¹ tn Or “forgotten.”

² tn Heb “the hope of the afflicted does [not] perish forever.” The negative particle is understood by ellipsis; note the preceding line. The imperfect verbal forms express what typically happens.

³ sn Psalm 37. The psalmist urges his audience not to envy the wicked, but to trust in and obey the Lord, for he will destroy sinners and preserve the godly. When the smoke of judgment clears, the wicked will be gone, but the godly will remain and inherit God’s promised blessings. The psalm is an acrostic; every other verse begins with a successive letter of the Hebrew alphabet.

⁴ tn The verb form is singular (see vv. 3-10 as well, where the second person verbs and pronouns are also singular). The psalmist’s exhortation has a wisdom flavor to it; it is personalized for each member of his audience.

⁵ tn Heb “over sinners.” The context indicates that the psalmist has in mind the apparent power and success of sinners. See v. 7b.

⁶ tn Heb “Refrain from anger! Abandon rage!”

⁷ tn Heb “do not cast me away from before you.”

⁸ sn Your Holy Spirit. The personal Spirit of God is mentioned frequently in the OT, but only here and in Isa 63:10-11 is he called “your/his Holy Spirit.”

⁹ sn Do not take…away. The psalmist expresses his fear that, due to his sin, God will take away the Holy Spirit from him. NT believers enjoy the permanent gift of the Holy Spirit and need not make such a request nor fear such a consequence. However, in the OT God’s Spirit empowered certain individuals for special tasks and only temporarily resided in them. For example, when God rejected Saul as king and chose David to replace him, the divine Spirit left Saul and came upon David (1 Sam 16:13-14).

¹⁰ tn Heb “do not cast me away at the time of old age.”

¹¹ tn Heb “did not listen to my voice.”

¹² tn The Hebrew expression אָבָה לִי (’avah liy) means “submit to me” (see Deut 13:8).

¹³ tn Heb “the brutish man does not know, and the fool does not understand this.” The adjective בַּעַר (ba’ar, “brutish”) refers to spiritual insensitivity, not mere lack of intelligence or reasoning ability (see Pss 49:10; 73:22; Prov 12:1; 30:2, as well as the use of the related verb in Ps 94:8).

¹⁴ tn Heb “he will not live in the midst of my house, one who does deceit.”

¹⁵ tn Heb “one who speaks lies will not be established before my eyes.”

¹⁶ tn Heb “the one who guards you.”

¹⁷ tn The prefixed verbal forms following the negative particle אל appear to be jussives. As noted above, if they are taken as true jussives of prayer, then the speaker in v. 3 would appear to be distinct from both the speaker in vv. 1-2 and the speaker in vv. 4-8. However, according to GKC 322 §109.e), the jussives are used rhetorically here “to express the conviction that something cannot or should not happen.” In this case one should probably translate, “he will not allow your foot to slip, your protector will not sleep,” and understand just one speaker in vv. 4-8.