“For he is good;
his loyal love toward Israel is forever.”
All the people gave a loud 7 shout as they praised the Lord when the temple of the Lord was established. 3:12 Many of the priests, the Levites, and the leaders 8 – older people who had seen with their own eyes the former temple while it was still established 9 – were weeping loudly, 10 and many others raised their voice in a joyous shout. 3:13 People were unable to tell the difference between the sound of joyous shouting and the sound of the people’s weeping, for the people were shouting so loudly 11 that the sound was heard a long way off.
For the music director; by the Korahites; a psalm.
47:1 All you nations, clap your hands!
Shout out to God in celebration! 13
1 tn Heb “he”; the referent (Moses) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
2 tn Heb “the sound of the answering of might,” meaning it is not the sound of shouting in victory (U. Cassuto, Exodus, 418).
3 tn Heb “the sound of the answering of weakness,” meaning the cry of the defeated (U. Cassuto, Exodus, 415).
4 tn Heb “answering in song” (a play on the twofold meaning of the word).
5 sn See A. Newman, “Compositional Analysis and Functional Ambiguity Equivalence: Translating Exodus 32, 17-18,” Babel 21 (1975): 29-35.
6 tn Heb “they answered.”
7 tn Heb “great.”
8 tn Heb “the heads of the fathers.”
9 sn The temple had been destroyed some fifty years earlier by the Babylonians in 586
10 tn Heb “with a great voice.”
11 tn Heb “a great shout.”
12 sn Psalm 47. In this hymn the covenant community praises the Lord as the exalted king of the earth who has given them victory over the nations and a land in which to live.
13 tn Heb “Shout to God with [the] sound of a ringing cry!”