Discovery BoxPsalms 27:1-6 
ContextBy David.
27:1 The Lord delivers and vindicates me! 2
I fear no one! 3
The Lord protects my life!
I am afraid of no one! 4
27:2 When evil men attack me 5
to devour my flesh, 6
when my adversaries and enemies attack me, 7
they stumble and fall. 8
27:3 Even when an army is deployed against me,
I do not fear. 9
Even when war is imminent, 10
I remain confident. 11
27:4 I have asked the Lord for one thing –
this is what I desire!
I want to live 12 in the Lord’s house 13 all the days of my life,
so I can gaze at the splendor 14 of the Lord
and contemplate in his temple.
27:5 He will surely 15 give me shelter 16 in the day of danger; 17
he will hide me in his home; 18
he will place me 19 on an inaccessible rocky summit. 20
27:6 Now I will triumph
over my enemies who surround me! 21
I will offer sacrifices in his dwelling place and shout for joy! 22
I will sing praises to the Lord!
1 sn Psalm 27. The author is confident of the Lord’s protection and asks the Lord to vindicate him.
2 tn Heb “the
3 tn Heb “Whom shall I fear?” The rhetorical question anticipates the answer, “No one!”
4 tn Heb “Of whom shall I be afraid?” The rhetorical question anticipates the answer, “No one!”
5 tn Heb “draw near to me.”
6 sn To devour my flesh. The psalmist compares his enemies to dangerous, hungry predators (see 2 Kgs 9:36; Ezek 39:17).
7 tn Heb “my adversaries and my enemies against me.” The verb “draw near” (that is, “attack”) is understood by ellipsis; see the previous line.
8 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.”
9 tn Heb “my heart does not fear.”
10 tn Heb “if war rises up against me.”
11 tn Heb “in this [i.e., “during this situation”] I am trusting.”
12 tn Heb “my living.”
13 sn The
14 tn Or “beauty.”
15 tn Or “for he will.” The translation assumes the כִּי (ki) is asseverative here, rather than causal.
16 tn Heb “he will hide me in his hut.”
17 tn Or “trouble.”
18 tn Heb “tent.”
19 tn The three imperfect verb forms in v. 5 anticipate a positive response to the prayer offered in vv. 7-12.
20 tn Heb “on a rocky summit he lifts me up.” The
21 tn Heb “and now my head will be lifted up over my enemies all around me.”
sn In vv. 1-3 the psalmist generalizes, but here we discover that he is facing a crisis and is under attack from enemies (see vv. 11-12).
22 tn Heb “I will sacrifice in his tent sacrifices of a shout for joy” (that is, “sacrifices accompanied by a joyful shout”).
