Mazmur 40:16

40:16 May all those who seek you be happy and rejoice in you!

May those who love to experience ¹  your deliverance say continually, ² 

“May the Lord be praised!” ³ 

Mazmur 48:2

48:2 It is lofty and pleasing to look at, ⁴ 

a source of joy to the whole earth. ⁵ 

Mount Zion resembles the peaks of Zaphon; ⁶ 

it is the city of the great king.

Mazmur 124:5

124:5 The raging water

would have overwhelmed us. ⁷ 

Mazmur 146:1

Psalm 146 ⁸ 

146:1 Praise the Lord!

Praise the Lord, O my soul!

[40:16]  ¹ tn Heb “those who love,” which stands metonymically for its cause, the experience of being delivered by the Lord.

[40:16]  ² tn The three prefixed verbal forms prior to the quotation are understood as jussives. The psalmist balances out his imprecation against his enemies with a prayer of blessing upon the godly.

[40:16]  ³ tn The prefixed verbal form is taken as a jussive, “may the Lord be magnified [in praise].” Another option is to take the verb as an imperfect, “the Lord is great” (cf. NRSV). See Ps 35:27.

[48:2]  ⁴ tn Heb “beautiful of height.” The Hebrew term נוֹף (nof, “height”) is a genitive of specification after the qualitative noun “beautiful.” The idea seems to be that Mount Zion, because of its lofty appearance, is pleasing to the sight.

[48:2]  ⁵ sn A source of joy to the whole earth. The language is hyperbolic. Zion, as the dwelling place of the universal king, is pictured as the world’s capital. The prophets anticipated this idealized picture becoming a reality in the eschaton (see Isa 2:1-4).

[48:2]  ⁶ tn Heb “Mount Zion, the peaks of Zaphon.” Like all the preceding phrases in v. 2, both phrases are appositional to “city of our God, his holy hill” in v. 1, suggesting an identification in the poet’s mind between Mount Zion and Zaphon. “Zaphon” usually refers to the “north” in a general sense (see Pss 89:12; 107:3), but here, where it is collocated with “peaks,” it refers specifically to Mount Zaphon, located in the vicinity of ancient Ugarit and viewed as the mountain where the gods assembled (see Isa 14:13). By alluding to West Semitic mythology in this way, the psalm affirms that Mount Zion is the real divine mountain, for it is here that the Lord God of Israel lives and rules over the nations. See P. Craigie, Psalms 1-50 (WBC), 353, and T. N. D. Mettinger, In Search of God, 103.

[124:5]  ⁷ tn Heb “then they would have passed over our being, the raging waters.”

[146:1]  ⁸ sn Psalm 146. The psalmist urges his audience not to trust in men, but in the Lord, the just king of the world who cares for the needy.