10:1 Why, Lord, do you stand far off?
Why do you pay no attention during times of trouble? 2
10:5 He is secure at all times. 3
He has no regard for your commands; 4
he disdains all his enemies. 5
22:11 Do not remain far away from me,
for trouble is near and I have no one to help me. 6
31:12 I am forgotten, like a dead man no one thinks about; 7
I am regarded as worthless, like a broken jar. 8
32:2 How blessed is the one 9 whose wrongdoing the Lord does not punish, 10
in whose spirit there is no deceit. 11
33:16 No king is delivered by his vast army;
a warrior is not saved by his great might.
34:10 Even young lions sometimes lack food and are hungry,
but those who seek the Lord lack no good thing.
38:19 But those who are my enemies for no reason are numerous; 12
those who hate me without cause outnumber me. 13
71:11 They say, 14 “God has abandoned him.
Run and seize him, for there is no one who will rescue him!”
72:12 For he will rescue the needy 15 when they cry out for help,
and the oppressed 16 who have no defender.
79:3 They have made their blood flow like water
all around Jerusalem, and there is no one to bury them. 17
89:22 No enemy will be able to exact tribute 18 from him; 19
a violent oppressor will not be able to humiliate him. 20
89:48 No man can live on without experiencing death,
or deliver his life from the power of Sheol. 21 (Selah)
101:3 I will not even consider doing what is dishonest. 22
I hate doing evil; 23
I will have no part of it. 24
107:4 They wandered through the wilderness on a desert road;
they found no city in which to live.
107:40 He would pour 25 contempt upon princes,
and he made them wander in a wasteland with no road.
1 sn Psalm 10. Many Hebrew
2 tn Heb “you hide for times in trouble.” The interrogative “why” is understood by ellipsis; note the preceding line. The Hiphil verbal form “hide” has no expressed object. Some supply “your eyes” by ellipsis (see BDB 761 s.v. I עָלַם Hiph and HALOT 835 s.v. I עלם hif) or emend the form to a Niphal (“you hide yourself,” see BHS, note c; cf. NEB, NIV, NRSV).
3 tn Heb “they are firm, his ways, at every time.” The verb חַיִל (khayil, “be firm, be strong”) occurs only here and in Job 20:21, where it has the sense “endure.”
4 tc Heb “[on a] height, your judgments from before him.” If the MT is retained, then the idea may be that God’s “judgments” are high above (i.e., not recognized) by the wicked man. However, the syntax is awkward. The translation assumes an emendation of מָרוֹם (marom, “height”) to סָרוּ (saru, “[your judgments] are turned aside”), the final mem (ם) being dittographic (note the initial mem on the immediately following word [מִשְׁפָּטֶיךָ, mishÿfatekha, “your judgments”). “Judgments” probably refers here to God’s laws or commands, rather than his judicial decisions or acts of judgment.
5 tn Heb “all his enemies, he snorts against them.” This may picture the wicked man defiantly challenging his enemies because he is confident of success. Another option is to take יָפִיחַ (yafiakh) from the root יָפַח (yafakh, “to testify”) and translate “he testifies against all his enemies,” implying that he gets the upper hand over them in legal battles. The noun יָפֵחַ (yafeakh, “witness”) is attested in biblical Hebrew (see Prov 6:19; 12:17; 14:5, 25; 19:5, 9, and Hab 2:3). The verb, however, is not clearly attested.
6 tn Heb “and there is no helper.”
7 tn Heb “I am forgotten, like a dead man, from [the] heart.” The “heart” is here viewed as the center of one’s thoughts.
8 tn Heb “I am like a broken jar.” One throws away a broken jar without a second thought because it is considered worthless and useless.
9 tn Heb “man.” The word choice reflects the perspective of the psalmist, who is male. The principle of the psalm is certainly applicable to all people, regardless of their gender or age. To facilitate modern application, the gender and age specific “man” has been translated with the more neutral “one.”
10 tn Heb “blessed [is] the man to whom the
11 sn In whose spirit there is no deceit. The point is not that the individual is sinless and pure. In this context, which focuses on confession and forgiveness of sin, the psalmist refers to one who refuses to deny or hide his sin, but instead honestly confesses it to God.
12 tn Heb “and my enemies, life, are many.” The noun חַיִּים (khayyim, “life”) fits very awkwardly here. The translation assumes an emendation to חִנָּם (khinam, “without reason”; note the parallelism with שֶׁקֶר [sheqer, “falsely”] and see Pss 35:19; 69:4; Lam 3:52). The verb עָצַם (’atsam) can sometimes mean “are strong,” but here it probably focuses on numerical superiority (note the parallel verb רָבַב, ravav, “be many”).
13 tn Heb “are many.”
14 tn Heb “saying.”
15 tn The singular is representative. The typical needy individual here represents the entire group.
16 tn The singular is representative. The typical oppressed individual here represents the entire group.
17 tn Heb “they have poured out their blood like water, all around Jerusalem, and there is no one burying.”
18 tn Heb “an enemy will not exact tribute.” The imperfect is understood in a modal sense, indicating capability or potential.
19 tn The translation understands the Hiphil of נָשַׁא (nasha’) in the sense of “act as a creditor.” This may allude to the practice of a conqueror forcing his subjects to pay tribute in exchange for “protection.” Another option is to take the verb from a homonymic verbal root meaning “to deceive,” “to trick.” Still another option is to emend the form to יִשָּׂא (yisa’), a Qal imperfect from נָאַשׂ (na’as, “rise up”) and to translate “an enemy will not rise up against him” (see M. Dahood, Psalms [AB], 2:317).
20 tn Heb “and a son of violence will not oppress him.” The imperfect is understood in a modal sense, indicating capability or potential. The reference to a “son of violence” echoes the language of God’s promise to David in 2 Sam 7:10 (see also 1 Chr 17:9).
21 tn Heb “Who [is] the man [who] can live and not see death, [who] can deliver his life from the hand of Sheol?” The rhetorical question anticipates the answer, “No one!”
22 tn Heb “I will not set before my eyes a thing of worthlessness.”
23 tn Heb “the doing of swerving [deeds] I hate.” The Hebrew term סֵטִים (setim) is probably an alternate spelling of שֵׂטִים (setim), which appears in many medieval Hebrew
24 tn Heb “it [i.e., the doing of evil deeds] does not cling to me.”
25 tn The active participle is understood as past durative here, drawing attention to typical action in a past time frame. However, it could be taken as generalizing (in which case one should translate using the English present tense), in which case the psalmist moves from narrative to present reality. Perhaps the participial form appears because the statement is lifted from Job 12:21.