Deuteronomy 9:3

9:3 Understand today that the Lord your God who goes before you is a devouring fire; he will defeat and subdue them before you. You will dispossess and destroy them quickly just as he ¹  has told you.

Genesis 48:21

48:21 Then Israel said to Joseph, “I am about to die, but God will be with you ²  and will bring you back to the land of your fathers.

Psalms 44:2-3

44:2 You, by your power, ³  defeated nations and settled our fathers on their land; ⁴ 

you crushed ⁵  the people living there ⁶  and enabled our ancestors to occupy it. ⁷ 

44:3 For they did not conquer ⁸  the land by their swords,

and they did not prevail by their strength, ⁹ 

but rather by your power, ¹⁰  strength ¹¹  and good favor, ¹² 

for you were partial to ¹³  them.

Psalms 146:3-6

146:3 Do not trust in princes,

or in human beings, who cannot deliver! ¹⁴ 

146:4 Their life’s breath departs, they return to the ground;

on that day their plans die. ¹⁵ 

146:5 How blessed is the one whose helper is the God of Jacob,

whose hope is in the Lord his God,

146:6 the one who made heaven and earth,

the sea, and all that is in them,

who remains forever faithful, ¹⁶ 

¹ tn Heb “the Lord.” The pronoun has been used in the translation in keeping with contemporary English style to avoid redundancy.

² tn The pronouns translated “you,” “you,” and “your” in this verse are plural in the Hebrew text.

³ tn Heb “you, your hand.”

⁴ tn Heb “dispossessed nations and planted them.” The third masculine plural pronoun “them” refers to the fathers (v. 1). See Ps 80:8, 15.

⁵ tn The verb form in the Hebrew text is a Hiphil preterite (without vav [ו] consecutive) from רָעַע (ra’a’, “be evil; be bad”). If retained it apparently means, “you injured; harmed.” Some prefer to derive the verb from רָעַע (“break”; cf. NEB “breaking up the peoples”), in which case the form must be revocalized as Qal (since this verb is unattested in the Hiphil).

⁶ tn Or “peoples.”

⁷ tn Heb “and you sent them out.” The translation assumes that the third masculine plural pronoun “them” refers to the fathers (v. 1), as in the preceding parallel line. See Ps 80:11, where Israel, likened to a vine, “spreads out” its tendrils to the west and east. Another option is to take the “peoples” as the referent of the pronoun and translate, “and you sent them away,” though this does not provide as tight a parallel with the corresponding line.

⁸ tn Or “take possession of.”

⁹ tn Heb “and their arm did not save them.” The “arm” here symbolizes military strength.

¹⁰ tn Heb “your right hand.” The Lord’s “right hand” here symbolizes his power to protect and deliver (see Pss 17:7; 20:6; 21:8).

¹¹ tn Heb “your arm.”

¹² tn Heb “light of your face.” The idiom “light of your face” probably refers to a smile (see Eccl 8:1), which in turn suggests favor and blessing (see Num 6:25; Pss 4:6; 31:16; 67:1; 80:3, 7, 19; 89:15; Dan 9:17).

¹³ tn Or “favorable toward.”

¹⁴ tn Heb “in a son of man, to whom there is no deliverance.”

¹⁵ tn Heb “his spirit goes out, it returns to his ground; in that day his plans die.” The singular refers to the representative man mentioned in v. 3b.

¹⁶ tn Heb “the one who guards faithfulness forever.”