¹ tn Or “petitions.”

¹ sn Rise up, O Lord! The psalmist’s mood changes from lament to petition and confidence.

² tn Or “command.” This may be the Israelites’ petition prior to the battle. See the introductory note to the psalm.

¹ sn In vv. 4-10 the psalmist recites the prayer of petition and lament he offered to the Lord.

² sn I will show you miraculous deeds. In this verse the Lord responds to the petition of v. 14 with a brief promise of deliverance.

¹ tn Heb “please let our petition fall before you.” For the idiom here see 37:20 and the translator’s note there.

¹ sn The psalm concludes with a petition to the Lord, asking him to continue to intervene in strength for the king and nation.

¹ sn You have heard. The psalmist is confident that God has responded positively to his earlier petitions for divine intervention. The psalmist apparently prayed the words of vv. 16-18 after the reception of an oracle of deliverance (given in response to the confident petition of vv. 12-15) or after the Lord actually delivered him from his enemies.

¹ tn Heb “Thus says the Lord God of Israel, to whom you sent me to present your petition before him, ‘…’” The sentence has been restructured to cut down on the length of the introduction leading in to the long quote.

¹ sn This chapter has a title (30:1), Agur’s confession and petition (30:2-9), and a series of Agur’s admonitions (30:10-33).

¹ sn Psalm 40. The psalmist combines a song of thanksgiving for a recent act of divine deliverance (vv. 1-11) with a confident petition for renewed divine intervention (vv. 12-17).

² sn He has heard my plea for mercy. The psalmist’s mood abruptly changes at this point because the Lord responded positively to his petition and assured him that he would deliver him.

¹ sn Rise up, Lord!…May the nations be judged. The psalm concludes with a petition that the Lord would continue to exercise his justice as he has done in the recent crisis.

² sn The Lord has heard. The psalmist’s mood abruptly changes because the Lord responded positively to the lament and petition of vv. 1-7 and promised him deliverance.

² tn Heb “I was causing to fall [= presenting] my petition before the king not to send me back to Jonathan’s house to die there.” The phrase “dungeon of” is supplied in the translation to help the reader connect this petition with Jeremiah’s earlier place of imprisonment, where the officials had put him with every intention of letting him die there (37:15-16, 20).

¹ tn In the structure of the Psalm, this verse is either another petition or a statement of confidence. If a petition, the four prefixed verbal forms in this verse should be understood as jussives. By form, many prefixed verbs can be either imperfect or jussive. But the third verb in the series, יָשֻׁבוּ (yashuvu), can be distinguished as an imperfect by its qibbuts theme vowel, and is not a jussive (which would have had a qamets hatuph or holem). Expecting all four verbs to be the same due to parallelism leads to the conclusion that this section is a statement of confidence, in which the imperfect verbs should be treated as future.

¹ tn The words “And I will reply” are not in the text, but the words of vv. 8-9 appear to be the answer to the petition at the end of v. 7. These words are supplied in the translation for clarity.

² sn This verse is almost an exact duplication of the petition in one of Jeremiah’s earlier prayers and complaints. See Jer 11:20 and notes there for explanation of the Hebrew psychology underlying the use of “kidneys and heart” here. For the thoughts expressed here see Ps 17.

² tn Heb “my soul would not be toward them.” For the usage of “soul” presupposed here see BDB 660 s.v. נֶפֶשׁ 6 in the light of the complaints and petitions in Jeremiah’s prayer in 14:19, 21.

¹ sn A petition for deliverance and success seems odd in a psalm thanking God for deliverance, but it is not unique (see Ps 9:19-20). The people ask God to continue to intervene for them as he has for the psalmist.