Mazmur 22:23

22:23 You loyal followers of the Lord, ¹  praise him!

All you descendants of Jacob, honor him!

All you descendants of Israel, stand in awe of him! ² 

Mazmur 31:1

Psalm 31 ³ 

For the music director; a psalm of David.

31:1 In you, O Lord, I have taken shelter!

Never let me be humiliated!

Vindicate me by rescuing me! ⁴ 

Mazmur 36:8

36:8 They are filled with food from your house,

and you allow them to drink from the river of your delicacies.

Mazmur 39:5

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

and my life span is nothing from your perspective. ⁶ 

Surely all people, even those who seem secure, are nothing but vapor. ⁷ 

Mazmur 40:14

40:14 May those who are trying to snatch away my life

be totally embarrassed and ashamed! ⁸ 

May those who want to harm me

be turned back and ashamed! ⁹ 

Mazmur 62:9

62:9 Men are nothing but a mere breath;

human beings are unreliable. ¹⁰ 

When they are weighed in the scales,

all of them together are lighter than air. ¹¹ 

Mazmur 87:4

87:4 I mention Rahab ¹²  and Babylon to my followers. ¹³ 

Here are ¹⁴  Philistia and Tyre, ¹⁵  along with Ethiopia. ¹⁶ 

It is said of them, “This one was born there.” ¹⁷ 

Mazmur 88:5

88:5 adrift ¹⁸  among the dead,

like corpses lying in the grave,

whom you remember no more,

and who are cut off from your power. ¹⁹ 

Mazmur 90:10

90:10 The days of our lives add up to seventy years, ²⁰ 

or eighty, if one is especially strong. ²¹ 

But even one’s best years are marred by trouble and oppression. ²² 

Yes, ²³  they pass quickly ²⁴  and we fly away. ²⁵ 

Mazmur 92:7

92:7 When the wicked sprout up like grass,

and all the evildoers glisten, ²⁶ 

it is so that they may be annihilated. ²⁷ 

Mazmur 97:10

97:10 You who love the Lord, hate evil!

He protects ²⁸  the lives of his faithful followers;

he delivers them from the power ²⁹  of the wicked.

Mazmur 139:16

139:16 Your eyes saw me when I was inside the womb. ³⁰ 

All the days ordained for me

were recorded in your scroll

before one of them came into existence. ³¹ 

[22:23]  ¹ tn Heb “[you] fearers of the Lord.” See Ps 15:4.

[22:23]  ² tn Heb “fear him.”

[31:1]  ³ sn Psalm 31. The psalmist confidently asks the Lord to protect him. Enemies threaten him and even his friends have abandoned him, but he looks to the Lord for vindication. In vv. 19-24, which were apparently written after the Lord answered the prayer of vv. 1-18, the psalmist thanks the Lord for delivering him.

[31:1]  ⁴ tn Heb “in your vindication rescue me.”

[39:5]  ⁵ 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]  ⁶ tn Heb “is like nothing before you.”

[39:5]  ⁷ 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.”

[40:14]  ⁸ tn Heb “may they be embarrassed and ashamed together, the ones seeking my life to snatch it away.”

[40:14]  ⁹ tn The four prefixed verbal forms in this verse (“may those…be…embarrassed and ashamed…may those…be turned back and ashamed”) are understood as jussives. The psalmist is calling judgment down on his enemies.

[40:14]  sn See Ps 35:4 for a similar prayer.

[62:9]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “only a breath [are] the sons of mankind, a lie [are] the sons of man.” The phrases “sons of mankind” and “sons of man” also appear together in Ps 49:2. Because of the parallel line there, where “rich and poor” are mentioned, a number of interpreters and translators treat these expressions as polar opposites, בְּנֵי אָדָם (bÿney ’adam) referring to the lower classes and בְּנֵי אִישׁ (bÿney ’ish) to higher classes. But usage does not support such a view. The rare phrase בְּנֵי אִישׁ (“sons of man”) appears to refer to human beings in general in its other uses (see Pss 4:2; Lam 3:33). It is better to understand the phrases as synonymous expressions.

