Mazmur 4:7

4:7 You make me happier ¹ 

than those who have abundant grain and wine. ² 

Mazmur 27:2

27:2 When evil men attack me ³ 

to devour my flesh, ⁴ 

when my adversaries and enemies attack me, ⁵ 

they stumble and fall. ⁶ 

Mazmur 30:7

30:7 O Lord, in your good favor you made me secure. ⁷ 

Then you rejected me ⁸  and I was terrified.

Mazmur 37:33

37:33 But the Lord does not surrender the godly,

or allow them to be condemned in a court of law. ⁹ 

Mazmur 37:35

37:35 I have seen ruthless evil men ¹⁰ 

growing in influence, like a green tree grows in its native soil. ¹¹ 

Mazmur 45:14

45:14 In embroidered robes she is escorted to the king.

Her attendants, the maidens of honor who follow her,

are led before you. ¹² 

Mazmur 68:9

68:9 O God, you cause abundant showers to fall ¹³  on your chosen people. ¹⁴ 

When they ¹⁵  are tired, you sustain them, ¹⁶ 

Mazmur 76:6

76:6 At the sound of your battle cry, ¹⁷  O God of Jacob,

both rider ¹⁸  and horse “fell asleep.” ¹⁹ 

Mazmur 76:9

76:9 when God arose to execute judgment,

and to deliver all the oppressed of the earth. (Selah)

Mazmur 77:16

77:16 The waters ²⁰  saw you, O God,

the waters saw you and trembled. ²¹ 

Yes, the depths of the sea ²²  shook with fear. ²³ 

Mazmur 78:21

78:21 When ²⁴  the Lord heard this, he was furious.

A fire broke out against Jacob,

and his anger flared up ²⁵  against Israel,

Mazmur 97:8

97:8 Zion hears and rejoices,

the towns ²⁶  of Judah are happy,

because of your judgments, O Lord.

Mazmur 99:8

99:8 O Lord our God, you answered them.

They found you to be a forgiving God,

but also one who punished their sinful deeds. ²⁷ 

Mazmur 102:24

102:24 I say, “O my God, please do not take me away in the middle of my life! ²⁸ 

You endure through all generations. ²⁹ 

Mazmur 127:5

127:5 How blessed is the man who fills his quiver with them!

They will not be put to shame ³⁰  when they confront ³¹  enemies at the city gate.

Mazmur 129:6

129:6 May they be like the grass on the rooftops

which withers before one can even pull it up, ³² 

Mazmur 139:15

139:15 my bones were not hidden from you,

when ³³  I was made in secret

and sewed together in the depths of the earth. ³⁴ 

[4:7]  ¹ tn Heb “you place joy in my heart.” Another option is to understand the perfect verbal form as indicating certitude, “you will make me happier.”

[4:7]  ² tn Heb “from (i.e., more than) the time (when) their grain and their wine are abundant.”

[27:2]  ³ tn Heb “draw near to me.”

[27:2]  ⁴ sn To devour my flesh. The psalmist compares his enemies to dangerous, hungry predators (see 2 Kgs 9:36; Ezek 39:17).

[27:2]  ⁵ 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]  ⁶ 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.”

[30:7]  ⁷ tn Heb “in your good favor you caused to stand for my mountain strength.” Apparently this means “you established strength for my mountain” (“mountain” in this case representing his rule, which would be centered on Mt. Zion) or “you established strength as my mountain” (“mountain” in this case being a metaphor for security).

[30:7]  ⁸ tn Heb “you hid your face.” The idiom “hide the face” can mean “ignore” (see Pss 10:11; 13:1; 51:9) or, as here, carry the stronger idea of “reject” (see Ps 88:14).

[37:33]  ⁹ tn Heb “the Lord does not abandon him into his hand or condemn him when he is judged.” The imperfects draw attention to the Lord’s characteristic behavior in this regard.

[37:35]  ¹⁰ tn The Hebrew uses the representative singular again here.

[37:35]  ¹¹ tn Heb “being exposed [?] like a native, luxuriant.” The Hebrew form מִתְעָרֶה (mit’areh) appears to be a Hitpael participle from עָרָה (’arah, “be exposed”), but this makes no sense in this context. Perhaps the form is a dialectal variant of מִתְעָלָה (“giving oneself an air of importance”; see Jer 51:3), from עָלָה (’alah, “go up”; see P. C. Craigie, Psalms 1-50 [WBC], 296). The noun אֶזְרָח (’ezrakh, “native, full citizen”) refers elsewhere to people, but here, where it is collocated with “luxuriant, green,” it probably refers to a tree growing in native soil.

