2:7 The king says, 1 “I will announce the Lord’s decree. He said to me: 2
‘You are my son! 3 This very day I have become your father!
22:2 My God, I cry out during the day,
but you do not answer,
and during the night my prayers do not let up. 4
25:5 Guide me into your truth 5 and teach me.
For you are the God who delivers me;
on you I rely all day long.
27:5 He will surely 6 give me shelter 7 in the day of danger; 8
he will hide me in his home; 9
he will place me 10 on an inaccessible rocky summit. 11
38:12 Those who seek my life try to entrap me; 12
those who want to harm me speak destructive words;
all day long they say deceitful things.
42:8 By day the Lord decrees his loyal love, 13
and by night he gives me a song, 14
a prayer 15 to the living God.
42:10 My enemies’ taunts cut into me to the bone, 16
as they say to me all day long, “Where is your God?” 17
71:24 All day long my tongue will also tell about your justice,
for those who want to harm me 18 will be embarrassed and ashamed. 19
72:15 May he live! 20 May they offer him gold from Sheba! 21
May they continually pray for him!
May they pronounce blessings on him all day long! 22
88:9 My eyes grow weak because of oppression.
I call out to you, O Lord, all day long;
I spread out my hands in prayer to you. 23
A psalm; a song for the Sabbath day.
92:1 It is fitting 25 to thank the Lord,
and to sing praises to your name, O sovereign One! 26
95:8 He says, 27 “Do not be stubborn like they were at Meribah, 28
like they were that day at Massah 29 in the wilderness, 30
137:7 Remember, O Lord, what the Edomites did
on the day Jerusalem fell. 31
They said, “Tear it down, tear it down, 32
right to its very foundation!”
139:12 even the darkness is not too dark for you to see, 33
and the night is as bright as 34 day;
darkness and light are the same to you. 35
1 tn The words “the king says” are supplied in the translation for clarification. The speaker is the Lord’s chosen king.
2 tn Or “I will relate the decree. The
3 sn ‘You are my son!’ The Davidic king was viewed as God’s “son” (see 2 Sam 7:14; Ps 89:26-27). The idiom reflects ancient Near Eastern adoption language associated with covenants of grant, by which a lord would reward a faithful subject by elevating him to special status, referred to as “sonship.” Like a son, the faithful subject received an “inheritance,” viewed as an unconditional, eternal gift. Such gifts usually took the form of land and/or an enduring dynasty. See M. Weinfeld, “The Covenant of Grant in the Old Testament and in the Ancient Near East,” JAOS 90 (1970): 184-203, for general discussion and some striking extra-biblical parallels.
4 tn Heb “there is no silence to me.”
5 sn The
6 tn Or “for he will.” The translation assumes the כִּי (ki) is asseverative here, rather than causal.
7 tn Heb “he will hide me in his hut.”
8 tn Or “trouble.”
9 tn Heb “tent.”
10 tn The three imperfect verb forms in v. 5 anticipate a positive response to the prayer offered in vv. 7-12.
11 tn Heb “on a rocky summit he lifts me up.” The
12 tn Heb “lay snares.”
13 sn The psalmist believes that the Lord has not abandoned him, but continues to extend his loyal love. To this point in the psalm, the author has used the name “God,” but now, as he mentions the divine characteristic of loyal love, he switches to the more personal divine name Yahweh (rendered in the translation as “the
14 tn Heb “his song [is] with me.”
15 tc A few medieval Hebrew
16 tc Heb “with a shattering in my bones my enemies taunt me.” A few medieval Hebrew
17 sn “Where is your God?” The enemies ask this same question in v. 3.
18 tn Heb “those who seek my harm.”
19 tn Heb “will have become embarrassed and ashamed.” The perfect verbal forms function here as future perfects, indicating future actions which will precede chronologically the action expressed by the main verb in the preceding line.
20 tn The prefixed verbal form is jussive, not imperfect. Because the form has the prefixed vav (ו), some subordinate it to what precedes as a purpose/result clause. In this case the representative poor individual might be the subject of this and the following verb, “so that he may live and give to him gold of Sheba.” But the idea of the poor offering gold is incongruous. It is better to take the jussive as a prayer with the king as subject of the verb. (Perhaps the initial vav is dittographic; note the vav at the end of the last form in v. 14.) The statement is probably an abbreviated version of the formula יְחִי הַמֶּלֶךְ (yÿkhiy hammelekh, “may the king live”; see 1 Sam 10:24; 2 Sam 16:16; 1 Kgs 1:25, 34, 39; 2 Kgs 11:12).
21 tn Heb “and he will give to him some gold of Sheba.” The prefixed verbal form is understood as a jussive with a grammatically indefinite subject (“and may one give”). Of course, the king’s subjects, mentioned in the preceding context, are the tribute bearers in view here.
22 tn As in the preceding line, the prefixed verbal forms are understood as jussives with a grammatically indefinite subject (“and may one pray…and may one bless”). Of course, the king’s subjects, mentioned in the preceding context, are in view here.
23 tn Heb “I spread out my hands to you.” Spreading out the hands toward God was a prayer gesture (see Exod 9:29, 33; 1 Kgs 8:22, 38; 2 Chr 6:12-13, 29; Ezra 9:15; Job 11:13; Isa 1:15). The words “in prayer” have been supplied in the translation to clarify this.
24 sn Psalm 92. The psalmist praises God because he defeats the wicked and vindicates his loyal followers.
25 tn Or “good.”
26 tn Traditionally “O Most High.”
27 tn The words “he says” are supplied in the translation to clarify that the following words are spoken by the Lord (see vv. 9-11).
28 sn The name Meribah means “strife.” Two separate but similar incidents at Meribah are recorded in the Pentateuch (Exod 17:1-7; Num 20:1-13, see also Pss 81:7; 106:32). In both cases the Israelites complained about lack of water and the Lord miraculously provided for them.
29 sn The name Massah means “testing.” This was another name (along with Meribah) given to the place where Israel complained following the Red Sea Crossing (see Exod 17:1-7, as well as Deut 6:16; 9:22; 33:8).
30 tn Heb “do not harden your heart[s] as [at] Meribah, as [in] the day of Massah in the wilderness.”
31 tn Heb “remember, O
32 tn Heb “lay [it] bare, lay [it] bare.”
33 tn The words “to see” are supplied in the translation for clarification and for stylistic reasons.
34 tn Heb “shines like.”
35 tn Heb “like darkness, like light.”