8:52 “May you be attentive 5 to your servant’s and your people Israel’s requests for help and may you respond to all their prayers to you. 6 8:53 After all, 7 you picked them out of all the nations of the earth to be your special possession, 8 just as you, O sovereign Lord, announced through your servant Moses when you brought our ancestors out of Egypt.”
1 tn Heb “and forgive your people who have sinned against you, [forgive] all their rebellious acts by which they rebelled against you, and grant them mercy before their captors so they will show them mercy.”
2 tn Or “for.”
3 tn Heb “inheritance.”
4 tn The Hebrew term כּוּר (kur, “furnace,” cf. Akkadian ku„ru) is a metaphor for the intense heat of purification. A כּוּר was not a source of heat but a crucible (“iron-smelting furnace”) in which precious metals were melted down and their impurities burned away (see I. Cornelius, NIDOTTE 2:618-19). Thus Egypt served not as a place of punishment for the Israelites, but as a place of refinement to bring Israel to a place of submission to divine sovereignty.
3 tn Heb “May your eyes be open.”
4 tn Heb “to listen to them in all their calling out to you.”
4 tn Or “For.”
5 tn Heb “your inheritance.”