Kejadian 18:14

18:14 Is anything impossible ¹  for the Lord? I will return to you when the season comes round again and Sarah will have a son.” ² 

Mazmur 68:1

Psalm 68 ³ 

For the music director; by David, a psalm, a song.

68:1 God springs into action! ⁴ 

His enemies scatter;

his adversaries ⁵  run from him. ⁶ 

Mazmur 119:28

119:28 I collapse ⁷  from grief.

Sustain me by your word! ⁸ 

[18:14]  ¹ tn The Hebrew verb פָּלָא (pala’) means “to be wonderful, to be extraordinary, to be surpassing, to be amazing.”

[18:14]  ² sn Sarah will have a son. The passage brings God’s promise into clear focus. As long as it was a promise for the future, it really could be believed without much involvement. But now, when it seemed so impossible from the human standpoint, when the Lord fixed an exact date for the birth of the child, the promise became rather overwhelming to Abraham and Sarah. But then this was the Lord of creation, the one they had come to trust. The point of these narratives is that the creation of Abraham’s offspring, which eventually became Israel, is no less a miraculous work of creation than the creation of the world itself.

[68:1]  ³ sn Psalm 68. The psalmist depicts God as a mighty warrior and celebrates the fact that God exerts his power on behalf of his people.

[68:1]  ⁴ tn Or “rises up.” The verb form is an imperfect, not a jussive. The psalmist is describing God’s appearance in battle in a dramatic fashion.

[68:1]  ⁵ tn Heb “those who hate him.”

[68:1]  ⁶ sn The wording of v. 1 echoes the prayer in Num 10:35: “Spring into action, Lord! Then your enemies will be scattered and your adversaries will run from you.”

[119:28]  ⁷ tn Some translate “my soul weeps,” taking the verb דָלַף (dalaf) from a root meaning “to drip; to drop” (BDB 196 s.v. דֶּלַף). On the basis of cognate evidence from Arabic and Akkadian, HALOT 223 s.v. II דלף proposes a homonymic root here, meaning “be sleepless.” Following L. C. Allen (Psalms 101-150 [WBC], 127, 135) the translation assumes that the verb is cognate with Ugaritic dlp, “to collapse; to crumple” in CTA 2 iv. 17, 26. See G. R. Driver, Canaanite Myths and Legends, 44, 144.

[119:28]  ⁸ tn Heb “according to your word.” Many medieval Hebrew mss read the plural “your words.”