22:6 The ropes of Sheol 1 tightened around me; 2
the snares of death trapped me. 3
22:19 They confronted 4 me in my day of calamity,
but the Lord helped me. 5
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 The same verb is translated “trapped” in v. 6. In this poetic narrative context the prefixed verbal form is best understood as a preterite indicating past tense, not imperfect. Cf. NAB, NCV, TEV, NLT “attacked.”
5 tn Heb “became my support.”