Psalms 56:8

56:8 You keep track of my misery. ¹ 

Put my tears in your leather container! ² 

Are they not recorded in your scroll? ³ 

Psalms 59:15

59:15 They wander around looking for something to eat;

they refuse to sleep until they are full. ⁴ 

Amos 8:12

8:12 People ⁵  will stagger from sea to sea, ⁶ 

and from the north around to the east.

They will wander about looking for a revelation from ⁷  the Lord,

but they will not find any. ⁸ 

Hebrews 11:37-38

11:37 They were stoned, sawed apart, ⁹  murdered with the sword; they went about in sheepskins and goatskins; they were destitute, afflicted, ill-treated 11:38 (the world was not worthy of them); they wandered in deserts and mountains and caves and openings in the earth.

¹ tn Heb “my wandering you count, you.” The Hebrew term נֹד (nod, “wandering,” derived from the verbal root נוֹד, nod, “to wander”; cf. NASB) here refers to the psalmist’s “changeable circumstances of life” and may be translated “misery.” The verb סָפַר (safar, “count”) probably carries the nuance “assess” here. Cf. NIV “my lament”; NRSV “my tossings.”

² tn Traditionally “your bottle.” Elsewhere the Hebrew word נֹאד (no’d, “leather container”) refers to a container made from animal skin which is used to hold wine or milk (see Josh 9:4, 13; Judg 4:19; 1 Sam 16:20). If such a container is metaphorically in view here, then the psalmist seems to be asking God to store up his tears as a reminder of his suffering.

³ tn The word “recorded” is supplied in the translation for clarification. The rhetorical question assumes a positive response (see the first line of the verse).

⁴ tn Heb “if they are not full, they stay through the night.”

⁵ tn Heb “they”; the referent (people) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

⁶ tn That is, from the Mediterranean Sea in the west to the Dead Sea in the east – that is, across the whole land.

⁷ tn Heb “looking for the word of.”

⁸ tn It is not clear whether the speaker in this verse is the Lord or the prophet.

⁹ tc The reading ἐπρίσθησαν (ejprisqhsan, “they were sawed apart”) is found in some important witnesses (Ì⁴⁶ [D* twice reads ἐπίρσθησαν, “they were burned”?] pc sy^p sa Or^pt Eus). Other mss have ἐπειράσθησαν (ejpeirasqhsan, “they were tempted”), either before “sawed apart” ([א] L P [048] 33 81 326 1505 pc sy^h), after “sawed apart” (Ì^13vid A D¹ Ψ 1739 1881 Ï lat bo Or^pt), or altogether in place of “sawed apart” (0150 vg^mss Cl). Since the two words ἐπρίσθησαν and ἐπειράσθησαν are so much alike in sight and sound, and since the position of “they were tempted” varies in the mss, it seems best to say that ἐπειράσθησαν is an accidental corruption of ἐπρίσθησαν or an intentional change to a more common word (the root of ἐπρίσθησαν [πρίζω, prizw] occurs only here in the NT, while the root of ἐπειράσθησαν [πειράζω, peirazw] occurs 38 times). The best reading here seems to be “sawed apart” without any addition before or after. (See TCGNT 603-4, for a discussion of emendations that scholars have proposed for this difficult problem.)