[45:14]  ¹² tn Heb “virgins after her, her companions, are led to you.” Some emend לָךְ (lakh, “to you”) to לָהּ (lah, “to her,” i.e., the princess), because the princess is now being spoken of in the third person (vv. 13-14a), rather than being addressed directly (as in vv. 10-12). However, the ambiguous suffixed form לָךְ need not be taken as second feminine singular. The suffix can be understood as a pausal second masculine singular form, addressed to the king. The translation assumes this to be the case; note that the king is addressed once more in vv. 16-17, where the second person pronouns are masculine.

[68:9]  ¹³ tn The verb נוּף (nuf, “cause rain to fall”) is a homonym of the more common נוּף (“brandish”).

[68:9]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “[on] your inheritance.” This refers to Israel as God’s specially chosen people (see Pss 28:9; 33:12; 74:2; 78:62, 71; 79:1; 94:5, 14; 106:40). Some take “your inheritance” with what follows, but the vav (ו) prefixed to the following word (note וְנִלְאָה, vÿnil’ah) makes this syntactically unlikely.

[68:9]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “it [is],” referring to God’s “inheritance.”

[68:9]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “it,” referring to God’s “inheritance.”

[76:6]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “from your shout.” The noun is derived from the Hebrew verb גָּעַר (ga’ar), which is often understood to mean “rebuke.” In some cases it is apparent that scolding or threatening is in view (see Gen 37:10; Ruth 2:16; Zech 3:2). However, in militaristic contexts this translation is inadequate, for the verb refers in this setting to the warrior’s battle cry, which terrifies and paralyzes the enemy. See A. Caquot, TDOT 3:53, and note the use of the verb in Pss 68:30; 106:9; Nah 1:4, as well as the related noun in Job 26:11; Pss 9:5; 18:15; 104:7; Isa 50:2; 51:20; 66:15.

[76:6]  ¹⁸ tn Or “chariot,” but even so the term is metonymic for the charioteer.

[76:6]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “he fell asleep, and [the] chariot and [the] horse.” Once again (see v. 5) “sleep” refers here to the “sleep” of death.

[77:16]  ²⁰ tn The waters of the Red Sea are here personified; they are portrayed as seeing God and fearing him.

[77:16]  ²¹ tn The prefixed verbal form may be taken as a preterite or as an imperfect with past progressive force.

[77:16]  ²² tn The words “of the sea” are supplied in the translation for stylistic reasons.

[77:16]  ²³ tn The prefixed verbal form may be taken as a preterite or as an imperfect with past progressive force.

[78:21]  ²⁴ tn Heb “therefore.”

[78:21]  ²⁵ tn Heb “and also anger went up.”

[97:8]  ²⁶ tn Heb “daughters.” The term “daughters” refers to the cities of Judah surrounding Zion (see Ps 48:11 and H. Haag, TDOT 2:336).

[99:8]  ²⁷ tn Heb “a God of lifting up [i.e., forgiveness] you were to them, and an avenger concerning their deeds.” The present translation reflects the traditional interpretation, which understands the last line as qualifying the preceding one. God forgave Moses and Aaron, but he also disciplined them when they sinned (cf. NIV, NRSV). Another option is to take “their deeds” as referring to harmful deeds directed against Moses and Aaron. In this case the verse may be translated, “and one who avenged attacks against them.” Still another option is to emend the participial form נֹקֵם (noqem, “an avenger”) to נֹקָם (noqam), a rare Qal participial form of נָקַה (naqah, “purify”) with a suffixed pronoun. In this case one could translate, “and one who purified them from their [sinful] deeds” (cf. NEB “and held them innocent”).

[102:24]  ²⁸ tn Heb “do not lift me up in the middle of my days.”

[102:24]  ²⁹ tn Heb “in a generation of generations [are] your years.”

[127:5]  ³⁰ tn Being “put to shame” is here metonymic for being defeated, probably in a legal context, as the reference to the city gate suggests. One could be humiliated (Ps 69:12) or deprived of justice (Amos 5:12) at the gate, but with strong sons to defend the family interests this was less likely to happen.

[127:5]  ³¹ tn Heb “speak with.”

[129:6]  ³² tn The Hebrew verb שָׁלַף (shalaf) normally means “to draw [a sword]” or “to pull.” BDB 1025 s.v. suggests the meaning “to shoot up” here, but it is more likely that the verb here means “to pluck; to pull up,” a nuance attested for this word in later Hebrew and Aramaic (see Jastrow 1587 s.v. שָׁלַף).

[139:15]  ³³ tc The Hebrew term אֲשֶׁר (’asher, “which”) should probably be emended to כֲּאַשֶׁר (ka’asher, “when”). The kaf (כ) may have been lost by haplography (note the kaf at the end of the preceding form).

[139:15]  ³⁴ sn The phrase depths of the earth may be metaphorical (euphemistic) or it may reflect a prescientific belief about the origins of the embryo deep beneath the earth’s surface (see H. W. Wolff, Anthropology of the Old Testament, 96-97). Job 1:21 also closely associates the mother’s womb with the earth.