18:29 Indeed, 1 with your help 2 I can charge against 3 an army; 4
by my God’s power 5 I can jump over a wall. 6
31:8 You do not deliver me over to the power of the enemy;
you enable me to stand 7 in a wide open place.
44:2 You, by your power, 8 defeated nations and settled our fathers on their land; 9
you crushed 10 the people living there 11 and enabled our ancestors to occupy it. 12
88:5 adrift 13 among the dead,
like corpses lying in the grave,
whom you remember no more,
and who are cut off from your power. 14
97:10 You who love the Lord, hate evil!
He protects 15 the lives of his faithful followers;
he delivers them from the power 16 of the wicked.
140:4 O Lord, shelter me from the power 17 of the wicked!
Protect me from violent men,
who plan to knock me over. 18
1 tn Or “for.” The translation assumes that כִּי (ki) is asseverative here.
2 tn Heb “by you.”
3 tn Heb “I will run.” The imperfect verbal forms in v. 29 indicate the subject’s potential or capacity to perform an action. Though one might expect a preposition to follow the verb here, this need not be the case with the verb רוּץ (ruts; see 1 Sam 17:22). Some emend the Qal to a Hiphil form of the verb and translate, “I put to flight [Heb “cause to run”] an army.”
4 tn More specifically, the noun גְּדוּד (gÿdud) refers to a raiding party or to a contingent of troops.
sn I can charge against an army. The picture of a divinely empowered warrior charging against an army in almost superhuman fashion appears elsewhere in ancient Near Eastern literature. See R. B. Chisholm, “An Exegetical and Theological Study of Psalm 18/2 Samuel 22” (Th.D. diss., Dallas Theological Seminary, 1983), 228.
5 tn Heb “and by my God.”
6 sn I can jump over a wall. The psalmist uses hyperbole to emphasize his God-given military superiority.
7 tn Heb “you cause my feet to stand.”
8 tn Heb “you, your hand.”
9 tn Heb “dispossessed nations and planted them.” The third masculine plural pronoun “them” refers to the fathers (v. 1). See Ps 80:8, 15.
10 tn The verb form in the Hebrew text is a Hiphil preterite (without vav [ו] consecutive) from רָעַע (ra’a’, “be evil; be bad”). If retained it apparently means, “you injured; harmed.” Some prefer to derive the verb from רָעַע (“break”; cf. NEB “breaking up the peoples”), in which case the form must be revocalized as Qal (since this verb is unattested in the Hiphil).
11 tn Or “peoples.”
12 tn Heb “and you sent them out.” The translation assumes that the third masculine plural pronoun “them” refers to the fathers (v. 1), as in the preceding parallel line. See Ps 80:11, where Israel, likened to a vine, “spreads out” its tendrils to the west and east. Another option is to take the “peoples” as the referent of the pronoun and translate, “and you sent them away,” though this does not provide as tight a parallel with the corresponding line.
13 tn Heb “set free.”
14 tn Heb “from your hand.”
15 tn The participle may be verbal, though it might also be understood as substantival and appositional to “the
16 tn Heb “hand.”
17 tn Heb “hands.”
18 tn Heb “to push down my steps.”