1 Samuel 1:6

1:6 Her rival wife used to upset her and make her worry, ¹  for the Lord had not enabled her to have children.

Psalms 5:7

5:7 But as for me, ²  because of your great faithfulness I will enter your house; ³ 

I will bow down toward your holy temple as I worship you. ⁴ 

Psalms 27:4

27:4 I have asked the Lord for one thing –

this is what I desire!

I want to live ⁵  in the Lord’s house ⁶  all the days of my life,

so I can gaze at the splendor ⁷  of the Lord

and contemplate in his temple.

Psalms 29:9

29:9 The Lord’s shout bends ⁸  the large trees ⁹ 

and strips ¹⁰  the leaves from the forests. ¹¹ 

Everyone in his temple says, “Majestic!” ¹² 

¹ tn Heb “and her rival wife grieved her, even [with] grief so as to worry her.”

² sn But as for me. By placing the first person pronoun at the beginning of the verse, the psalmist highlights the contrast between the evildoers’ actions and destiny, outlined in the preceding verses, with his own.

³ sn I will enter your house. The psalmist is confident that God will accept him into his presence, in contrast to the evildoers (see v. 5).

⁴ tn Heb “in fear [of] you.” The Hebrew noun יִרְאָה (yir’ah, “fear”), when used of fearing God, is sometimes used metonymically for what it ideally produces: “worship, reverence, piety.”

⁵ tn Heb “my living.”

⁶ sn The Lord’s house. This probably refers to the tabernacle (if one accepts Davidic authorship) or the temple (see Judg 19:18; 1 Sam 1:7, 24; 2 Sam 12:20; 1 Kgs 7:12, 40, 45, 51).

⁷ tn Or “beauty.”

⁸ tn The Hebrew imperfect verbal form is descriptive in function; the psalmist depicts the action as underway.

⁹ tc Heb “the deer.” Preserving this reading, some translate the preceding verb, “causes [the deer] to give premature birth” (cf. NEB, NASB). But the Polel of חוּל/חִיל (khul/khil) means “give birth,” not “cause to give birth,” and the statement “the Lord’s shout gives birth to deer” is absurd. In light of the parallelism (note “forests” in the next line) and v. 5, it is preferable to emend אַיָּלוֹת (’ayyalot, “deer”) to אֵילוֹת (’elot, “large trees”) understanding the latter as an alternate form of the usual plural form אַיָּלִים (’ayyalim).

¹⁰ tn The verb is used in Joel 1:7 of locusts stripping the leaves from a tree. The prefixed verbal form with vav (ו) consecutive here carries the descriptive function of the preceding imperfect. See GKC 329 §111.t.

¹¹ tn The usual form of the plural of יַעַר (ya’ar, “forest”) is יְעָרִים (yÿ’arim). For this reason some propose an emendation to יְעָלוֹת (yÿ’alot, “female mountain goats”) which would fit nicely in the parallelism with “deer” (cf. NEB “brings kids early to birth”). In this case one would have to understand the verb חָשַׂף (khasaf) to mean “cause premature birth,” an otherwise unattested homonym of the more common חָשַׂף (“strip bare”).

¹² tn Heb “In his temple, all of it says, ‘Glory.’”