Discovery BoxPsalms 22:27-30 
Context22:27 Let all the people of the earth acknowledge the Lord and turn to him! 1
Let all the nations 2 worship you! 3
and rules over the nations.
22:29 All of the thriving people 5 of the earth will join the celebration and worship; 6
all those who are descending into the grave 7 will bow before him,
including those who cannot preserve their lives. 8
22:30 A whole generation 9 will serve him;
they will tell the next generation about the sovereign Lord. 10
1 tn Heb “may all the ends of the earth remember and turn to the
2 tn Heb “families of the nations.”
3 tn Heb “before you.”
4 tn Heb “for to the
5 tn Heb “fat [ones].” This apparently refers to those who are healthy and robust, i.e., thriving. In light of the parallelism, some prefer to emend the form to יְשֵׁנֵי (yÿsheney, “those who sleep [in the earth]”; cf. NAB, NRSV), but דִּשְׁנֵי (dishney, “fat [ones]”) seems to form a merism with “all who descend into the grave” in the following line. The psalmist envisions all people, whether healthy or dying, joining in worship of the
6 tn Heb “eat and worship.” The verb forms (a perfect followed by a prefixed form with vav [ו] consecutive) are normally used in narrative to relate completed actions. Here the psalmist uses the forms rhetorically as he envisions a time when the
7 tn Heb “all of the ones going down [into] the dust.” This group stands in contrast to those mentioned in the previous line. Together the two form a merism encompassing all human beings – the healthy, the dying, and everyone in between.
8 tn Heb “and his life he does not revive.”
9 tn Heb “offspring.”
10 tn Heb “it will be told concerning the Lord to the generation.” The Hebrew term translated “Lord” here is אֲדֹנָי (’adonay).
