Psalms 10:12

10:12 Rise up, Lord! ¹ 

O God, strike him down! ² 

Do not forget the oppressed!

Psalms 21:8

21:8 You ³  prevail over ⁴  all your enemies;

your power is too great for those who hate you. ⁵ 

Psalms 38:2

38:2 For your arrows pierce ⁶  me,

and your hand presses me down. ⁷ 

Psalms 39:10

39:10 Please stop wounding me! ⁸ 

You have almost beaten me to death! ⁹ 

Psalms 74:11

74:11 Why do you remain inactive?

Intervene and destroy him! ¹⁰ 

Psalms 104:28

104:28 You give food to them and they receive it;

you open your hand and they are filled with food. ¹¹ 

Psalms 109:27

109:27 Then they will realize ¹²  this is your work, ¹³ 

and that you, Lord, have accomplished it.

Psalms 145:16

145:16 You open your hand,

and fill every living thing with the food they desire. ¹⁴ 

¹ sn Rise up, O Lord! The psalmist’s mood changes from lament to petition and confidence.

² tn Heb “lift up your hand.” Usually the expression “lifting the hand” refers to praying (Pss 28:2; 134:2) or making an oath (Ps 106:26), but here it probably refers to “striking a blow” (see 2 Sam 18:28; 20:21). Note v. 15, where the psalmist asks the Lord to “break the arm of the wicked.” A less likely option is that the psalmist is requesting that the Lord declare by oath his intention to intervene.

³ tn The king is now addressed. One could argue that the Lord is still being addressed, but v. 9 militates against this proposal, for there the Lord is mentioned in the third person and appears to be distinct from the addressee (unless, of course, one takes “Lord” in v. 9 as vocative; see the note on “them” in v. 9b). Verse 7 begins this transition to a new addressee by referring to both the king and the Lord in the third person (in vv. 1-6 the Lord is addressed and only the king referred to in the third person).

⁴ tn Heb “your hand finds.” The idiom pictures the king grabbing hold of his enemies and defeating them (see 1 Sam 23:17). The imperfect verbal forms in vv. 8-12 may be translated with the future tense, as long as the future is understood as generalizing.

⁵ tn Heb “your right hand finds those who hate you.”

⁵ tn The verb Hebrew נָחַת (nakhat) apparently here means “penetrate, pierce” (note the use of the Qal in Prov 17:10). The psalmist pictures the Lord as a warrior who shoots arrows at him (see Ps 7:12-13).

⁶ tn Heb “and your hand [?] upon me.” The meaning of the verb נָחַת (nakhat) is unclear in this context. It is preferable to emend the form to וַתָּנַח (vattanakh) from the verb נוּחַ (nuakh, “rest”). In this case the text would read literally, “and your hand rests upon me” (see Isa 25:10, though the phrase is used in a positive sense there, unlike Ps 38:2).

⁷ tn Heb “remove from upon me your wound.”

⁸ tn Heb “from the hostility of your hand I have come to an end.”

⁹ tn Heb “Why do you draw back your hand, even your right hand? From the midst of your chest, destroy!” The psalmist pictures God as having placed his right hand (symbolic of activity and strength) inside his robe against his chest. He prays that God would pull his hand out from under his robe and use it to destroy the enemy.

¹¹ tn Heb “they are satisfied [with] good.”

¹³ tn After the preceding imperative, the prefixed verbal form with vav (ו) conjunctive indicates purpose or result.

¹⁴ tn Heb “that your hand [is] this.”

¹⁵ tn Heb “[with what they] desire.”