Mazmur 36:7-10

36:7 How precious ¹  is your loyal love, O God!

The human race finds shelter under your wings. ² 

36:8 They are filled with food from your house,

and you allow them to drink from the river of your delicacies.

36:9 For you are the one who gives

and sustains life. ³ 

36:10 Extend ⁴  your loyal love to your faithful followers, ⁵ 

and vindicate ⁶  the morally upright! ⁷ 

Mazmur 73:1

Book 3
(Psalms 73-89)

Psalm 73 ⁸ 

A psalm by Asaph.

73:1 Certainly God is good to Israel, ⁹ 

and to those whose motives are pure! ¹⁰ 

Mazmur 73:24-26

73:24 You guide ¹¹  me by your wise advice,

and then you will lead me to a position of honor. ¹² 

73:25 Whom do I have in heaven but you?

I desire no one but you on earth. ¹³ 

73:26 My flesh and my heart may grow weak, ¹⁴ 

but God always ¹⁵  protects my heart and gives me stability. ¹⁶ 

Mazmur 145:7-9

145:7 They will talk about the fame of your great kindness, ¹⁷ 

and sing about your justice. ¹⁸ 

145:8 The Lord is merciful and compassionate;

he is patient ¹⁹  and demonstrates great loyal love. ²⁰ 

145:9 The Lord is good to all,

and has compassion on all he has made. ²¹ 

Yesaya 64:4

64:4 Since ancient times no one has heard or perceived, ²² 

no eye has seen any God besides you,

who intervenes for those who wait for him.

Ratapan 3:23-25

3:23 They are fresh ²³  every morning;

your faithfulness is abundant! ²⁴ 

3:24 “My portion is the Lord,” I have said to myself, ²⁵ 

so I will put my hope in him.

ט (Tet)

3:25 The Lord is good to those who trust ²⁶  in him,

to the one ²⁷  who seeks him.

Ratapan 3:1

The Prophet Speaks:

א (Alef) ²⁸ 

3:1 I am the man ²⁹  who has experienced ³⁰  affliction

from the rod ³¹  of his wrath.

Kolose 2:9

2:9 For in him all the fullness of deity lives ³²  in bodily form,

Kolose 2:1

2:1 For I want you to know how great a struggle I have for you, ³³  and for those in Laodicea, and for those who have not met me face to face. ³⁴ 

Yohanes 3:1-2

Conversation with Nicodemus

3:1 Now a certain man, a Pharisee ³⁵  named Nicodemus, who was a member of the Jewish ruling council, ³⁶  3:2 came to Jesus ³⁷  at night ³⁸  and said to him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the miraculous signs ³⁹  that you do unless God is with him.”

[36:7]  ¹ tn Or “valuable.”

[36:7]  ² tn Heb “and the sons of man in the shadow of your wings find shelter.” The preservation of physical life is in view, as the next verse makes clear.

[36:9]  ³ tn Heb “for with you is the fountain of life, in your light we see light.” Water (note “fountain”) and light are here metaphors for life.

[36:10]  ⁴ tn Heb “draw out to full length.”

[36:10]  ⁵ tn Heb “to those who know you.” The Hebrew verb יָדַע (yada’, “know”) is used here of those who “know” the Lord in the sense that they recognize his royal authority and obey his will (see Jer 22:16).

[36:10]  ⁶ tn Heb “and your justice to.” The verb “extend” is understood by ellipsis in the second line (see the previous line).

[36:10]  ⁷ tn Heb “the pure of heart.” The “heart” is here viewed as the seat of one’s moral character and motives. The “pure of heart” are God’s faithful followers who trust in and love the Lord and, as a result, experience his deliverance (see Pss 7:10; 11:2; 32:11; 64:10; 94:15; 97:11).

[73:1]  ⁸ sn Psalm 73. In this wisdom psalm the psalmist offers a personal testimony of his struggle with the age-old problem of the prosperity of the wicked. As he observed evil men prosper, he wondered if a godly lifestyle really pays off. In the midst of his discouragement, he reflected upon spiritual truths and realities. He was reminded that the prosperity of the wicked is only temporary. God will eventually vindicate his people.

[73:1]  ⁹ tn Since the psalm appears to focus on an individual’s concerns, not the situation of Israel, this introduction may be a later addition designed to apply the psalm’s message to the entire community. To provide a better parallel with the next line, some emend the Hebrew phrase לְיִשְׂרָאֵל אֱלֹהִים (lÿyisra’el ’elohim, “to Israel, God”) to אֱלֹהִים [or אֵל] לָיָּשָׁר (’elohim [or ’el] lÿyyashar, “God [is good] to the upright one”).

[73:1]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “to the pure of heart.”

[73:24]  ¹¹ tn The imperfect verbal form here suggests this is the psalmist’s ongoing experience.

[73:24]  ¹² tn Heb “and afterward [to] glory you will take me.” Some interpreters view this as the psalmist’s confidence in an afterlife in God’s presence and understand כָּבוֹד (cavod) as a metonymic reference to God’s presence in heaven. But this seems unlikely in the present context. The psalmist anticipates a time of vindication, when the wicked are destroyed and he is honored by God for his godly life style. The verb לָקַח (laqakh, “take”) here carries the nuance “lead, guide, conduct,” as in Num 23:14, 27-28; Josh 24:3 and Prov 24:11.

[73:25]  ¹³ tn Heb “Who [is there] for me in heaven? And besides you I do not desire [anyone] in the earth.” The psalmist uses a merism (heaven/earth) to emphasize that God is the sole object of his desire and worship in the entire universe.

