Discovery BoxPsalms 139:16 
Context139:16 Your eyes saw me when I was inside the womb. 1
All the days ordained for me
were recorded in your scroll
before one of them came into existence. 2
Psalms 119:152
Context119:152 I learned long ago that
you ordained your rules to last. 3
Psalms 111:9
Context111:9 He delivered his people; 4
he ordained that his covenant be observed forever. 5
His name is holy and awesome.
1 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.
2 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).
3 tn Heb “long ago I knew concerning your rules, that forever you established them.” See v. 89 for the same idea. The translation assumes that the preposition מִן (min) prefixed to “your rules” introduces the object of the verb יָדַע (yada’), as in 1 Sam 23:23. Another option is that the preposition indicates source, in which case one might translate, “Long ago I realized from your rules that forever you established them” (cf. NIV, NRSV).
4 tn Heb “redemption he sent for his people.”
5 tn Heb “he commanded forever his covenant.”