[62:9]  ¹¹ tn The noun הֶבֶל (hevel), translated “a breath” earlier in the verse, appears again here.

[87:4]  ¹² sn “Rahab,” which means “proud one,” is used here as a title for Egypt (see Isa 30:7).

[87:4]  ¹³ tn Heb “to those who know me” (see Ps 36:10). Apparently the Lord speaks here. The verbal construction (the Hiphil of זָכַר, zakhar, “remember” followed by the preposition -לְ [le] with a substantive) is rare, but the prepositional phrase is best understood as indicating the recipient of the announcement (see Jer 4:16). Some take the preposition in the sense of “among” and translate, “among those who know me” (cf. NEB, NIV, NRSV). In this case these foreigners are viewed as the Lord’s people and the psalm is interpreted as anticipating a time when all nations will worship the Lord (see Ps 86:9) and be considered citizens of Zion.

[87:4]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “Look.”

[87:4]  ¹⁵ map For location see Map1 A2; Map2 G2; Map4 A1; JP3 F3; JP4 F3.

[87:4]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “Cush.”

[87:4]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “and this one was born there.” The words “It is said of them” are not in the Hebrew text, but are supplied for clarification and stylistic purposes (see v. 5). Those advocating the universalistic interpretation understand “there” as referring to Zion, but it seems more likely that the adverb refers to the nations just mentioned. The foreigners are identified by their native lands.

[88:5]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “set free.”

[88:5]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “from your hand.”

[90:10]  ²⁰ tn Heb “the days of our years, in them [are] seventy years.”

[90:10]  ²¹ tn Heb “or if [there is] strength, eighty years.”

[90:10]  ²² tn Heb “and their pride [is] destruction and wickedness.” The Hebrew noun רֹהַב (rohav) occurs only here. BDB 923 s.v. assigns the meaning “pride,” deriving the noun from the verbal root רהב (“to act stormily [boisterously, arrogantly]”). Here the “pride” of one’s days (see v. 9) probably refers to one’s most productive years in the prime of life. The words translated “destruction and wickedness” are also paired in Ps 10:7. They also appear in proximity in Pss 7:14 and 55:10. The oppressive and abusive actions of evil men are probably in view (see Job 4:8; 5:6; 15:35; Isa 10:1; 59:4).

[90:10]  ²³ tn or “for.”

[90:10]  ²⁴ tn Heb “it passes quickly.” The subject of the verb is probably “their pride” (see the preceding line). The verb גּוּז (guz) means “to pass” here; it occurs only here and in Num 11:31.

[90:10]  ²⁵ sn We fly away. The psalmist compares life to a bird that quickly flies off (see Job 20:8).

[92:7]  ²⁶ tn Or “flourish.”

[92:7]  ²⁷ tn Heb “in order that they might be destroyed permanently.”

[92:7]  sn God allows the wicked to prosper temporarily so that he might reveal his justice. When the wicked are annihilated, God demonstrates that wickedness does not pay off.

[97:10]  ²⁸ tn The participle may be verbal, though it might also be understood as substantival and appositional to “the Lord.” In this case one could translate, “Hate evil, you who love the Lord, the one who protects the lives…and delivers them.”

[97:10]  ²⁹ tn Heb “hand.”

[139:16]  ³⁰ tn Heb “Your eyes saw my shapeless form.” The Hebrew noun גֹּלֶם (golem) occurs only here in the OT. In later Hebrew the word refers to “a lump, a shapeless or lifeless substance,” and to “unfinished matter, a vessel wanting finishing” (Jastrow 222 s.v. גּוֹלֶם). The translation employs the dynamic rendering “when I was inside the womb” to clarify that the speaker was still in his mother’s womb at the time he was “seen” by God.

[139:16]  ³¹ tn Heb “and on your scroll all of them were written, [the] days [which] were formed, and [there was] not one among them.” This “scroll” may be the “scroll of life” mentioned in Ps 69:28 (see the note on the word “living” there).