¹ tn Or “presumptuous.”

² tn Heb “let them not rule over me.”

³ tn Heb “great.”

⁴ tn Heb “lift up your heads.” The gates of the Lord’s dwelling place are here personified. The idiom “lift up the head” often means “be confident, bold” (see Judg 8:28; Job 10:15; Ps 83:2; Zech 1:21).

⁵ tn Heb “lift yourselves up.”

⁶ tn Or “king of glory.”

⁷ tn Following the imperatives of the preceding lines, the prefixed verbal form with vav (ו) conjunctive indicates purpose or result.

⁸ tn Heb “your hand was heavy upon me.”

⁹ tc Heb “my [?] was turned.” The meaning of the Hebrew term לְשַׁד (lÿshad) is uncertain. A noun לָשָׁד (lashad, “cake”) is attested in Num 11:8, but it would make no sense to understand that word in this context. It is better to emend the form to לְשֻׁדִּי (lÿshuddiy, “to my destruction”) and understand “your hand” as the subject of the verb “was turned.” In this case the text reads, “[your hand] was turned to my destruction.” In Lam 3:3 the author laments that God’s “hand” was “turned” (הָפַךְ, hafakh) against him in a hostile sense.

sn You tried to destroy me. The psalmist’s statement reflects his perspective. As far as he was concerned, it seemed as if the Lord was trying to kill him.

¹⁰ tn The translation assumes that the plural form indicates degree. If one understands the form as a true plural, then one might translate, “in the times of drought.”

¹¹ sn Summer. Perhaps the psalmist suffered during the hot season and perceived the very weather as being an instrument of divine judgment. Another option is that he compares his time of suffering to the uncomfortable and oppressive heat of summer.

¹² tn Heb “before your pots perceive thorns.”

¹³ tn Apparently God (v. 6) is the subject of the verb here.

¹⁴ tn Heb “like living, like burning anger he will sweep it away.” The meaning of the text is unclear. The translation assumes that within the cooking metaphor (see the previous line) חַי (khay, “living”) refers here to raw meat (as in 1 Sam 2:15, where it modifies בָּשָׂר, basar, “flesh”) and that חָרוּן (kharun; which always refers to God’s “burning anger” elsewhere) here refers to food that is cooked. The pronominal suffix on the verb “sweep away” apparently refers back to the “thorns” of the preceding line. The image depicts swift and sudden judgment. Before the fire has been adequately kindled and all the meat cooked, the winds of judgment will sweep away everything in their path.

¹⁵ tn Heb “you have caused your people to see [what is] hard.”

¹⁶ tn Heb “wine of staggering,” that is, intoxicating wine that makes one stagger in drunkenness. Intoxicating wine is here an image of divine judgment that makes its victims stagger like drunkards. See Isa 51:17-23.

¹⁷ tn Heb “you set our sins in front of you.”

¹⁸ tn Heb “what we have hidden to the light of your face.” God’s face is compared to a light or lamp that exposes the darkness around it.