22:26 Let the oppressed eat and be filled! 1
Let those who seek his help praise the Lord!
May you 2 live forever!
37:19 They will not be ashamed when hard times come; 3
when famine comes they will have enough to eat. 4
42:3 I cannot eat, I weep day and night; 5
all day long they say to me, 6 “Where is your God?”
68:23 so that your feet may stomp 7 in their blood,
and your dogs may eat their portion of the enemies’ corpses.” 8
73:10 Therefore they have more than enough food to eat,
and even suck up the water of the sea. 9
1 sn Eat and be filled. In addition to praising the Lord, the psalmist also offers a thank offering to the Lord and invites others to share in a communal meal.
2 tn Heb “may your heart[s].”
3 tn Heb “in a time of trouble.”
4 tn Heb “in days of famine they will be satisfied.”
5 tn Heb “My tears have become my food day and night.”
6 tn Heb “when [they] say to me all the day.” The suffixed third masculine plural pronoun may have been accidentally omitted from the infinitive בֶּאֱמֹר (be’ÿmor, “when [they] say”). Note the term בְּאָמְרָם (bÿ’omram, “when they say”) in v. 10.
7 tc Some (e.g. NRSV) prefer to emend מָחַץ (makhats, “smash; stomp”; see v. 21) to רָחַץ (rakhats, “bathe”; see Ps 58:10).
8 tn Heb “[and] the tongue of your dogs from [the] enemies [may eat] its portion.”
9 tc Heb “therefore his people return [so Qere (marginal reading); Kethib (consonantal text) has “he brings back”] to here, and waters of abundance are sucked up by them.” The traditional Hebrew text (MT) defies explanation. The present translation reflects M. Dahood’s proposed emendations (Psalms [AB], 2:190) and reads the Hebrew text as follows: לָכֵן יִשְׂבְעוּם לֶחֶם וּמֵי מָלֵא יָמֹצּוּ לָמוֹ (“therefore they are filled with food, and waters of abundance they suck up for themselves”). The reading יִשְׂבְעוּם לֶחֶם (yisvÿ’um lekhem, “they are filled with food”) assumes (1) an emendation of יָשׁיּב עַמּוֹ (yashyyv, “he will bring back his people”) to יִשְׂבְעוּם (yisvÿ’um, “they will be filled”; a Qal imperfect third masculine plural form from שָׂבַע [sava’] with enclitic mem [ם]), and (2) an emendation of הֲלֹם (halom, “to here”) to לֶחֶם (“food”). The expression “be filled/fill with food” appears elsewhere at least ten times (see Ps 132:15, for example). In the second line the Niphal form יִמָּצוּ (yimmatsu, derived from מָצָה, matsah, “drain”) is emended to a Qal form יָמֹצּוּ (yamotsu), derived from מָצַץ (matsats, “to suck”). In Isa 66:11 the verbs שָׂבַע (sava’; proposed in Ps 73:10a) and מָצַץ (proposed in Ps 73:10b) are parallel. The point of the emended text is this: Because they are seemingly sovereign (v. 9), they become greedy and grab up everything they need and more.