¹ tn Heb “see.”

² tn Heb “Give light [to] my eyes.” The Hiphil of אוּר (’ur), when used elsewhere with “eyes” as object, refers to the law of God giving moral enlightenment (Ps 19:8), to God the creator giving literal eyesight to all people (Prov 29:13), and to God giving encouragement to his people (Ezra 9:8). Here the psalmist pictures himself as being on the verge of death. His eyes are falling shut and, if God does not intervene soon, he will “fall asleep” for good.

³ tn Heb “or else I will sleep [in?] the death.” Perhaps the statement is elliptical, “I will sleep [the sleep] of death,” or “I will sleep [with the sleepers in] death.”

⁴ tn Heb “my enemies speak evil concerning me.”

⁵ tn Heb “and his name perish.”

⁶ tn Or “for.”

⁷ sn The following line defines the phrase far from you in a spiritual sense. Those “far” from God are those who are unfaithful and disloyal to him.

⁸ tn Heb “everyone who commits adultery from you.”

⁹ tn Heb “and he ended in vanity their days.”

¹⁰ tn Heb “and their years in terror.”

¹¹ tn Heb “burned with fire.”

¹² tn Heb “because of the rebuke of your face they perish.”

¹³ tn Heb “men.” The point in the context is mortality, however, not maleness.

sn You will die like mortals. For the concept of a god losing immortality and dying, see Isa 14:12-15, which alludes to a pagan myth in which the petty god “Shining One, son of the Dawn,” is hurled into Sheol for his hubris.

¹⁴ tn Heb “like one of the rulers.” The comparison does not necessarily imply that they are not rulers. The expression “like one of” can sometimes mean “as one of” (Gen 49:16; Obad 11) or “as any other of” (Judg 16:7, 11).

¹⁵ tn Heb “and may they be terrified to perpetuity.” The Hebrew expression עֲדֵי־עַד (’adey-’ad, “to perpetuity”) can mean “forevermore” (see Pss 92:7; 132:12, 14), but here it may be used hyperbolically, for the psalmist asks that the experience of judgment might lead the nations to recognize (v. 18) and even to seek (v. 16) God.

¹⁶ tn Heb “may they be ashamed and perish.” The four prefixed verbal forms in this verse are understood as jussives. The psalmist concludes his prayer with an imprecation, calling severe judgment down on his enemies. The strong language of the imprecation seems to run contrary to the positive outcome of divine judgment envisioned in v. 16b. Perhaps the language of v. 17 is overstated for effect. Another option is that v. 16b expresses an ideal, while the strong imprecation of vv. 17-18 anticipates reality. It would be nice if the defeated nations actually pursued a relationship with God, but if judgment does not bring them to that point, the psalmist asks that they be annihilated so that they might at least be forced to acknowledge God’s power.

¹⁷ tn Heb “and he lifted his hand to [or “concerning”] them.” The idiom “to lift a hand” here refers to swearing an oath. One would sometimes solemnly lift one’s hand when making such a vow (see Ezek 20:5-6, 15).

¹⁸ tn Heb “to cause them to fall.”

¹⁹ tn Or “offspring”; Heb “seed.”

²⁰ tn Heb “and to cause their offspring to fall.” Some emend the verb to “scatter” to form tighter parallelism with the following line (cf. NRSV “disperse”).

²¹ tn Heb “among the lands.” The word “foreign” is supplied in the translation for clarification.

²² tn Heb “the works of the Lord.”