139:16 Your eyes saw me when I was inside the womb. 1
All the days ordained for me
were recorded in your scroll
before one of them came into existence. 2
84:10 Certainly 3 spending just one day in your temple courts is better
than spending a thousand elsewhere. 4
I would rather stand at the entrance 5 to the temple of my God
than live 6 in the tents of the wicked.
1 tn Heb “Your eyes saw my shapeless form.” The Hebrew noun גֹּלֶם (golem) occurs only here in the OT. In later Hebrew the word refers to “a lump, a shapeless or lifeless substance,” and to “unfinished matter, a vessel wanting finishing” (Jastrow 222 s.v. גּוֹלֶם). The translation employs the dynamic rendering “when I was inside the womb” to clarify that the speaker was still in his mother’s womb at the time he was “seen” by God.
2 tn Heb “and on your scroll all of them were written, [the] days [which] were formed, and [there was] not one among them.” This “scroll” may be the “scroll of life” mentioned in Ps 69:28 (see the note on the word “living” there).
3 tn Or “for.”
4 tn Heb “better is a day in your courts than a thousand [spent elsewhere].”
5 tn Heb “I choose being at the entrance of the house of my God over living in the tents of the wicked.” The verb סָפַף (safaf) appears only here in the OT; it is derived from the noun סַף (saf, “threshold”). Traditionally some have interpreted this as a reference to being a doorkeeper at the temple, though some understand it to mean “lie as a beggar at the entrance to the temple” (see HALOT 765 s.v. ספף).
6 tn The verb דּוּר (dur, “to live”) occurs only here in the OT.