29:9 The Lord’s shout bends 1 the large trees 2
and strips 3 the leaves from the forests. 4
Everyone in his temple says, “Majestic!” 5
39:6 Surely people go through life as mere ghosts. 6
Surely they accumulate worthless wealth
without knowing who will eventually haul it away.” 7
47:9 The nobles of the nations assemble,
along with the people of the God of Abraham, 8
for God has authority over the rulers 9 of the earth.
He is highly exalted! 10
50:3 Our God approaches and is not silent; 11
consuming fire goes ahead of him
and all around him a storm rages. 12
A song, a psalm of David.
108:1 I am determined, 14 O God!
I will sing and praise you with my whole heart. 15
128:3 Your wife will be like a fruitful vine 16
in the inner rooms of your house;
your children 17 will be like olive branches,
as they sit all around your table.
1 tn The Hebrew imperfect verbal form is descriptive in function; the psalmist depicts the action as underway.
2 tc Heb “the deer.” Preserving this reading, some translate the preceding verb, “causes [the deer] to give premature birth” (cf. NEB, NASB). But the Polel of חוּל/חִיל (khul/khil) means “give birth,” not “cause to give birth,” and the statement “the
3 tn The verb is used in Joel 1:7 of locusts stripping the leaves from a tree. The prefixed verbal form with vav (ו) consecutive here carries the descriptive function of the preceding imperfect. See GKC 329 §111.t.
4 tn The usual form of the plural of יַעַר (ya’ar, “forest”) is יְעָרִים (yÿ’arim). For this reason some propose an emendation to יְעָלוֹת (yÿ’alot, “female mountain goats”) which would fit nicely in the parallelism with “deer” (cf. NEB “brings kids early to birth”). In this case one would have to understand the verb חָשַׂף (khasaf) to mean “cause premature birth,” an otherwise unattested homonym of the more common חָשַׂף (“strip bare”).
sn The Lord’s thunderous shout is accompanied by high winds which damage the trees of the forest.
5 tn Heb “In his temple, all of it says, ‘Glory.’”
6 tn Heb “surely, as an image man walks about.” The preposition prefixed to “image” indicates identity here.
sn People go through life (Heb “man walks about”). “Walking” is here used as a metaphor for living. The point is that human beings are here today, gone tomorrow. They have no lasting substance and are comparable to mere images or ghosts.
7 tc Heb “Surely [in] vain they strive, he accumulates and does not know who gathers them.” The MT as it stands is syntactically awkward. The verb forms switch from singular (“walks about”) to plural (“they strive”) and then back to singular (“accumulates and does not know”), even though the subject (generic “man”) remains the same. Furthermore there is no object for the verb “accumulates” and no plural antecedent for the plural pronoun (“them”) attached to “gathers.” These problems can be removed if one emends the text from הֶבֶל יֶהֱמָיוּן (hevel yehemaun, “[in] vain they strive”) to הֶבְלֵי הָמוֹן (hevley hamon, “vain things of wealth”). This assumes a misdivision in the MT and a virtual dittography of vav (ו) between the mem and nun of המון. The present translation follows this emendation.
8 tc The words “along with” do not appear in the MT. However, the LXX has “with,” suggesting that the original text may have read עִם עַם (’im ’am, “along with the people”). In this case the MT is haplographic (the consonantal sequence ayin-mem [עם] being written once instead of twice). Another option is that the LXX is simply and correctly interpreting “people” as an adverbial accusative and supplying the appropriate preposition.
9 tn Heb “for to God [belong] the shields of the earth.” Perhaps the rulers are called “shields” because they are responsible for protecting their people. See Ps 84:9, where the Davidic king is called “our shield,” and perhaps also Hos 4:18.
10 tn The verb עָלָה (’alah, “ascend”) appears once more (see v. 5), though now in the Niphal stem.
11 tn According to GKC 322 §109.e, the jussive (note the negative particle אַל, ’al) is used rhetorically here “to express the conviction that something cannot or should not happen.”
12 tn Heb “fire before him devours, and around him it is very stormy.”
13 sn Psalm 108. With some minor variations, this psalm is a composite of Ps 57:7-11 (see vv. 1-5) and Ps 60:5-12 (see vv. 6-13).
14 tn Or perhaps “confident”; Heb “my heart is steadfast.” The “heart” is viewed here as the seat of the psalmist’s volition and/or emotions.
15 tn Heb “also my glory,” but this makes little sense in the context. Some view the term כָּבוֹד (“glory”) here as a metonymy for man’s inner being (see BDB 459 s.v. II כָּבוֹד 5), but it is preferable to emend the form to כְּבֵדִי (kÿvodiy, “my liver”). Like the heart, the liver is viewed as the seat of one’s emotions. See also Pss 16:9; 30:12; 57:9; as well as H. W. Wolff, Anthropology of the Old Testament, 64, and M. Dahood, Psalms (AB), 3:93. For an Ugaritic example of the heart/liver as the source of joy, see G. R. Driver, Canaanite Myths and Legends, 47-48: “her [Anat’s] liver swelled with laughter, her heart was filled with joy, the liver of Anat with triumph.”
16 sn The metaphor of the fruitful vine pictures the wife as fertile; she will give her husband numerous children (see the next line).
17 tn One could translate “sons” (see Ps 127:3 and the note on the word “sons” there), but here the term seems to refer more generally to children of both genders.