¹ tn Heb “declare/regard them as guilty.” Declaring the psalmist’s adversaries guilty is here metonymic for judging them or paying them back for their wrongdoing.

² tn Heb “may they fall from their plans.” The prefixed verbal form is a jussive, expressing an imprecation. The psalmist calls judgment down on the evildoers. Their plans will be their downfall in that God will judge them for their evil schemes.

³ tn Or “banish them.”

⁴ tn The Hebrew noun used here, פֶּשַׁע (pesha’), refers to rebellious actions. The psalmist pictures his enemies as rebels against God (see the next line).

⁵ tn In the psalms the Hebrew term רְשָׁעִים (rÿsha’im, “wicked”) describes people who are proud, practical atheists (Ps 10:2, 4, 11) who hate God’s commands, commit sinful deeds, speak lies and slander (Ps 50:16-20), and cheat others (Ps 37:21). They oppose God and his people.

⁶ tn The prefixed verbal form is a jussive, expressing an imprecation here.

⁷ tn Or “the godly” (see Ps 5:12). The singular form is collective (see the plural “upright in heart” in v. 10), though it may reflect the personal focus of the psalmist in this context.

⁸ tn The prefixed verbal form expresses the psalmist’s prayer or wish.

⁹ tn For other uses of the verb in this sense, see Job 7:18; Pss 11:4; 26:2; 139:23.

¹⁰ tn Heb “and [the one who] tests hearts and kidneys, just God.” The translation inverts the word order to improve the English style. The heart and kidneys were viewed as the seat of one’s volition, conscience, and moral character.

¹¹ sn Your victory. Here the king is addressed (see v. 1).

¹² tc The Hebrew verb דָּגַל (dagal) occurs only here in the Qal. If accepted as original, it may carry the nuance “raise a banner,” but it is preferable to emend the form to נגיל (“we will rejoice”) which provides better parallelism with “shout for joy” and fits well with the prepositional phrase “in the name of our God” (see Ps 89:16).

¹³ tn Heb “as for me, when they were sick, my clothing was sackcloth.” Sackcloth was worn by mourners. When the psalmist’s enemies were sick, he was sorry for their misfortune and mourned for them.

¹⁴ sn Fasting was also a practice of mourners. By refraining from normal activities, such as eating food, the mourner demonstrated the sincerity of his sorrow.

¹⁵ tn Heb “and my prayer upon my chest will return.” One could translate, “but my prayer was returning upon my chest,” but the use of the imperfect verbal form sets this line apart from the preceding and following lines (vv. 13a, 14), which use the perfect to describe the psalmist’s past actions.

¹⁶ sn See Pss 35:10; 37:14.

¹⁷ tn The prefixed verbal form may be taken as a jussive of prayer (as in the present translation; cf. NIV) or as an imperfect, “The Lord will pay attention to me” (cf. NRSV). The parallel in Ps 70:5 has, “O God, hurry to me!” For this reason some prefer to emend יַחֲשָׁב (yakhashav, “may he pay attention”) to חוּשָׁה (khushah, “hurry!”). The syntax of the Hebrew text is awkward; elsewhere when the Qal of חָשַׁב (khashav, “reckon; consider”) is collocated with the preposition -ל (lamed) and a pronominal suffix there is an accompanying direct object or additional prepositional phrase/adverbial accusative (see Gen 15:6; 2 Sam 19:19; Job 13:24; 19:11; 33:10; Pss 32:2; 41:7; Amos 6:5).

¹⁸ tn Heb “as for me, [may] my prayer be to you, O Lord, [in] a time of favor.”

¹⁹ tn Heb “O God, in the abundance of your loyal love, answer me in the faithfulness of your deliverance.”

²⁰ tn Heb “let them be wiped out of the scroll of the living.”

sn The phrase the scroll of the living occurs only here in the OT. It pictures a scroll or census list containing the names of the citizens of a community. When an individual died, that person’s name was removed from the list. So this curse is a very vivid way of asking that the enemies die.

²¹ tn Heb “and with the godly let them not be written.”

sn Do not let their names be listed with the godly. This curse pictures a scroll in which God records the names of his loyal followers. The psalmist makes the point that his enemies have no right to be included in this list of the godly.

²² tn Heb “may it be known among the nations, to our eyes, the vengeance of the shed blood of your servants.”

²³ tn Heb “good.”

²⁴ tn Heb “in order that [I may] rejoice with the rejoicing of your nation.”

²⁵ tn Heb “with your inheritance.”

²⁶ sn The people refer here to the psalmist, who enters the Lord’s temple to thank him publicly (see vv. 19-21), as the one who comes in the name of the Lord.

²⁷ tn The pronominal suffix is second masculine plural, but the final mem (ם) is probably dittographic (note the mem [מ] at the beginning of the following form) or enclitic, in which case the suffix may be taken as second masculine singular, referring to the psalmist.

²⁸ tn Heb “from the house of the Lord.”

²⁹ tn The perfect verbal form is used for rhetorical effect; it describes an anticipated development as if it were already reality.

³⁰ tn Heb “bring out my life.”

³¹ tn Or “gather around.”

³² tn The Hebrew idiom גָּמַל עַל (gamal ’al) means “to repay,” here in a positive sense.

³³ tn Heb “cause me to hear in the morning your loyal love.” Here “loyal love” probably stands metonymically for an oracle of assurance promising God’s intervention as an expression of his loyal love.

sn The morning is sometimes viewed as the time of divine intervention (see Pss 30:5; 59:16; 90:14).

³⁴ sn The way probably refers here to God’s moral and ethical standards and requirements (see v. 10).

³⁵ tn Heb “for to you I lift up my life.” The Hebrew expression נָאָשׂ נֶפֶשׁ (na’as nefesh, “to lift up [one’s] life”) means “to desire; to long for” (see Deut 24:15; Prov 19:18; Jer 22:27; 44:14; Hos 4:8, as well as H. W. Wolff, Anthropology of the Old Testament, 16).

³⁶ tn Or “your will.” See Ps 40:8.

³⁷ tn Heb “your good spirit.” God’s “spirit” may refer here to his presence (see the note on the word “presence” in Ps 139:7) or to his personal Spirit (see Ps 51:10).

³⁸ tn The prefixed verbal form is taken as a jussive. Taking the statement as a prayer fits well with the petitionary tone of vv. 7-10a.

³⁹ sn A level land (where one can walk free of obstacles) here symbolizes divine blessing and protection. See Pss 26:12 and 27:11 for similar imagery.