Discovery BoxPsalms 27:2 
Context27:2 When evil men attack me 1
to devour my flesh, 2
when my adversaries and enemies attack me, 3
they stumble and fall. 4
Psalms 82:5
Context82:5 They 5 neither know nor understand.
They stumble 6 around in the dark,
while all the foundations of the earth crumble. 7
1 tn Heb “draw near to me.”
2 sn To devour my flesh. The psalmist compares his enemies to dangerous, hungry predators (see 2 Kgs 9:36; Ezek 39:17).
3 tn Heb “my adversaries and my enemies against me.” The verb “draw near” (that is, “attack”) is understood by ellipsis; see the previous line.
4 tn The Hebrew verbal forms are perfects. The translation assumes the psalmist is generalizing here, but another option is to take this as a report of past experience, “when evil men attacked me…they stumbled and fell.”
5 sn Having addressed the defendants, God now speaks to those who are observing the trial, referring to the gods in the third person.
6 tn Heb “walk.” The Hitpael stem indicates iterative action, picturing these ignorant “judges” as stumbling around in the darkness.
7 sn These gods, though responsible for justice, neglect their duty. Their self-imposed ignorance (which the psalmist compares to stumbling around in the dark) results in widespread injustice, which threatens the social order of the world (the meaning of the phrase all the foundations of the earth crumble).
