16:9 You must count seven weeks; you must begin to count them 11 from the time you begin to harvest the standing grain.
5:19 Please remember me for good, O my God, for all that I have done for this people.
33:27 That person sings 12 to others, 13 saying:
‘I have sinned and falsified what is right,
but I was not punished according to what I deserved. 14
33:28 He redeemed my life 15
from going down to the place of corruption,
and my life sees the light!’
34:15 The Lord pays attention to the godly
and hears their cry for help. 16
Written by David, when he pretended to be insane before Abimelech, causing the king to send him away. 18
34:1 I will praise 19 the Lord at all times;
my mouth will continually praise him. 20
A psalm of David, written when he fled from his son Absalom. 22
3:1 Lord, how 23 numerous are my enemies!
Many attack me. 24
1 tn Heb “oracle of the
2 tn Heb “I have set my face against this city for evil [i.e., disaster] and not for good [i.e., well-being].” For the use of the idiom “set one’s face against/toward” see, e.g., usage in 1 Kgs 2:15; 2 Kgs 2:17; Jer 42:15, 17 and note the interesting interplay of usage in Jer 44:11-12.
3 tn Heb “he will burn it with fire.”
4 tn Heb “seeks.” The statement reflects the ancient belief that God (Baal in Canaanite thinking) directly controlled storms and rainfall.
5 tn Heb “the eyes of the
6 sn From the beginning to the end of the year. This refers to the agricultural year that was marked by the onset of the heavy rains, thus the autumn. See note on the phrase “the former and the latter rains” in v. 14.
7 tn Heb “that not.” The words “I am speaking” have been supplied in the translation for stylistic reasons.
8 tn Heb “who have not known and who have not seen the discipline of the Lord.” The collocation of the verbs “know” and “see” indicates that personal experience (knowing by seeing) is in view. The term translated “discipline” (KJV, ASV “chastisement”) may also be rendered “instruction,” but vv. 2b-6 indicate that the referent of the term is the various acts of divine judgment the Israelites had witnessed.
9 tn The words “which revealed” have been supplied in the translation to show the logical relationship between the terms that follow and the divine judgments. In the Hebrew text the former are in apposition to the latter.
10 tn Heb “his strong hand and his stretched-out arm.”
11 tn Heb “the seven weeks.” The translation uses a pronoun to avoid redundancy in English.
12 tc The verb יָשֹׁר (yashor) is unusual. The typical view is to change it to יָשִׁיר (yashir, “he sings”), but that may seem out of harmony with a confession. Dhorme suggests a root שׁוּר (shur, “to repeat”), but this is a doubtful root. J. Reider reads it יָשֵׁיר (yasher) and links it to an Arabic word “confesses” (ZAW 24 [1953]: 275).
13 tn Heb “to men.”
14 tn The verb שָׁוָה (shavah) has the impersonal meaning here, “it has not been requited to me.” The meaning is that the sinner has not been treated in accordance with his deeds: “I was not punished according to what I deserved.”
15 sn See note on “him” in v. 24.
16 tn Heb “the eyes of the
17 sn Psalm 34. In this song of thanksgiving the psalmist praises God for delivering him from distress. He encourages others to be loyal to the Lord, tells them how to please God, and assures them that the Lord protects his servants. The psalm is an acrostic; vv. 1-21 begin with successive letters of the Hebrew alphabet. (Verse 6 begins with the letter he (ה) and v. 7 with the letter zayin (ז). The letter vav (ו), which comes between ה and ז, seems to be omitted, although it does appear at the beginning of v. 6b. The final verse of the psalm, which begins with the letter pe (פ), is outside the acrostic scheme.
18 tn Heb “By David, when he changed his sense before Abimelech and he drove him away and he went.”
19 tn Heb “bless.”
20 tn Heb “continually [will] his praise [be] in my mouth.”
21 sn Psalm 3. The psalmist acknowledges that he is confronted by many enemies (vv. 1-2). But, alluding to a divine oracle he has received (vv. 4-5), he affirms his confidence in God’s ability to protect him (vv. 3, 6) and requests that God make his promise a reality (vv. 7-8).
22 sn According to Jewish tradition, David offered this prayer when he was forced to flee from Jerusalem during his son Absalom’s attempted coup (see 2 Sam 15:13-17).
23 tn The Hebrew term מָה (mah, “how”) is used here as an adverbial exclamation (see BDB 553 s.v.).
24 tn Heb “many rise up against me.”