Psalms 55:6

55:6 I say, ¹  “I wish I had wings like a dove!

I would fly away and settle in a safe place!

Psalms 94:17

94:17 If the Lord had not helped me,

I would have laid down in the silence of death. ² 

Psalms 95:9

95:9 where your ancestors challenged my authority, ³ 

and tried my patience, even though they had seen my work.

Psalms 105:44

105:44 He handed the territory of nations over to them,

and they took possession of what other peoples had produced, ⁴ 

Psalms 106:43

106:43 Many times he delivered ⁵  them,

but they had a rebellious attitude, ⁶ 

and degraded themselves ⁷  by their sin.

Psalms 107:11

107:11 because they had rebelled against God’s commands, ⁸ 

and rejected the instructions of the sovereign king. ⁹ 

Psalms 123:3--124:1

123:3 Show us favor, O Lord, show us favor!

For we have had our fill of humiliation, and then some. ¹⁰ 

123:4 We have had our fill ¹¹ 

of the taunts of the self-assured,

of the contempt of the proud.

Psalm 124 ¹² 

A song of ascents, ¹³  by David.

124:1 “If the Lord had not been on our side” –

let Israel say this! –

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¹ tn The prefixed verbal form with vav (ו) consecutive carries on the descriptive (present progressive) force of the verbs in v. 5.

² tn Heb “If the Lord [were] not my help, quickly my life would have lain down in silence.” The psalmist, perhaps speaking as the nation’s representative, recalls God’s past intervention. For other examples of conditional sentences with the term לוּלֵי (luley, “if not”) in the protasis and a perfect verbal form in the apodosis, see Pss 119:92 and 124:2-5.

³ tn Heb “where your fathers tested me.”

⁴ tn Heb “and the [product of the] work of peoples they possessed.”

⁵ tn The prefixed verbal form is either preterite or imperfect, in which case it is customary, describing repeated action in past time (“he would deliver”).

⁶ tn Heb “but they rebelled in their counsel.” The prefixed verbal form is either preterite or imperfect, in which case it is customary, describing repeated action in past time (“they would have a rebellious attitude”).

⁷ tn Heb “they sank down.” The Hebrew verb מָכַךְ (makhakh, “to lower; to sink”) occurs only here in the Qal.

⁸ tn Heb “the words of God.”

⁹ tn Heb “the counsel of the Most High.”

¹⁰ tn Heb “for greatly we are filled [with] humiliation.”

¹¹ tn Heb “greatly our soul is full to it.”

¹² sn Psalm 124. Israel acknowledges that the Lord delivered them from certain disaster.

¹³ sn The precise significance of this title, which appears in Pss 120-134, is unclear. Perhaps worshipers recited these psalms when they ascended the road to Jerusalem to celebrate annual religious festivals. For a discussion of their background see L. C. Allen, Psalms 101-150 (WBC), 219-21.