Psalms 94:17

94:17 If the Lord had not helped me,

I would have laid down in the silence of death. ¹ 

Psalms 115:17

115:17 The dead do not praise the Lord,

nor do any of those who descend into the silence of death. ² 

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¹ 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.

² tn Heb “silence,” a metonymy here for death (see Ps 94:17).