Discovery BoxPsalms 22:29 
Context22:29 All of the thriving people 1 of the earth will join the celebration and worship; 2
all those who are descending into the grave 3 will bow before him,
including those who cannot preserve their lives. 4
Psalms 31:11
Context31:11 Because of all my enemies, people disdain me; 5
my neighbors are appalled by my suffering 6 –
those who know me are horrified by my condition; 7
those who see me in the street run away from me.
Psalms 35:10
Context35:10 With all my strength I will say, 8
“O Lord, who can compare to you?
You rescue 9 the oppressed from those who try to overpower them; 10
the oppressed and needy from those who try to rob them.” 11
Psalms 69:4
Context69:4 Those who hate me without cause are more numerous than the hairs of my head.
Those who want to destroy me, my enemies for no reason, 12 outnumber me. 13
They make me repay what I did not steal! 14
1 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
2 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
3 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.
4 tn Heb “and his life he does not revive.”
5 tn Heb “because of all my enemies I am a reproach.”
6 tc Heb “and to my neighbors, exceedingly.” If the MT is retained, then these words probably go with what precedes. However the syntactical awkwardness of the text suggests it is textually corrupt. P. C. Craigie (Psalms 1-50 [WBC], 258) suggests that the initial mem (מ) on מְאֹד (me’od, “exceedingly”) be understood as an enclitic mem (ם) which was originally suffixed to the preceding form and then later misinterpreted. The resulting form אֵד (’ed) can then be taken as a defectively written form of אֵיד (’ed, “calamity”). If one follows this emendation, then the text reads literally, “and to my neighbors [I am one who experiences] calamity.” The noun פַחַד (fakhad, “[object of] horror”) occurs in the next line; אֵיד and פַחַד appear in parallelism elsewhere (see Prov 1:26-27).
7 tn Heb “and [an object of ] horror to those known by me.”
8 tn Heb “all my bones will say.”
9 tn Heb “[the one who] rescues.” The substantival participle in the Hebrew text characterizes God as one who typically rescues the oppressed.
10 tn Heb “from [the one who is] too strong for him.” The singular forms are used in a representative sense. The typical oppressed individual and typical oppressor are in view.
11 tn Heb “the oppressed [one] and needy [one] from [the one who] robs him.” As in the previous line, the singular forms are used in a representative sense.
12 tn Heb “[with] a lie.” The Hebrew noun שֶׁקֶר (sheqer, “lie”) is used here as an adverb, “falsely, wrongfully” (see Pss 35:19; 38:19).
13 tn The Hebrew verb עָצַם (’atsam) can sometimes mean “are strong,” but here it probably focuses on numerical superiority; note the parallel verb רָבַב (ravav, “be many”).
14 tn Heb “that which I did not steal, then I restore.” Apparently אָז (’az, “then”) is used here to emphasize the verb that follows.
sn They make me repay what I did not steal. The psalmist’s enemies falsely accuse him and hold him accountable for alleged crimes he did not even commit.
