Mazmur 27:1-2

Psalm 27 ¹ 

By David.

27:1 The Lord delivers and vindicates me! ² 

I fear no one! ³ 

The Lord protects my life!

I am afraid of no one! ⁴ 

27:2 When evil men attack me ⁵ 

to devour my flesh, ⁶ 

when my adversaries and enemies attack me, ⁷ 

they stumble and fall. ⁸ 

Mazmur 62:1-6

Psalm 62 ⁹ 

For the music director, Jeduthun; a psalm of David.

62:1 For God alone I patiently wait; ¹⁰ 

he is the one who delivers me. ¹¹ 

62:2 He alone is my protector ¹²  and deliverer.

He is my refuge; ¹³  I will not be upended. ¹⁴ 

62:3 How long will you threaten ¹⁵  a man?

All of you are murderers, ¹⁶ 

as dangerous as a leaning wall or an unstable fence. ¹⁷ 

62:4 They ¹⁸  spend all their time planning how to bring him ¹⁹  down. ²⁰ 

They love to use deceit; ²¹ 

they pronounce blessings with their mouths,

but inwardly they utter curses. ²²  (Selah)

62:5 Patiently wait for God alone, my soul! ²³ 

For he is the one who gives me confidence. ²⁴ 

62:6 He alone is my protector ²⁵  and deliverer.

He is my refuge; ²⁶  I will not be upended. ²⁷ 

Mazmur 73:20

73:20 They are like a dream after one wakes up. ²⁸ 

O Lord, when you awake ²⁹  you will despise them. ³⁰ 

Mazmur 115:3

115:3 Our God is in heaven!

He does whatever he pleases! ³¹ 

Mazmur 121:5-7

121:5 The Lord is your protector;

the Lord is the shade at your right hand.

121:6 The sun will not harm you by day,

or the moon by night. ³² 

121:7 The Lord will protect you from all harm;

he will protect your life.

Mazmur 18:10-11

18:10 He mounted ³³  a winged angel ³⁴  and flew;

he glided ³⁵  on the wings of the wind. ³⁶ 

18:11 He shrouded himself in darkness, ³⁷ 

in thick rain clouds. ³⁸ 

[27:1]  ¹ sn Psalm 27. The author is confident of the Lord’s protection and asks the Lord to vindicate him.

[27:1]  ² tn Heb “the Lord [is] my light and my deliverance.” “Light” is often used as a metaphor for deliverance and the life/blessings it brings. See Pss 37:6; 97:11; 112:4; Isa 49:6; 51:4; Mic 7:8. Another option is that “light” refers here to divine guidance (see Ps 43:3).

[27:1]  ³ tn Heb “Whom shall I fear?” The rhetorical question anticipates the answer, “No one!”

[27:1]  ⁴ tn Heb “Of whom shall I be afraid?” The rhetorical question anticipates the answer, “No one!”

[27:2]  ⁵ tn Heb “draw near to me.”

[27:2]  ⁶ sn To devour my flesh. The psalmist compares his enemies to dangerous, hungry predators (see 2 Kgs 9:36; Ezek 39:17).

[27:2]  ⁷ tn Heb “my adversaries and my enemies against me.” The verb “draw near” (that is, “attack”) is understood by ellipsis; see the previous line.

[27:2]  ⁸ tn The Hebrew verbal forms are perfects. The translation assumes the psalmist is generalizing here, but another option is to take this as a report of past experience, “when evil men attacked me…they stumbled and fell.”

[62:1]  ⁹ sn Psalm 62. The psalmist expresses his unwavering confidence in God’s justice and in his ability to protect his people.

[62:1]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “only for God [is] there silence [to] my soul.”

[62:1]  ¹¹ tn Heb “from him [is] my deliverance.”

[62:2]  ¹² tn Heb “my high rocky summit.”

[62:2]  ¹³ tn Or “my elevated place” (see Ps 18:2).

[62:2]  ¹⁴ tn The Hebrew text adds רַבָּה (rabbah, “greatly”) at the end of the line. It is unusual for this adverb to follow a negated verb. Some see this as qualifying the assertion to some degree, but this would water down the affirmation too much (see v. 6b, where the adverb is omitted). If the adverb has a qualifying function, it would suggest that the psalmist might be upended, though not severely. This is inconsistent with the confident mood of the psalm. The adverb probably has an emphatic force here, “I will not be greatly upended” meaning “I will not be annihilated.”

[62:3]  ¹⁵ tn The verb form is plural; the psalmist addresses his enemies. The verb הוּת occurs only here in the OT. An Arabic cognate means “shout at.”

[62:3]  ¹⁶ tn The Hebrew text has a Pual (passive) form, but the verb form should be vocalized as a Piel (active) form. See BDB 953-54 s.v. רָצַח.

[62:3]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “like a bent wall and a broken fence.” The point of the comparison is not entirely clear. Perhaps the enemies are depicted as dangerous, like a leaning wall or broken fence that is in danger of falling on someone (see C. A. Briggs and E. G. Briggs, Psalms [ICC], 2:69).

[62:4]  ¹⁸ tn That is, the psalmist’s enemies addressed in the previous verse.

[62:4]  ¹⁹ tn That is, the generic “man” referred to in the previous verse.

