2 Samuel 22:6

22:6 The ropes of Sheol ¹  tightened around me; ² 

the snares of death trapped me. ³ 

2 Samuel 22:29

22:29 Indeed, ⁴  you are my lamp, ⁵  Lord.

The Lord illumines ⁶  the darkness around me. ⁷ 

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¹ tn “Sheol,” personified here as David’s enemy, is the underworld, place of the dead in primitive Hebrew cosmology.

² tn Heb “surrounded me.”

³ tn Heb “confronted me.”

⁴ tn Or “for.” The translation assumes that כִּי (ki) is asseverative here.

⁵ tc Many medieval Hebrew mss, some LXX mss, and the Syriac Peshitta support reading תָּאִיר (ta’ir, “you cause to shine”) before the words “my lamp.” See Ps 18:28. The metaphor, which likens the Lord to a lamp or light, pictures him as the psalmist’s source of life. For other examples of “lamp” used in this way, see Job 18:6; 21:17; Prov 13:9; 20:20; 24:20. For other examples of “light” as a symbol for life, see Job 3:20; 33:30; Ps 56:13.

⁶ tc The Lucianic Greek recension and Vulgate understand this verb to be second person rather than third person as in the MT. But this is probably the result of reading the preceding word “Lord” as a vocative under the influence of the vocative in the first part of the verse.

⁷ tn Heb “my darkness.”