Mazmur 27:5

27:5 He will surely ¹  give me shelter ²  in the day of danger; ³ 

he will hide me in his home; ⁴ 

he will place me ⁵  on an inaccessible rocky summit. ⁶ 

Mazmur 139:16

139:16 Your eyes saw me when I was inside the womb. ⁷ 

All the days ordained for me

were recorded in your scroll

before one of them came into existence. ⁸ 

[27:5]  ¹ tn Or “for he will.” The translation assumes the כִּי (ki) is asseverative here, rather than causal.

[27:5]  ² tn Heb “he will hide me in his hut.”

[27:5]  ³ tn Or “trouble.”

[27:5]  ⁴ tn Heb “tent.”

[27:5]  ⁵ tn The three imperfect verb forms in v. 5 anticipate a positive response to the prayer offered in vv. 7-12.

[27:5]  ⁶ tn Heb “on a rocky summit he lifts me up.” The Lord places the psalmist in an inaccessible place where his enemies cannot reach him. See Ps 18:2.

[139:16]  ⁷ 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]  ⁸ 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).