer, ¹³  I will hear your prayers. ¹⁴  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, ¹⁵ 

Hosea 7:14

7:14 They do not pray to me, ¹⁶ 

but howl in distress on their beds;

They slash themselves ¹⁷  for grain and new wine,

but turn away from me.

Matius 6:5-8

Private Prayer

6:5 “Whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, because they love to pray while standing in synagogues ¹⁸  and on street corners so that people can see them. Truly I say to you, they have their reward. 6:6 But whenever you pray, go into your room, ¹⁹  close the door, and pray to your Father in secret. And your Father, who sees in secret, will reward you. ²⁰  6:7 When ²¹  you pray, do not babble repetitiously like the Gentiles, because they think that by their many words they will be heard. 6:8 Do ²²  not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.

Matius 23:14

23:14 [[EMPTY]] ²³ 

Yohanes 4:24

4:24 God is spirit, ²⁴  and the people who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”

Yohanes 4:1

Departure From Judea

4:1 Now when Jesus ²⁵  knew that the Pharisees ²⁶  had heard that he ²⁷  was winning ²⁸  and baptizing more disciples than John

Yohanes 3:20-22

3:20 For everyone who does evil deeds hates the light and does not come to the light, so that their deeds will not be exposed. 3:21 But the one who practices the truth comes to the light, so that it may be plainly evident that his deeds have been done in God. ²⁹ 

Further Testimony About Jesus by John the Baptist

3:22 After this, ³⁰  Jesus and his disciples came into Judean territory, and there he spent time with them and was baptizing.

[17:1]  ¹ sn Psalm 17. The psalmist asks God to intervene on his behalf because his life is threatened by dangerous enemies. He appeals to divine justice, for he is certain of his own innocence. Because he is innocent, he expects to encounter God and receive an assuring word.

[17:1]  ² tn Heb “hear, Lord, what is just.”

[17:1]  ³ tn Heb “Listen to my prayer, [made] without lips of deceit.”

[15:8]  ⁴ tn Heb “an abomination of the Lord.” The term יְהוָה (yÿhvah, “the Lord”) functions as a subjective genitive: “the Lord abhors.” Cf. NIV “the Lord detests”; NCV, NLT “the Lord hates”; CEV “the Lord is disgusted.”

[15:8]  ⁵ tn Heb “sacrifice” (so many English versions).

[15:8]  ⁶ sn The sacrifices of the wicked are hated by the Lord because the worshipers are insincere and blasphemous (e.g., Prov 15:29; 21:3; 28:9; Ps 40:6-8; Isa 1:10-17). In other words, the spiritual condition of the worshiper determines whether or not the worship is acceptable to God.

[15:8]  ⁷ sn J. H. Greenstone notes that if God will accept the prayers of the upright, he will accept their sacrifices; for sacrifice is an outer ritual and easily performed even by the wicked, but prayer is a private and inward act and not usually fabricated by unbelievers (Proverbs, 162).

[15:8]  ⁸ tn Heb “[is] his pleasure.” The 3rd person masculine singular suffix functions as a subjective genitive: “he is pleased.” God is pleased with the prayers of the upright.

[1:15]  ⁹ tn Heb “I close my eyes from you.”

[1:15]  ¹⁰ sn This does not just refer to the blood of sacrificial animals, but also the blood, as it were, of their innocent victims. By depriving the poor and destitute of proper legal recourse and adequate access to the economic system, the oppressors have, for all intents and purposes, “killed” their victims.

[1:16]  ¹¹ sn Having demonstrated the people’s guilt, the Lord calls them to repentance, which will involve concrete action in the socio-economic realm, not mere emotion.

[1:16]  ¹² sn This phrase refers to Israel’s covenant treachery (cf. Deut 28:10; Jer 4:4; 21:12; 23:2, 22; 25:5; 26:3; 44:22; Hos 9:15; Ps 28:4). In general, the noun ַמעַלְלֵיכֶם (ma’alleykhem) can simply be a reference to deeds, whether good or bad. However, Isaiah always uses it with a negative connotation (cf. 3:8, 10).

[29:12]  ¹³ 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]  ¹⁴ 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]  ¹⁵ 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.

[7:14]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “they do not cry out to me in their heart”; NLT “with sincere hearts.”

[7:14]  ¹⁷ tc The MT reads יִתְגּוֹרָרוּ (yitgoraru) which is either (1) Hitpolel imperfect 3rd person masculine plural (“they assemble themselves”; so KJV, NASB) from I גּוּר (gur, “to sojourn”; BDB 157 s.v. I גּוּר) or (2) Hitpolel imperfect 3rd person masculine plural (“they excite themselves”) from II גּוּר (gur, “to stir up”; BDB 158 s.v. II גּוּר). However, the Hebrew lexicographers suggest that both of these options are unlikely. Several other Hebrew mss preserve an alternate textual tradition of יִתְגּוֹדָדוּ (yitgodadu) which is a Hitpolel imperfect 3rd person common plural (“they slash themselves”) from גָּדַד (gadad, “to cut”; BDB 151 s.v. גָּדַד), as also reflected in the LXX (cf. NAB “they lacerated themselves”; NRSV, TEV “gash themselves”; NLT “cut themselves.” This reflects the pagan Canaanite cultic practice of priests cutting themselves and draining their blood on the ground to elicit agricultural fertility by resurrecting the slain fertility god Baal from the underworld (Deut 14:1; 1 Kgs 18:28; Jer 16:6; 41:5; 47:5). Cf. CEV which adds “in the hope that Baal will bless their crops.”

