Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)
11 O Lord, teach me how you want me to live.[a]
Then I will obey your commands.[b]
Make me wholeheartedly committed to you.[c]
12 O Lord, my God, I will give you thanks with my whole heart.
I will honor your name continually.[d]
13 For you will extend your great loyal love to me,[e]
and will deliver my life[f] from the depths of Sheol.[g]
14 O God, arrogant men attack me;[h]
a gang[i] of ruthless men, who do not respect you, seek my life.[j]
15 But you, O Lord, are a compassionate and merciful God.
You are patient[k] and demonstrate great loyal love and faithfulness.[l]
16 Turn toward me and have mercy on me.
Give your servant your strength.
Deliver this son of your female servant.[m]
17 Show me evidence of your favor.[n]
Then those who hate me will see it and be ashamed,[o]
for you, O Lord, will help me and comfort me.[p]
Footnotes
- Psalm 86:11 tn Heb “teach me your way.” The Lord’s “way” refers here to the moral principles he expects the psalmist to follow. See Pss 25:4; 27:11.
- Psalm 86:11 tn Heb “I will walk in your truth.” The Lord’s commandments are referred to as “truth” here because they are a trustworthy and accurate expression of the divine will. See Ps 25:5.
- Psalm 86:11 tn Heb “Bind my heart to the fearing of your name.” The verb translated “bind” occurs only here in the Piel stem. It appears twice in the Qal, meaning “be joined” in both cases (Gen 49:6; Isa 14:20). To “fear” God’s name means to have a healthy respect for him which in turn motivates one to obey his commands (see Pss 61:5; 102:15).
- Psalm 86:12 tn Or “forever.”
- Psalm 86:13 tn Heb “for your loyal love [is] great over me.”
- Psalm 86:13 tn Or “for he will have delivered my life.” The verb form indicates a future perfect here.
- Psalm 86:13 tn Or “lower Sheol.”
- Psalm 86:14 tn Heb “rise up against me.”
- Psalm 86:14 tn Or “assembly.”
- Psalm 86:14 tn Heb “seek my life and do not set you before them.” See Ps 54:3.
- Psalm 86:15 tn Heb “slow to anger.”
- Psalm 86:15 tn Heb “and great of loyal love and faithfulness.”sn The psalmist’s confession of faith in this verse echoes Exod 34:6.
- Psalm 86:16 tn Heb “the son of your female servant.” The phrase “son of a female servant” (see also Ps 116:16) is used of a son born to a secondary wife or concubine (Exod 23:12). In some cases the child’s father is the master of the house (see Gen 21:10, 13; Judg 9:18). The phrase may be used metaphorically and idiomatically to emphasize the psalmist’s humility before the Lord and his status as the Lord’s servant. Or it may be a reference to the psalmist’s own mother who also was a servant of the Lord.
- Psalm 86:17 tn Heb “Work with me a sign for good.” The expression “work a sign” also occurs in Judg 6:17.
- Psalm 86:17 tn After the imperative in the preceding line (“work”), the prefixed verb forms with prefixed vav (ו) conjunctive indicate purpose or result.
- Psalm 86:17 tn The perfect verbal forms are understood here as dramatic/rhetorical, expressing the psalmist’s certitude that such a sign from the Lord will be followed by his intervention. Another option is to understand the forms as future perfects (“for you, O Lord, will have helped me and comforted me”).
The Lord Challenges the Pagan Gods
21 “Present your argument,” says the Lord.
“Produce your evidence,”[a] says Jacob’s king.[b]
22 “Let them produce evidence! Let them tell us what will happen!
Tell us about your earlier predictive oracles,[c]
so we may examine them[d] and see how they were fulfilled.[e]
Or decree for us some future events!
23 Predict how future events will turn out,[f]
so we might know you are gods.
Yes, do something good or something bad,
so we might be frightened and in awe.[g]
24 Look, you are nothing, and your accomplishments are nonexistent;
the one who chooses to worship you is disgusting.[h]
25 I have stirred up one out of the north[i] and he advances,
one from the eastern horizon who prays in my name.[j]
He steps on[k] rulers as if they were clay,
like a potter treading the clay.
26 Who decreed this from the beginning, so we could know?
Who announced it[l] ahead of time, so we could say, ‘He’s correct’?
Indeed, none of them decreed it.
Indeed, none of them announced it.
Indeed, no one heard you say anything!
27 I first decreed to Zion, ‘Look, here’s what will happen!’[m]
I sent a herald to Jerusalem.
28 I look, but there is no one,
among them there is no one who serves as an adviser,
that I might ask questions and receive answers.
29 Look, all of them are nothing,[n]
their accomplishments are nonexistent;
their metal images lack any real substance.[o]
Footnotes
- Isaiah 41:21 tn Heb “strong [words],” see HALOT 870 s.v. *עֲצֻמוֹת.
- Isaiah 41:21 sn Apparently this challenge is addressed to the pagan idol gods, see vv. 23-24.
- Isaiah 41:22 tn Heb “As for the former things, tell us what they are!”
