10:17 Lord, you have heard 1 the request 2 of the oppressed;
you make them feel secure because you listen to their prayer. 3
19:14 May my words and my thoughts
be acceptable in your sight, 4
O Lord, my sheltering rock 5 and my redeemer. 6
8:26 In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness, for we do not know how we should pray, 7 but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with inexpressible groanings. 8:27 And he 8 who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit 9 intercedes on behalf of the saints according to God’s will.
1 sn You have heard. The psalmist is confident that God has responded positively to his earlier petitions for divine intervention. The psalmist apparently prayed the words of vv. 16-18 after the reception of an oracle of deliverance (given in response to the confident petition of vv. 12-15) or after the Lord actually delivered him from his enemies.
2 tn Heb “desire.”
3 tn Heb “you make firm their heart, you cause your ear to listen.”
4 tn Heb “may the words of my mouth and the thought of my heart be acceptable before you.” The prefixed verbal form at the beginning of the verse is understood as a jussive of prayer. Another option is to translate the form as an imperfect continuing the thought of v. 14b: “[Then] the words of my mouth and the thought of my heart will be acceptable before you.”
5 tn Heb “my rocky cliff,” which is a metaphor for protection; thus the translation “sheltering rock.”
6 tn Heb “and the one who redeems me.” The metaphor casts the Lord in the role of a leader who protects members of his extended family in times of need and crisis.
7 tn Or “for we do not know what we ought to pray for.”
8 sn He refers to God here; Paul has not specifically identified him for the sake of rhetorical power (for by leaving the subject slightly ambiguous, he draws his audience into seeing God’s hand in places where he is not explicitly mentioned).
9 tn Grk “he,” or “it”; the referent (the Spirit) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
10 tn The participles in v. 20 have been variously interpreted. Some treat them imperativally or as attendant circumstance to the imperative in v. 21 (“maintain”): “build yourselves up…pray.” But they do not follow the normal contours of either the imperatival or attendant circumstance participles, rendering this unlikely. A better option is to treat them as the means by which the readers are to maintain themselves in the love of God. This both makes eminently good sense and fits the structural patterns of instrumental participles elsewhere.