[73:26]  ¹⁴ tn The Hebrew verb כָלָה (khalah, “to fail; to grow weak”) does not refer here to physical death per se, but to the physical weakness that sometimes precedes death (see Job 33:21; Pss 71:9; 143:7; Prov 5:11).

[73:26]  ¹⁵ tn Or “forever.”

[73:26]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “is the rocky summit of my heart and my portion.” The psalmist compares the Lord to a rocky summit where one could go for protection and to landed property, which was foundational to economic stability in ancient Israel.

[145:7]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “the fame of the greatness of your goodness.”

[145:7]  ¹⁸ tn The prefixed verbal forms in v. 7 are understood as imperfects, indicating how the psalmist expects his audience to respond to his praise. Another option is to take the forms as jussives, indicating the psalmist’s wish, “may they talk…and sing.”

[145:8]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “slow to anger” (see Pss 86:15; 103:8).

[145:8]  ²⁰ tn Heb “and great of loyal love” (see Pss 86:15; 103:8).

[145:9]  ²¹ tn Heb “and his compassion is over all his works.”

[64:4]  ²² tn Heb “from ancient times they have not heard, they have not listened.”

[3:23]  ²³ tn Heb “they are new.”

[3:23]  ²⁴ tn The adjective רַב (rav) has a broad range of meanings: (1) quantitative: “much, numerous, many (with plurals), abundant, enough, exceedingly” and (2) less often in a qualitative sense: “great” (a) of space and location, (b) “strong” as opposed to “weak” and (c) “major.” The traditional translation, “great is thy faithfulness,” is less likely than the quantitative sense: “your faithfulness is abundant” [or, “plentiful”]. NJPS is on target in its translation: “Ample is your grace!”

[3:24]  ²⁵ tn Heb “My soul said…” The term נַפְשִׁי (nafshi, “my soul”) is a synecdoche of part (= my soul) for the whole person (= I ).

[3:25]  ²⁶ tn Heb “wait for him”

[3:25]  ²⁷ tn Heb “to the soul…” The term נֶפֶשׁ (nefesh, “soul”) is a synecdoche of part (= “the soul who seeks him”) for the whole person (= “the person who seeks him”).

[3:1]  ²⁸ sn The nature of the acrostic changes here. Each of the three lines in each verse, not just the first, begins with the corresponding letter of the alphabet.

[3:1]  ²⁹ tn The noun גֶּבֶר (gever, “man”) refers to a strong man, distinguished from women, children, and other non-combatants whom he is to defend. According to W. F. Lanahan the speaking voice in this chapter is that of a defeated soldier (“The Speaking Voice in the Book of Lamentations” JBL 93 [1974]: 41-49.) F. W. Dobbs-Allsopp (Lamentations [IBC], 108) argues that is the voice of an “everyman” although “one might not unreasonably suppose that some archetypal communal figure like the king does in fact stand in the distant background.”

[3:1]  ³⁰ tn The verb רָאָה (ra’ah, “to see”) has a broad range of meanings, including (1) “to see” as to learn from experience and (2) “to see” as to experience (e.g., Gen 20:10; Ps 89:49; Eccl 5:17; Jer 5:12; 14:13; 20:18; 42:14; Zeph 3:15). Here it means that the speaker has experienced these things. The same Hebrew verb occurs in 2:20 where the Lord is asked to “see” (translated “Consider!”), although it is difficult to maintain this connection in an English translation.

[3:1]  ³¹ tn The noun שֵׁבֶט (shevet, “rod”) refers to the weapon used for smiting an enemy (Exod 21:20; 2 Sam 23:21; 1 Chr 11:3; Isa 10:15; Mic 4:14) and instrument of child-discipline (Prov 10:13; 22:15; 29:15). It is used figuratively to describe discipline of the individual (Job 9:34; 21:9; 37:13; 2 Sam 7:14; Ps 89:33) and the nation (Isa 10:5, 24; 14:29; 30:31).

[2:9]  ³² sn In him all the fullness of deity lives. The present tense in this verse (“lives”) is significant. Again, as was stated in the note on 1:19, this is not a temporary dwelling, but a permanent one. Paul’s point is polemical against the idea that the fullness of God dwells anywhere else, as the Gnostics believed, except in Christ alone. At the incarnation, the second person of the Trinity assumed humanity, and is forever the God-man.

[2:1]  ³³ tn Or “I want you to know how hard I am working for you…”

[2:1]  ³⁴ tn Grk “as many as have not seen my face in the flesh.”

[3:1]  ³⁵ sn See the note on Pharisees in 1:24.

[3:1]  ³⁶ tn Grk “a ruler of the Jews” (denoting a member of the Sanhedrin, the highest legal, legislative, and judicial body among the Jews).

[3:2]  ³⁷ tn Grk “him”; the referent (Jesus) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[3:2]  ³⁸ tn Or “during the night.”

[3:2]  sn Possibly Nicodemus came…at night because he was afraid of public association with Jesus, or he wanted a lengthy discussion without interruptions; no explanation for the timing of the interview is given by the author. But the timing is significant for John in terms of the light-darkness motif – compare John 9:4, 11:10, 13:30 (especially), 19:39, and 21:3. Out of the darkness of his life and religiosity Nicodemus came to the Light of the world. The author probably had multiple meanings or associations in mind here, as is often the case.

[3:2]  ³⁹ sn The reference to signs (σημεῖα, shmeia) forms a link with John 2:23-25. Those people in Jerusalem believed in Jesus because of the signs he had performed. Nicodemus had apparently seen them too. But for Nicodemus all the signs meant is that Jesus was a great teacher sent from God. His approach to Jesus was well-intentioned but theologically inadequate; he had failed to grasp the messianic implications of the miraculous signs.