- Isaiah 41:22 tn Heb “so we might set [them to] our heart.”
- Isaiah 41:22 tn Heb “and might know their outcome.”
- Isaiah 41:23 tn Heb “Declare the coming things, with respect to the end.”
- Isaiah 41:23 tc The translation assumes the Qere (וְנִרְאֶה [venirʾeh], from יָרֵא [yareʾ], “be afraid”).tn Heb “so we might be frightened and afraid together.” On the meaning of the verb שָׁתָע (shataʿ), see the note at v. 10.
- Isaiah 41:24 tn Heb “an object of disgust [is he who] chooses you.”
- Isaiah 41:25 sn That is, Cyrus the Persian. See the note at v. 2.
- Isaiah 41:25 tn Heb “[one] from the rising of the sun [who] calls in my name.”
- Isaiah 41:25 tn The Hebrew text has וְיָבֹא (veyavoʾ, “and he comes”), but this likely needs to be emended to an original וַיָּבָס (vayyavas), from בּוּס (bus, “step on”).
- Isaiah 41:26 tn The words “who announced it” are supplied in the translation for clarification. The interrogative particle and verb are understood by ellipsis (see the preceding line).
- Isaiah 41:27 tn The Hebrew text reads simply, “First to Zion, ‘Look here they are!’” The words “I decreed” are supplied in the translation for clarification.
- Isaiah 41:29 tc The Hebrew text has אָוֶן (ʾaven, “deception,” i.e., “false”), but the Qumran scroll 1QIsaa has אין (“nothing”), which forms a better parallel with אֶפֶס (ʾefes, “nothing”) in the next line. See also 40:17 and 41:12.
- Isaiah 41:29 tn Heb “their statues are wind and nothing”; NASB “wind and emptiness”; NIV “wind and confusion.”
Warning Against Drifting Away
2 Therefore we must pay closer attention to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away. 2 For if the message spoken through angels[a] proved to be so firm that every violation[b] or disobedience received its just penalty, 3 how will we escape if we neglect such a great salvation? It was first communicated through the Lord and was confirmed to us by those who heard him, 4 while God confirmed their witness[c] with signs and wonders and various miracles and gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed[d] according to his will.
Exposition of Psalm 8: Jesus and the Destiny of Humanity
5 For he did not put the world to come,[e] about which we are speaking,[f] under the control of angels. 6 Instead someone testified somewhere:
“What is man that you think of him[g] or the son of man that you care for him?
7 You made him lower than the angels for a little while.
You crowned him with glory and honor.[h]
8 You put all things under his control.”[i]
For when he put all things under his control, he left nothing outside of his control. At present we do not yet see all things under his control,[j] 9 but we see Jesus, who was made lower than the angels for a little while,[k] now crowned with glory and honor because he suffered death,[l] so that by God’s grace he would experience[m] death on behalf of everyone.
Footnotes
- Hebrews 2:2 sn The message spoken through angels refers to the OT law, which according to Jewish tradition was mediated to Moses through angels (cf. Deut 33:2; Ps 68:17-18; Acts 7:38, 53; Gal 3:19; and Jub. 1:27, 29; Josephus, Ant. 15.5.3 [15.136]).
- Hebrews 2:2 tn Grk “through angels became valid and every violation.”
- Hebrews 2:4 tn Grk “God bearing witness together” (the phrase “with them” is implied).
- Hebrews 2:4 tn Grk “and distributions of the Holy Spirit.”
- Hebrews 2:5 sn The phrase the world to come means “the coming inhabited earth,” using the Greek term which describes the world of people and their civilizations.
- Hebrews 2:5 sn See the previous reference to the world in Heb 1:6.
- Hebrews 2:6 tn Grk “remember him.”
- Hebrews 2:7 tc Several witnesses, many of them early and significant (א A C D* P Ψ 0243 0278 33 1739 1881 al lat co), have at the end of v 7, “You have given him dominion over the works of your hands.” Other mss, not quite as impressive in weight, lack the words (P46 B D2 M). In spite of the impressive external evidence for the longer reading, it is most likely a scribal addition to conform the text of Hebrews to Ps 8:6 (8:7 LXX). Conformity of a NT quotation of the OT to the LXX was a routine scribal activity, and can hardly be in doubt here as to the cause of the longer reading.
- Hebrews 2:8 tn Grk “you subjected all things under his feet.”sn A quotation from Ps 8:4-6.
- Hebrews 2:8 sn The expression all things under his control occurs three times in 2:8. The latter two occurrences are not exactly identical to the Greek text of Ps 8:6 quoted at the beginning of the verse, but have been adapted by the writer of Hebrews to fit his argument.
- Hebrews 2:9 tn Or “who was made a little lower than the angels.”
- Hebrews 2:9 tn Grk “because of the suffering of death.”
- Hebrews 2:9 tn Grk “would taste.” Here the Greek verb does not mean “sample a small amount” (as a typical English reader might infer from the word “taste”), but “experience something cognitively or emotionally; come to know something” (cf. BDAG 195 s.v. γεύομαι 2).
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