35:13 When they were sick, I wore sackcloth, 1
and refrained from eating food. 2
(If I am lying, may my prayers go unanswered!) 3
1 tn Heb “as for me, when they were sick, my clothing was sackcloth.” Sackcloth was worn by mourners. When the psalmist’s enemies were sick, he was sorry for their misfortune and mourned for them.
2 sn Fasting was also a practice of mourners. By refraining from normal activities, such as eating food, the mourner demonstrated the sincerity of his sorrow.
3 tn Heb “and my prayer upon my chest will return.” One could translate, “but my prayer was returning upon my chest,” but the use of the imperfect verbal form sets this line apart from the preceding and following lines (vv. 13a, 14), which use the perfect to describe the psalmist’s past actions.
4 sn On this word here and in the following verse, see the note on the word hell in 5:22.
5 tn Grk “than having.”
6 sn The word translated hell is “Gehenna” (γέεννα, geenna), a Greek transliteration of the Hebrew words ge hinnom (“Valley of Hinnom”). This was the valley along the south side of Jerusalem. In OT times it was used for human sacrifices to the pagan god Molech (cf. Jer 7:31; 19:5-6; 32:35), and it came to be used as a place where human excrement and rubbish were disposed of and burned. In the intertestamental period, it came to be used symbolically as the place of divine punishment (cf. 1 En. 27:2, 90:26; 4 Ezra 7:36). This Greek term also occurs in vv. 45, 47.
7 tc Most later
8 tn Grk “than having.”
9 tc See tc note at the end of v. 43.
10 tn Grk “throw it out.”
11 tn Grk “than having.”
12 tn The Greek pronoun ὅσος (Josos) means “as many as” and can be translated “All those” or “Everyone.”