10:2 The wicked arrogantly chase the oppressed; 1
the oppressed are trapped 2 by the schemes the wicked have dreamed up. 3
36:11 Do not let arrogant men overtake me,
or let evil men make me homeless! 4
40:4 How blessed 5 is the one 6 who trusts in the Lord 7
and does not seek help from 8 the proud or from liars! 9
86:14 O God, arrogant men attack me; 10
a gang 11 of ruthless men, who do not respect you, seek my life. 12
124:5 The raging water
would have overwhelmed us. 13
140:5 Proud men hide a snare for me;
evil men 14 spread a net by the path;
they set traps for me. (Selah)
1 tn Heb “because of the pride of [the] wicked he burns [i.e. hotly pursues] [the] oppressed.” The singular forms רָשָׁע (rasha’, “wicked”) and עָנִי (’aniy, “oppressed”) are collective and representative, as indicated in the next line, which uses plural verb forms to describe the actions of both.
2 tn The two imperfect verbal forms in v. 2 describe either what typically happens (from the psalmist’s perspective) or what the psalmist was experiencing at the time he offered this prayer.
3 tn Heb “they are trapped in the schemes which they have thought up.” The referents of the two pronominal suffixes on the verbs have been specified in the translation for clarity. The referent of the first suffix (“they”) is taken as the oppressed, while the referent of the second (“they”) is taken to be the wicked (cf. NIV, which renders “wicked” in the previous line as a collective singular). Others take the referent of both occurrences of “they” in the line to be the wicked (cf. NRSV, “let them be caught in the schemes they have devised”).
4 tn Heb “let not a foot of pride come to me, and let not the hand of the evil ones cause me to wander as a fugitive.”
5 tn The Hebrew noun is an abstract plural. The word often refers metonymically to the happiness that God-given security and prosperity produce (see Pss 1:1, 3; 2:12; 34:9; 41:1; 65:4; 84:12; 89:15; 106:3; 112:1; 127:5; 128:1; 144:15).
6 tn Heb “man.” See the note on the word “one” in Ps 1:1.
7 tn Heb “who has made the
8 tn Heb “and does not turn toward.”
9 tn Heb “those falling away toward a lie.”
10 tn Heb “rise up against me.”
11 tn Or “assembly.”
12 tn Heb “seek my life and do not set you before them.” See Ps 54:3.
13 tn Heb “then they would have passed over our being, the raging waters.”
14 tn Heb “and ropes,” but many prefer to revocalize the noun as a participle (חֹבְלִים, khovÿlim) from the verb חָבַל (khaval, “act corruptly”).
15 tn The end of this sentence seems not to have been finished, or it is very elliptical. In the present translation the phrase “he has destroyed them” is supplied. Others take the last prepositional phrase to be the completion and supply only a verb: “[he was] above them.” U. Cassuto (Exodus, 216) takes the word “gods” to be the subject of the verb “act proudly,” giving the sense of “precisely (כִּי, ki) in respect of these things of which the gods of Egypt boasted – He is greater than they (עֲלֵיהֶם, ‘alehem).” He suggests rendering the clause, “excelling them in the very things to which they laid claim.”
16 sn A quotation from Prov 3:34.