27:2 When evil men attack me 1
to devour my flesh, 2
when my adversaries and enemies attack me, 3
they stumble and fall. 4
32:10 An evil person suffers much pain, 5
but the Lord’s faithfulness overwhelms the one who trusts in him. 6
37:10 Evil men will soon disappear; 7
you will stare at the spot where they once were, but they will be gone. 8
37:16 The little bit that a godly man owns is better than
the wealth of many evil men, 9
37:20 But 10 evil men will die;
the Lord’s enemies will be incinerated 11 –
they will go up in smoke. 12
37:21 Evil men borrow, but do not repay their debt,
but the godly show compassion and are generous. 13
37:35 I have seen ruthless evil men 14
growing in influence, like a green tree grows in its native soil. 15
43:1 Vindicate me, O God!
Fight for me 17 against an ungodly nation!
Deliver me 18 from deceitful and evil men! 19
54:5 May those who wait to ambush me 20 be repaid for their evil! 21
As a demonstration of your faithfulness, 22 destroy them!
101:3 I will not even consider doing what is dishonest. 23
I hate doing evil; 24
I will have no part of it. 25
119:115 Turn away from me, you evil men,
so that I can observe 26 the commands of my God. 27
1 tn Heb “draw near to me.”
2 sn To devour my flesh. The psalmist compares his enemies to dangerous, hungry predators (see 2 Kgs 9:36; Ezek 39:17).
3 tn Heb “my adversaries and my enemies against me.” The verb “draw near” (that is, “attack”) is understood by ellipsis; see the previous line.
4 tn The Hebrew verbal forms are perfects. The translation assumes the psalmist is generalizing here, but another option is to take this as a report of past experience, “when evil men attacked me…they stumbled and fell.”
5 tn Heb “many [are the] pains of evil [one].” The singular form is representative here; the typical evildoer, representative of the larger group of wicked people, is in view.
6 tn Heb “but the one who trusts in the
7 tn Heb “and yet, a little, there will be no wicked [one].”
8 tn Heb “and you will carefully look upon his place, but he will not be [there].” The singular is used here in a representative sense; the typical evildoer is in view.
9 tn Heb “Better [is] a little to the godly one than the wealth of many evil ones.” The following verses explain why this is true. Though a godly individual may seem to have only meager possessions, he always has what he needs and will eventually possess the land. The wicked may prosper for a brief time, but will eventually be destroyed by divine judgment and lose everything.
10 tn Or “for,” but Hebrew כי in this case would have to extend all the way back to v. 17a. Another option is to understand the particle as asseverative, “surely” (see v. 22).
11 tc The meaning of the MT (כִּיקַר כָּרִים [kiqar karim], “like what is precious among the pastures/rams”) is uncertain. One possibility is to take the noun כָּרִים as “pastures” and interpret “what is precious” as referring to flowers that blossom but then quickly disappear (see v. 2 and BDB 430 s.v. יָקָר 3). If כָּרִים is taken as “rams,” then “what is precious” might refer to the choicest portions of rams. The present translation follows a reading in the Dead Sea Scrolls (4QpPs37), כיקוד כורם (“like the burning of an oven”). The next line, which pictures the
12 tn Heb “they perish in smoke, they perish.” In addition to repeating the verb for emphasis, the psalmist uses the perfect form of the verb to picture the enemies’ demise as if it had already taken place. In this way he draws attention to the certitude of their judgment.
13 tn Heb “an evil [man] borrows and does not repay; but a godly [man] is gracious and gives.” The singular forms are used in a representative sense; the typical evildoer and godly individual are in view. The three active participles and one imperfect (“repay”) draw attention to the characteristic behavior of the two types.
14 tn The Hebrew uses the representative singular again here.
15 tn Heb “being exposed [?] like a native, luxuriant.” The Hebrew form מִתְעָרֶה (mit’areh) appears to be a Hitpael participle from עָרָה (’arah, “be exposed”), but this makes no sense in this context. Perhaps the form is a dialectal variant of מִתְעָלָה (“giving oneself an air of importance”; see Jer 51:3), from עָלָה (’alah, “go up”; see P. C. Craigie, Psalms 1-50 [WBC], 296). The noun אֶזְרָח (’ezrakh, “native, full citizen”) refers elsewhere to people, but here, where it is collocated with “luxuriant, green,” it probably refers to a tree growing in native soil.
16 sn Psalm 43. Many medieval Hebrew
17 tn Or “argue my case.”
18 tn The imperfect here expresses a request or wish. Note the imperatives in the first half of the verse. See also v. 3.
19 tn Heb “from the deceitful and evil man.” The Hebrew text uses the singular form “man” in a collective sense, as the reference to a “nation” in the parallel line indicates.
20 tn Heb “to those who watch me [with evil intent].” See also Pss 5:8; 27:11; 56:2.
21 tn The Kethib (consonantal text) reads a Qal imperfect, “the evil will return,” while the Qere (marginal reading) has a Hiphil imperfect, “he will repay.” The parallel line has an imperative (indicating a prayer/request), so it is best to read a jussive form יָשֹׁב (yashov, “let it [the evil] return”) here.
22 tn Heb “in [or “by”] your faithfulness.”
23 tn Heb “I will not set before my eyes a thing of worthlessness.”
24 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
25 tn Heb “it [i.e., the doing of evil deeds] does not cling to me.”
26 tn The cohortative verbal form with vav (ו) conjunctive indicates purpose/result after the preceding imperative.
27 tn The psalmist has already declared that he observes God’s commands despite persecution, so here the idea must be “so that I might observe the commands of my God unhindered by threats.”