125:4 Do good, O Lord, to those who are good,
to the morally upright! 4
125:5 As for those who are bent on traveling a sinful path, 5
may the Lord remove them, 6 along with those who behave wickedly! 7
May Israel experience peace! 8
1 tn Grk “walk” (a common NT idiom for how one conducts one’s life or how one behaves).
2 tn On the term “flesh” (once in this verse and twice in v. 17) see the note on the same word in Gal 5:13.
3 tn Or “let us also follow,” “let us also walk by.”
4 tn Heb “pure of heart.” The “heart” is here viewed as the seat of one’s moral character and motives. The “pure of heart” are God’s faithful followers who trust in and love the
5 tn Heb “and the ones making their paths twisted.” A sinful lifestyle is compared to a twisting, winding road.
6 tn Heb “lead them away.” The prefixed verbal form is understood as a jussive of prayer here (note the prayers directly before and after this). Another option is to translate, “the
7 tn Heb “the workers of wickedness.”
8 tn Heb “peace [be] upon Israel.” The statement is understood as a prayer (see Ps 122:8 for a similar prayer for peace).
9 tc Although κανόνι (kanoni, “standard, rule”) is found in most witnesses, though in various locations in this verse (א2 D2 Ψ 075 Ï), it is almost surely a motivated reading, for it clarifies the cryptic τῷ αὐτῷ (tw autw, “the same”). Both the fact that the word floats, and that there are other variants which accomplish greater clarity by other means, strongly suggests the secondary nature of any of the longer readings here. Further, the shortest text has excellent and early support in Ì16,46 א* A B Ivid 6 33 1739 co, rendering it decidedly the preferred reading. The translation adds “standard” because of English requirements, not because of textual basis.
10 tn Grk “Nevertheless, to what we have attained, to the same hold fast.”