90:7 Yes, 9 we are consumed by your anger;
we are terrified by your wrath.
90:8 You are aware of our sins; 10
you even know about our hidden sins. 11
90:9 Yes, 12 throughout all our days we experience your raging fury; 13
the years of our lives pass quickly, like a sigh. 14
1 tn Heb “arose, stood”; which here suggests that they stood by him in his time of grief.
2 tn Heb “and he said, ‘Indeed I will go down to my son mourning to Sheol.’” Sheol was viewed as the place where departed spirits went after death.
3 tn Heb “his”; the referent (Joseph) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
4 tn Heb “the days of.”
5 tn Heb “sojournings.” Jacob uses a term that depicts him as one who has lived an unsettled life, temporarily residing in many different places.
6 tn Heb “the days of.”
7 tn The Hebrew word רַע (ra’) can sometimes mean “evil,” but that would give the wrong connotation here, where it refers to pain, difficulty, and sorrow. Jacob is thinking back through all the troubles he had to endure to get to this point.
8 tn Heb “and they have not reached the days of the years of my fathers in the days of their sojournings.”
9 tn Or “for.”
10 tn Heb “you set our sins in front of you.”
11 tn Heb “what we have hidden to the light of your face.” God’s face is compared to a light or lamp that exposes the darkness around it.
12 tn Or “for.”
13 tn Heb “all our days pass by in your anger.”
14 tn Heb “we finish our years like a sigh.” In Ezek 2:10 the word הֶגֶה (hegeh) elsewhere refers to a grumbling or moaning sound. Here a brief sigh or moan is probably in view. If so, the simile pictures one’s lifetime as transient. Another option is that the simile alludes to the weakness that characteristically overtakes a person at the end of one’s lifetime. In this case the phrase could be translated, “we end our lives with a painful moan.”