¹tn The word “where” is repeated in Greek for emphasis.
²tn Grk “from here.”
³tn Grk “in your members [i.e., parts of the body].”
⁴tn Grk “is hostility toward God.”
⁵tn Grk “vainly says.”
⁶tn Grk “he”; the referent (God) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
⁷tc The Byzantine text and a few other mss (P 33 Ï) have the intransitive katw/vkhsen (katwkhsen) here, which turns toV pneu'ma (to pneuma) into the subject of the verb: “The spirit which lives within us.” But the more reliable and older witnesses (Ì74 Í B Y 049 1241 1739 al) have the causative verb, katw/vkisen (katwkisen), which implies a different subject and toV pneu'ma as the object: “The spirit that he causes to live within us.” Both because of the absence of an explicit subject and the relative scarcity of the causative katoikivzw (katoikizw, “cause to dwell”) compared to the intransitive katoikevw (katoikew, “live, dwell”) in biblical Greek (katoikivzw does not occur in the NT at all, and occurs one twelfth as frequently as katoikevw in the LXX), it is easy to see why scribes would replace katw/vkisen with katw/vkhsen. Thus, on internal and external grounds, katw/vkisen is the preferred reading.
⁸tn Interpreters debate the referent of the word “spirit” in this verse: (1) The translation takes “spirit” to be the lustful capacity within people that produces a divided mind (1:8, 14) and inward conflicts regarding God (4:1-4). God has allowed it to be in man since the fall, and he provides his grace (v. 6) and the new birth through the gospel message (1:18-25) to counteract its evil effects. (2) On the other hand the word “spirit” may be taken positively as the Holy Spirit and the sense would be, “God yearns jealously for the Spirit he caused to live within us.” But the word for “envious” or “jealous” is generally negative in biblical usage and the context before and after seems to favor the negative interpretation.
sn No OT verse is worded exactly this way. This is either a statement about the general teaching of scripture or a quotation from an ancient translation of the Hebrew text that no longer exists today.
⁹sn A quotation from Prov 3:34.
¹⁰tn Or “two-minded” (the same description used in 1:8).
¹¹tn This term and the following one are preceded by kaiv (kai) in the Greek text, but contemporary English generally uses connectives only between the last two items in such a series.
¹²tn Grk “let your laughter be turned.”
¹³tn Grk “brothers.” See note on the phrase “brothers and sisters” in 1:2.
¹⁴tn See note on the word “believer” in 1:9.
¹⁵tn Grk “a judge.”
¹⁶tn Grk “who judges your neighbor.”
¹⁷tn Or “city.”
¹⁸tn Grk “who” (continuing the description of the people of v. 13). Because of the length and complexity of the Greek sentence, a new sentence was started here in the translation.
¹⁹tn Or “you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow.”
²⁰tn Or “a vapor.” The Greek word ajtmiv" (atmis) denotes a swirl of smoke arising from a fire (cf. Gen 19:28; Lev 16:13; Joel 2:30 [Acts 2:19]; Ezek 8:11).
²¹tn Grk “instead of your saying.”
²²tn Grk “but now.”
²³tn Or “knows how to do what is good.”
²⁴tn Grk “to him it is sin.”