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
73:26 My flesh and my heart may grow weak, 5
but God always 6 protects my heart and gives me stability. 7
78:39 He remembered 8 that they were made of flesh,
and were like a wind that blows past and does not return. 9
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 The Hebrew verb כָלָה (khalah, “to fail; to grow weak”) does not refer here to physical death per se, but to the physical weakness that sometimes precedes death (see Job 33:21; Pss 71:9; 143:7; Prov 5:11).
6 tn Or “forever.”
7 tn Heb “is the rocky summit of my heart and my portion.” The psalmist compares the
8 tn The prefixed verbal form with vav (ו) consecutive signals a return to the narrative.
9 tn Heb “and he remembered that they [were] flesh, a wind [that] goes and does not return.”