35:27 May those who desire my vindication shout for joy and rejoice!
May they continually say, 1 “May the Lord be praised, 2 for he wants his servant to be secure.” 3
95:10 For forty years I was continually disgusted 4 with that generation,
and I said, ‘These people desire to go astray; 5
they do not obey my commands.’ 6
109:17 He loved to curse 7 others, so those curses have come upon him. 8
He had no desire to bless anyone, so he has experienced no blessings. 9
112:10 When the wicked 10 see this, they will worry;
they will grind their teeth in frustration 11 and melt away;
the desire of the wicked will perish. 12
1 tn The prefixed verbal forms in v. 27a are understood as jussives (see vv. 24b-26).
2 tn The prefixed verbal form is taken as a jussive, “may the
3 tn Heb “the one who desires the peace of his servant.”
4 tn The prefixed verbal form is either a preterite or an imperfect. If the latter, it emphasizes the ongoing nature of the condition in the past. The translation reflects this interpretation of the verbal form.
5 tn Heb “a people, wanderers of heart [are] they.”
6 tn Heb “and they do not know my ways.” In this context the
7 sn A curse in OT times consists of a formal appeal to God to bring judgment down upon another. Curses were sometimes justified (such as the one spoken by the psalmist here in vv. 6-19), but when they were not, the one pronouncing the curse was in danger of bringing the anticipated judgment down upon himself.
8 tn Heb “and he loved a curse and it came [upon] him.” A reference to the evil man experiencing a curse seems premature here, for the psalmist is asking God to bring judgment on his enemies. For this reason some (cf. NIV, NRSV) prefer to repoint the vav (ו) on “it came” as conjunctive and translate the verb as a jussive of prayer (“may it come upon him!”). The prefixed form with vav consecutive in the next line is emended in the same way and translated, “may it be far from him.” However, the psalmist may be indicating that the evil man’s lifestyle has already begun to yield its destructive fruit.
9 tn Heb “and he did not delight in a blessing and it is far from him.”
10 tn The Hebrew text uses the singular; the representative wicked individual is in view as typifying the group (note the use of the plural form in v. 10).
11 tn Heb “his teeth he will gnash.” In Pss 35:16 and 37:12 this action is associated with a vicious attack.
12 tn This could mean that the desires of the wicked will go unfulfilled. Another possibility is that “desire” refers by metonymy to the object desired and acquired. In this case the point is that the wicked will lose what they desired so badly and acquired by evil means (see Ps 10:3).