[6:5]  ¹⁸ sn See the note on synagogues in 4:23.

[6:6]  ¹⁹ sn The term translated room refers to the inner room of a house, normally without any windows opening outside, the most private location possible (BDAG 988 s.v. ταμεῖον 2).

[6:6]  ²⁰ tc See the tc note on “will reward you” in 6:4: The problem is the same and the ms support differs only slightly.

[6:7]  ²¹ tn Here δέ (de) has not been translated.

[6:8]  ²² tn Grk “So do not.” Here οὖν (oun) has not been translated.

[23:14]  ²³ tc The most important mss (א B D L Z Θ Ë¹ 33 892* pc and several versional witnesses) do not have 23:14 “Woe to you experts in the law and you Pharisees, hypocrites! You devour widows’ property, and as a show you pray long prayers! Therefore you will receive a more severe punishment.” Part or all of the verse is contained (either after v. 12 or after v. 13) in W 0102 0107 ˹³ Ï and several versions, but it is almost certainly not original. The present translation follows NA²⁷ in omitting the verse number as well, a procedure also followed by a number of other modern translations. Note also that Mark 12:40 and Luke 20:47 are very similar in wording and are not disputed textually.

[4:24]  ²⁴ tn Here πνεῦμα (pneuma) is understood as a qualitative predicate nominative while the articular θεός (qeos) is the subject.

[4:1]  ²⁵ tc Several early and important witnesses, along with the majority of later ones (Ì^66c,75 A B C L W^s Ψ 083 ˹³ 33 Ï sa), have κύριος (kurio", “Lord”) here instead of ᾿Ιησοῦς (Ihsou", “Jesus”). As significant as this external support is, the internal evidence seems to be on the side of ᾿Ιησοῦς. “Jesus” is mentioned two more times in the first two verses of chapter four in a way that is stylistically awkward (so much so that the translation has substituted the pronoun for the first one; see tn note below). This seems to be sufficient reason to motivate scribes to change the wording to κύριος. Further, the reading ᾿Ιησοῦς is not without decent support, though admittedly not as strong as that for κύριος (Ì^66* א D Θ 086 ˹ 565 1241 al lat bo). On the other hand, this Gospel speaks of Jesus as Lord in the evangelist’s narrative descriptions elsewhere only in 11:2; 20:18, 20; 21:12; and probably 6:23, preferring ᾿Ιησοῦς most of the time. This fact could be used to argue that scribes, acquainted with John’s style, changed κύριος to ᾿Ιησοῦς. But the immediate context generally is weighed more heavily than an author’s style. It is possible that neither word was in the original text and scribes supplied what they thought most appropriate (see TCGNT 176). But without ms evidence to this effect coupled with the harder reading ᾿Ιησοῦς, this conjecture must remain doubtful. All in all, it is best to regard ᾿Ιησοῦς as the original reading here.

[4:1]  ²⁶ sn See the note on Pharisees in 1:24.

[4:1]  ²⁷ tn Grk “Jesus”; the repetition of the proper name is somewhat redundant in English (see the beginning of the verse) and so the pronoun (“he”) has been substituted here.

[4:1]  ²⁸ tn Grk “was making.”

[3:21]  ²⁹ sn John 3:16-21 provides an introduction to the (so-called) “realized” eschatology of the Fourth Gospel: Judgment has come; eternal life may be possessed now, in the present life, as well as in the future. The terminology “realized eschatology” was originally coined by E. Haenchen and used by J. Jeremias in discussion with C. H. Dodd, but is now characteristically used to describe Dodd’s own formulation. See L. Goppelt, Theology of the New Testament, 1:54, note 10, and R. E. Brown (John [AB], 1:cxvii-cxviii) for further discussion. Especially important to note is the element of choice portrayed in John’s Gospel. If there is a twofold reaction to Jesus in John’s Gospel, it should be emphasized that that reaction is very much dependent on a person’s choice, a choice that is influenced by his way of life, whether his deeds are wicked or are done in God (John 3:20-21). For John there is virtually no trace of determinism at the surface. Only when one looks beneath the surface does one find statements like “no one can come to me, unless the Father who sent me draws him” (John 6:44).

[3:22]  ³⁰ tn This section is related loosely to the preceding by μετὰ ταῦτα (meta tauta). This constitutes an indefinite temporal reference; the intervening time is not specified.