Mazmur 100:3

100:3 Acknowledge that the Lord is God!

He made us and we belong to him; ¹ 

we are his people, the sheep of his pasture.

Mazmur 139:16

139:16 Your eyes saw me when I was inside the womb. ² 

All the days ordained for me

were recorded in your scroll

before one of them came into existence. ³ 

[100:3]  ¹ tn The present translation (like most modern translations) follows the Qere (marginal reading), which reads literally, “and to him [are] we.” The Kethib (consonantal text) has “and not we.” The suffixed preposition לו (“to him”) was confused aurally with the negative particle לא because the two sound identical.

[139:16]  ² 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]  ³ 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).