For the music director, a psalm of David.
139:1 O Lord, you examine me 2 and know.
“By my strong hand I have accomplished this,
by my strategy that I devised.
I invaded the territory of nations, 3
and looted their storehouses.
Like a mighty conqueror, 4 I brought down rulers. 5
10:14 My hand discovered the wealth of the nations, as if it were in a nest,
as one gathers up abandoned eggs,
I gathered up the whole earth.
There was no wing flapping,
or open mouth chirping.” 6
45:3 I will give you hidden treasures, 7
riches stashed away in secret places,
so you may recognize that I am the Lord,
the one who calls you by name, the God of Israel.
49:10 But I will strip everything away from Esau’s descendants.
I will uncover their hiding places so they cannot hide.
Their children, relatives, and neighbors will all be destroyed.
Not one of them will be left!
50:37 Destructive forces will come against her horses and her 8 chariots.
Destructive forces will come against all the foreign troops within her; 9
they will be as frightened as women! 10
Destructive forces will come against her treasures;
they will be taken away as plunder!
6:19 “Do not accumulate for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth 11 and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal. 6:20 But accumulate for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and thieves do not break in and steal.
1 sn Psalm 139. The psalmist acknowledges that God, who created him, is aware of his every action and thought. He invites God to examine his motives, for he is confident they are pure.
2 tn The statement is understood as generalizing – the psalmist describes what God typically does.
3 tn Heb “removed the borders of nations”; cf. NAB, NIV, NRSV “boundaries.”
4 tc The consonantal text (Kethib) has כְּאַבִּיר (kÿ’abir, “like a strong one”); the marginal reading (Qere) is כַּבִיר (kavir, “mighty one”).
5 tn Heb “and I brought down, like a strong one, ones sitting [or “living”].” The participle יוֹשְׁבִים (yoshÿvim, “ones sitting”) could refer to the inhabitants of the nations, but the translation assumes that it refers to those who sit on thrones, i.e., rulers. See BDB 442 s.v. יָשַׁב and HALOT 444 s.v. ישׁב.
6 sn The Assyrians’ conquests were relatively unopposed, like robbing a bird’s nest of its eggs when the mother bird is absent.
7 tn Heb “treasures of darkness” (KJV, NASB, NIV, NRSV); TEV “treasures from dark, secret places.”
8 tn Hebrew has “his” in both cases here whereas the rest of the possessive pronouns throughout vv. 35-37 are “her.” There is no explanation for this switch unless the third masculine singular refers as a distributive singular to the soldiers mentioned in the preceding verse (cf. GKC 464 §145.l). This is probably the case here, but to refer to “their horses and their chariots” in the midst of all the “her…” might create more confusion than what it is worth to be that pedantic.
9 tn Or “in the country,” or “in her armies”; Heb “in her midst.”
10 tn Heb “A sword against his horses and his chariots and against all the mixed company [or mixed multitude] in her midst and they will become like women.” The sentence had to be split up because it is too long and the continuation of the second half with its consequential statement would not fit together with the first half very well. Hence the subject and verb have been repeated. The Hebrew word translated “foreign troops” (עֶרֶב, ’erev) is the same word that is used in 25:20 to refer to the foreign peoples living in Egypt and in Exod 12:38 for the foreign people that accompanied Israel out of Egypt. Here the word is translated contextually to refer to foreign mercenaries, an identification that most of the commentaries and many of the modern English versions accept (see, e.g., J. Bright, Jeremiah [AB], 355; NRSV; NIV). The significance of the simile “they will become like women” has been spelled out for the sake of clarity.
11 tn The term σής (shs) refers to moths in general. It is specifically the larvae of moths that destroy clothing by eating holes in it (L&N 4.49; BDAG 922 s.v.). See Jas 5:2, which mentions “moth-eaten” clothing.