¹ sn Psalm 83. The psalmist asks God to deliver Israel from the attacks of foreign nations. Recalling how God defeated Israel’s enemies in the days of Deborah and Gideon, he prays that the hostile nations would be humiliated.

¹ sn Let the oppressed and poor praise your name. The statement is metonymic. The point is this: May the oppressed be delivered from their enemies. Then they will have ample reason to praise God’s name.

³ tn Heb “they set up their banners [as] banners.” The Hebrew noun אוֹת (ʾot, “sign”) here refers to the enemy army’s battle flags and banners (see Num 2:12).

³ sn You are my high ridge. This metaphor pictures God as a rocky, relatively inaccessible summit, where one would be able to find protection from enemies. See 1 Sam 23:25, 28.

² tn The three prefixed verbal forms prior to the quotation are understood as jussives. The psalmist balances out his imprecation against his enemies with a prayer of blessing on the godly.

³ sn They make me repay what I did not steal. The psalmist’s enemies falsely accuse him and hold him accountable for alleged crimes he did not even commit.

⁴ sn The wording of v. 1 echoes the prayer in Num 10:35: “Spring into action, Lord. Then your enemies will be scattered and your adversaries will run from you.”

¹ tn Heb “but they for destruction seek my life.” The pronoun “they” must refer here to the psalmist’s enemies, referred to at this point for the first time in the psalm.

⁴ tn The perfect form is used rhetorically here to express the psalmist’s certitude. The demise of the enemies is so certain that he can speak of it as already accomplished.

¹ tn Heb “then my enemies will turn back in the day I cry out.” The Hebrew particle אָז (ʾaz, “then”) is probably used here to draw attention to the following statement.

¹ sn Psalm 55. The suffering and oppressed author laments that one of his friends has betrayed him, but he is confident that God will vindicate him by punishing his deceitful enemies.

⁴ tn God’s “name” refers here to his reputation and revealed character, which would instill fear in the psalmist’s enemies (see C. A. Briggs and E. G. Briggs, Psalms [ICC], 2:17).

¹ sn Psalm 54. The psalmist asks God for protection against his enemies, confidently affirms that God will vindicate him, and promises to give thanks to God for his saving intervention.

⁵ tn Heb “the loyal love of God [is] all the day.” In this context, where the psalmist is threatened by his enemy, the point seems to be that the psalmist is protected by God’s loyal love at all times.

¹ tn Heb “your arrows are sharp—peoples beneath you fall—in the heart of the enemies of the king.” The choppy style reflects the poet’s excitement.

² tn This metaphor pictures God as a rocky, relatively inaccessible summit, where one would be able to find protection from enemies. See 1 Sam 23:25, 28; Pss 18:2; 31:3.

¹ tn The words “they say” are not in the Hebrew text, but are supplied in the translation to make it clear that v. 8 contains a quotation of what the psalmist’s enemies say about him (see v. 7a).

² tn The three prefixed verbal forms prior to the quotation are understood as jussives. The psalmist balances out his imprecation against his enemies with a prayer of blessing upon the godly.

² tn The four prefixed verbal forms in this verse (“may those…be…embarrassed and ashamed…may those…be turned back and ashamed”) are understood as jussives. The psalmist is calling judgment down on his enemies.

¹ sn I am like a deaf man…like a mute. The psalmist is like a deaf mute; he is incapable of defending himself and is vulnerable to his enemies’ deception (see v. 14).