Mazmur 18:6

18:6 In my distress I called to the Lord;

I cried out to my God. ¹ 

From his heavenly temple ²  he heard my voice;

he listened to my cry for help. ³ 

Mazmur 21:9

21:9 You burn them up like a fiery furnace ⁴  when you appear; ⁵ 

the Lord angrily devours them; ⁶ 

the fire consumes them.

Mazmur 39:5

39:5 Look, you make my days short-lived, ⁷ 

and my life span is nothing from your perspective. ⁸ 

Surely all people, even those who seem secure, are nothing but vapor. ⁹ 

Mazmur 40:10

40:10 I have not failed to tell about your justice; ¹⁰ 

I spoke about your reliability and deliverance;

I have not neglected to tell the great assembly about your loyal love and faithfulness. ¹¹ 

Mazmur 51:4

51:4 Against you – you above all ¹²  – I have sinned;

I have done what is evil in your sight.

So ¹³  you are just when you confront me; ¹⁴ 

you are right when you condemn me. ¹⁵ 

Mazmur 52:5

52:5 Yet ¹⁶  God will make you a permanent heap of ruins. ¹⁷ 

He will scoop you up ¹⁸  and remove you from your home; ¹⁹ 

he will uproot you from the land of the living. (Selah)

Mazmur 68:4

68:4 Sing to God! Sing praises to his name!

Exalt the one who rides on the clouds! ²⁰ 

For the Lord is his name! ²¹ 

Rejoice before him!

Mazmur 89:19

89:19 Then you ²²  spoke through a vision to your faithful followers ²³  and said:

“I have energized a warrior; ²⁴ 

I have raised up a young man ²⁵  from the people.

[18:6]  ¹ tn In this poetic narrative context the four prefixed verbal forms in v. 6 are best understood as preterites indicating past tense, not imperfects.

[18:6]  ² tn Heb “from his temple.” Verse 10, which pictures God descending from the sky, indicates that the heavenly temple is in view, not the earthly one.

[18:6]  ³ tc Heb “and my cry for help before him came into his ears.” 2 Sam 22:7 has a shorter reading, “my cry for help, in his ears.” It is likely that Ps 18:6 MT as it now stands represents a conflation of two readings: (1) “my cry for help came before him,” (2) “my cry for help came into his ears.” See F. M. Cross and D. N. Freedman, Studies in Ancient Yahwistic Poetry (SBLDS), 144, n. 13.

[21:9]  ⁴ tn Heb “you make them like a furnace of fire.” Although many modern translations retain the literal Hebrew, the statement is elliptical. The point is not that he makes them like a furnace, but like an object burned in a furnace (cf. NEB, “at your coming you shall plunge them into a fiery furnace”).

[21:9]  ⁵ tn Heb “at the time of your face.” The “face” of the king here refers to his angry presence. See Lam 4:16.

[21:9]  ⁶ tn Heb “the Lord, in his anger he swallows them, and fire devours them.” Some take “the Lord” as a vocative, in which case he is addressed in vv. 8-9a. But this makes the use of the third person in v. 9b rather awkward, though the king could be the subject (see vv. 1-7).

[39:5]  ⁷ tn Heb “Look, handbreadths you make my days.” The “handbreadth” (equivalent to the width of four fingers) was one of the smallest measures used by ancient Israelites. See P. C. Craigie, Psalms 1-50 (WBC), 309.

[39:5]  ⁸ tn Heb “is like nothing before you.”

[39:5]  ⁹ tn Heb “surely, all vapor [is] all mankind, standing firm.” Another option is to translate, “Surely, all mankind, though seemingly secure, is nothing but a vapor.”

[40:10]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “your justice I have not hidden in the midst of my heart.”

[40:10]  ¹¹ tn Heb “I have not hidden your loyal love and reliability.”

[51:4]  ¹² tn Heb “only you,” as if the psalmist had sinned exclusively against God and no other. Since the Hebrew verb חָטָא (hata’, “to sin”) is used elsewhere of sinful acts against people (see BDB 306 s.v. 2.a) and David (the presumed author) certainly sinned when he murdered Uriah (2 Sam 12:9), it is likely that the psalmist is overstating the case to suggest that the attack on Uriah was ultimately an attack on God himself. To clarify the point of the hyperbole, the translation uses “especially,” rather than the potentially confusing “only.”

[51:4]  ¹³ tn The Hebrew term לְמַעַן (lÿma’an) normally indicates purpose (“in order that”), but here it introduces a logical consequence of the preceding statement. (Taking the clause as indicating purpose here would yield a theologically preposterous idea – the psalmist purposely sinned so that God’s justice might be vindicated!) For other examples of לְמַעַן indicating result, see 2 Kgs 22:17; Jer 27:15; Amos 2:7, as well as IBHS 638-40 §38.3.

[51:4]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “when you speak.” In this context the psalmist refers to God’s word of condemnation against his sin delivered through Nathan (cf. 2 Sam 12:7-12).

[51:4]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “when you judge.”

[52:5]  ¹⁶ tn The adverb גַּם (gam, “also; even”) is translated here in an adversative sense (“yet”). It highlights the contrastive correspondence between the evildoer’s behavior and God’s response.

[52:5]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “will tear you down forever.”

[52:5]  ¹⁸ tn This rare verb (חָתָה, khatah) occurs only here and in Prov 6:27; 25:22; Isa 30:14.

[52:5]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “from [your] tent.”

[68:4]  ²⁰ tn Traditionally the Hebrew term עֲרָבוֹת (’aravot) is taken as “steppe-lands” (often rendered “deserts”), but here the form is probably a homonym meaning “clouds.” Verse 33, which depicts God as the one who “rides on the sky” strongly favors this (see as well Deut 33:26), as does the reference in v. 9 to God as the source of rain. The term עֲרָבָה (’aravah, “cloud”) is cognate with Akkadian urpatu/erpetu and with Ugaritic ’rpt. The phrase rkb ’rpt (“one who rides on the clouds”) appears in Ugaritic mythological texts as an epithet of the storm god Baal. The nonphonemic interchange of the bilabial consonants b and p is attested elsewhere in roots common to Hebrew and Ugaritic, though the phenomenon is relatively rare.

[68:4]  ²¹ tc Heb “in the Lord his name.” If the MT is retained, the preposition -בְ (bet) is introducing the predicate (the so-called bet of identity), “the Lord is his name.” However, some prefer to emend the text to כִּי יָהּ שְׁמוֹ (ki yah shÿmo, “for Yah is his name”). This emendation, reflected in the present translation, assumes a confusion of bet (ב) and kaf (כ) and haplography of yod (י).

[89:19]  ²² tn The pronoun “you” refers to the Lord, who is addressed here. The quotation that follows further develops the announcement of vv. 3-4.

[89:19]  ²³ tc Many medieval mss read the singular here, “your faithful follower.” In this case the statement refers directly to Nathan’s oracle to David (see 2 Sam 7:17).

[89:19]  ²⁴ tn Heb “I have placed help upon a warrior.”

[89:19]  ²⁵ tn Or perhaps “a chosen one.”