¹ tn Heb “Are not Abana and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all of the waters of Israel?” The rhetorical question expects an emphatic “yes” as an answer.

² tn Heb “because he struck down two men more innocent and better than he and he killed them with the sword, and my father David did not know.”

¹ tn Or “righteous” (so KJV, NASB, NIV, NRSV); NAB “you are in the right”; NLT “are a better man than I am.”

² tn Heb “a large and a small,” but since the issue is the weight, “a heavy and a light one” conveys the idea better in English.

¹ tn The construction uses a genitive: “a bull of the sin offering,” which means, a bull that is designated for a sin (or better, purification) offering.

¹ tn The imperfect tense could be translated “you shall keep” as a binding command, but the obligatory nuance (“must”) captures the binding sense better.

¹ tn Most modern translations take the statement as a comparison (“how is vine wood better than any forest wood?”) based on the preposition מִן (min). But a comparison should have a word as an adjective or stative verb designating a quality, i.e., a word for “good/better” is lacking. The preposition is translated above in its partitive sense.

⁴ sn This is another “better” saying, contrasting a poor person who has integrity with a rich person who is perverse. Of course there are rich people with integrity and perverse poor people, but that is not of interest here. If it came to the choices described here, honest poverty is better than corrupt wealth.

³ sn The second half of the proverb presents the logical inference: The liar would be without “loyal love” entirely, and so poverty would be better than this. A poor person who wishes to do better is preferable to a person who makes promises and does not keep them.

² sn This is another “better” saying; between these two things, the first is better. There are other options—such as righteousness with wealth—but the proverb is not concerned with that. A similar saying appears in Amenemope 8:19-20 (ANET 422).

¹ sn One of the frequent characteristics of wisdom literature is the “better” saying; it is a comparison of different but similar things to determine which is to be preferred. These two verses focus on spiritual things being better than troubled material things.

¹ tn The word נֶפֶשׁ (nefesh) is often translated “soul.” But since Hebrew thought does not make such a distinction between body and soul, it is usually better to translate it with “person.” When a suffix is added to the word, then that pronoun would serve as the better translation, as here with “my soul” = “I” (meaning with every fiber of my being).

⁴ tn Since Paul’s focus is on the present experience of the Colossians, “mature” is a better translation of τέλειον (teleion) than “perfect,” since the latter implies a future, eschatological focus.

² tn Grk “Nevertheless, you also, one by one, each his own wife so let him love as himself.” This statement is cumbersome and was cleaned up to reflect better English style.

⁵ tn Grk “and,” but the sequence of events is better expressed in English by “then.” A new sentence is begun in the translation because of the length of the sentence in Greek, which exceeds normal English sentence length.

² sn He was amazed. Now Simon, the one who amazed others, is himself amazed, showing the superiority of Philip’s connection to God. Christ is better than anything the culture has to offer.

² sn Finally Pilate gave in. He decided crucifying one Galilean teacher was better than facing a riot. Justice lost out in the process because he did not follow his own verdict.

¹ tn This verb is future indicative, and thus not subordinate to “grant” (διατίθεμαι, diatithemai) as part of the result clause beginning with ἵνα ἔσθητε (hina esthēte) at the beginning of v. 30. It is better understood as a predictive future.

² tc Some mss (those of ƒ¹³) place John 7:53-8:11 here after v. 38, no doubt because it was felt that this was a better setting for the pericope.

⁶ tn Grk “sons.” Here the phrase “sons of light” is a reference to the righteous. The point is that those of the world often think ahead about consequences better than the righteous do.