[62:4]  ²⁰ tn Heb “only from his lofty place [or perhaps, “dignity”] they plan to drive [him] away.”

[62:4]  ²¹ tn Heb “they delight [in] a lie.”

[62:4]  ²² sn The enemies use deceit to bring down their victim. They make him think they are his friends by pronouncing blessings upon him, but inwardly they desire his demise.

[62:5]  ²³ tn Heb “only for God be silent, my soul.” The wording is similar to that of v. 1a. Here an imperatival form, דּוֹמִּי (dommiy, “be silent”), appears instead of the noun דּוּמִיָּה (dumiyyah, “silence”). The psalmist is encouraging himself to maintain his trust in God.

[62:5]  ²⁴ tn Heb “for from him [is] my hope.”

[62:6]  ²⁵ tn Heb “my high rocky summit.”

[62:6]  ²⁶ tn Or “my elevated place” (see Ps 18:2).

[62:6]  ²⁷ sn The wording is identical to that of v. 2, except that רַבָּה (rabbah, “greatly”) does not appear in v. 6.

[73:20]  ²⁸ tn Heb “like a dream from awakening.” They lack any real substance; their prosperity will last for only a brief time.

[73:20]  ²⁹ sn When you awake. The psalmist compares God’s inactivity to sleep and the time of God’s judgment to his awakening from sleep.

[73:20]  ³⁰ tn Heb “you will despise their form.” The Hebrew term צֶלֶם (tselem, “form; image”) also suggests their short-lived nature. Rather than having real substance, they are like the mere images that populate one’s dreams. Note the similar use of the term in Ps 39:6.

[115:3]  ³¹ sn He does whatever he pleases. Such sovereignty is characteristic of kings (see Eccl 8:3).

[121:6]  ³² sn One hardly thinks of the moon’s rays as being physically harmful, like those of the sun. The reference to the moon may simply lend poetic balance to the verse, but it is likely that the verse reflects an ancient, primitive belief that the moon could have an adverse effect on the mind (note the English expression “moonstruck,” which reflects such a belief). Another possibility is that the sun and moon stand by metonymy for harmful forces characteristic of the day and night, respectively.

[18:10]  ³³ tn Or “rode upon.”

[18:10]  ³⁴ tn Heb “a cherub.” Because of the typical associations of the word “cherub” in English with chubby winged babies, the term has been rendered “winged angel” in the translation.

[18:10]  sn Winged angel (Heb “cherub”). Cherubs, as depicted in the OT, possess both human and animal (lion, ox, and eagle) characteristics (see Ezek 1:10; 10:14, 21; 41:18). They are pictured as winged creatures (Exod 25:20; 37:9; 1 Kgs 6:24-27; Ezek 10:8, 19) and serve as the very throne of God when the ark of the covenant is in view (Pss 80:1; 99:1; see Num 7:89; 1 Sam 4:4; 2 Sam 6:2; 2 Kgs 19:15). The picture of the Lord seated on the cherubs suggests they might be used by him as a vehicle, a function they carry out in Ezek 1:22-28 (the “living creatures” mentioned here are identified as cherubs in Ezek 10:20). In Ps 18:10 the image of a cherub serves to personify the wind (see the next line of the psalm).

[18:10]  ³⁵ tc 2 Sam 22:11 reads “appeared” (from רָאָה, ra’ah); the relatively rare verb דָאָה (da’ah, “glide”) is more difficult and probably the original reading here in Ps 18.

[18:10]  ³⁶ sn The wings of the wind. Verse 10 may depict (1) the Lord riding a cherub, which is in turn propelled by the wind current. Another option (2) is that two different vehicles (a cherub and the wind) are envisioned. Yet another option (3) is that the wind is personified as a cherub. For a discussion of ancient Near Eastern parallels to the imagery in v. 10, see M. Weinfeld, “‘Rider of the Clouds’ and ‘Gatherer of the Clouds’,” JANESCU 5 (1973): 422-24.

[18:11]  ³⁷ tc Heb “he made darkness his hiding place around him, his covering.” 2 Sam 22:12 reads, “he made darkness around him coverings,” omitting “his hiding place” and pluralizing “covering.” Ps 18:11 may include a conflation of synonyms (“his hiding place” and “his covering”) or 2 Sam 22:12 may be the result of haplography/homoioarcton. Note that three successive words in Ps 18:11 begin with the Hebrew letter samek: סִתְרוֹ סְבִיבוֹתָיו סֻכָּתוֹ (sitro sÿvivotayv sukkato).

[18:11]  ³⁸ tc Heb “darkness of water, clouds of clouds.” The noun “darkness” (חֶשְׁכַת, kheshkhat) is probably a corruption of an original reading חשׁרת, a form that is preserved in 2 Sam 22:12. The latter is a construct form of חַשְׁרָה (khashrah, “sieve”) which occurs only here in the OT. A cognate Ugaritic noun means “sieve,” and a related verb חָשַׁר (khashar, “to sift”) is attested in postbiblical Hebrew and Aramaic. The phrase חַשְׁרַת מַיִם (khashrat mayim) means literally “a sieve of water.” It pictures the rain clouds as a sieve through which the rain falls to the ground (see F. M. Cross and D. N. Freedman, Studies in Ancient Yahwistic Poetry [SBLDS], 146, n. 33).