By David.
35:1 O Lord, fight 2 those who fight with me!
Attack those who attack me!
37:12 Evil men plot against the godly 3
and viciously attack them. 4
27:2 When evil men attack me 5
to devour my flesh, 6
when my adversaries and enemies attack me, 7
they stumble and fall. 8
1 sn Psalm 35. The author, who faces ruthless enemies who seek his life for no reason, begs the Lord to fight his battles for him and to vindicate him by annihilating his adversaries.
2 tn Or “contend.”
3 tn Or “innocent.” The singular is used here in a representative sense; the typical evildoer and the typical godly individual are in view.
4 tn Heb “and gnashes at him with his teeth” (see Ps 35:16). The language may picture the evil men as wild animals. The active participles in v. 12 are used for purposes of dramatic description.
5 tn Heb “draw near to me.”
6 sn To devour my flesh. The psalmist compares his enemies to dangerous, hungry predators (see 2 Kgs 9:36; Ezek 39:17).
7 tn Heb “my adversaries and my enemies against me.” The verb “draw near” (that is, “attack”) is understood by ellipsis; see the previous line.
8 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.”