50:12 Even if I were hungry, I would not tell you,
for the world and all it contains belong to me.
35:14 I mourned for them as I would for a friend or my brother. 1
I bowed down 2 in sorrow as if I were mourning for my mother. 3
139:16 Your eyes saw me when I was inside the womb. 4
All the days ordained for me
were recorded in your scroll
before one of them came into existence. 5
1 tn Heb “like a friend, like a brother to me I walked about.”
2 sn I bowed down. Bowing down was a posture for mourning. See Ps 38:6.
3 tn Heb “like mourning for a mother [in] sorrow I bowed down.”
4 tn Heb “Your eyes saw my shapeless form.” The Hebrew noun גֹּלֶם (golem) occurs only here in the OT. In later Hebrew the word refers to “a lump, a shapeless or lifeless substance,” and to “unfinished matter, a vessel wanting finishing” (Jastrow 222 s.v. גּוֹלֶם). The translation employs the dynamic rendering “when I was inside the womb” to clarify that the speaker was still in his mother’s womb at the time he was “seen” by God.
5 tn Heb “and on your scroll all of them were written, [the] days [which] were formed, and [there was] not one among them.” This “scroll” may be the “scroll of life” mentioned in Ps 69:28 (see the note on the word “living” there).