Psalms 13:4

13:4 Then ¹  my enemy will say, “I have defeated him!”

Then ²  my foes will rejoice because I am upended.

Psalms 31:8

31:8 You do not deliver me over to the power of the enemy;

you enable me to stand ³  in a wide open place.

Psalms 35:25

35:25 Do not let them say to themselves, ⁴  “Aha! We have what we wanted!” ⁵ 

Do not let them say, “We have devoured him!”

Psalms 86:17

86:17 Show me evidence of your favor! ⁶ 

Then those who hate me will see it and be ashamed, ⁷ 

for you, O Lord, will help me and comfort me. ⁸ 

Psalms 124:6

124:6 The Lord deserves praise, ⁹ 

for ¹⁰  he did not hand us over as prey to their teeth.

Jeremiah 20:13

20:13 Sing to the Lord! Praise the Lord!

For he rescues the oppressed from the clutches of evildoers. ¹¹ 

Colossians 2:15

2:15 Disarming ¹²  the rulers and authorities, he has made a public disgrace of them, triumphing over them by the cross. ¹³ 

¹ tn Heb “or else.”

² tn Heb “or else.”

³ tn Heb “you cause my feet to stand.”

⁴ tn Heb “in their heart[s].”

⁵ tn Heb “Aha! Our desire!” The “desire” of the psalmist’s enemies is to triumph over him.

⁶ tn Heb “Work with me a sign for good.” The expression “work a sign” also occurs in Judg 6:17.

⁷ tn After the imperative in the preceding line (“work”), the prefixed verb forms with prefixed vav (ו) conjunctive indicate purpose or result.

⁸ tn The perfect verbal forms are understood here as dramatic/rhetorical, expressing the psalmist’s certitude that such a sign from the Lord will be followed by his intervention. Another option is to understand the forms as future perfects (“for you, O Lord, will have helped me and comforted me”).

⁹ tn Heb “blessed [be] the Lord.”

¹⁰ tn Heb “[the one] who.”

¹¹ sn While it may be a little confusing to modern readers to see the fluctuation in moods and the shifts in addressee in a prayer and complaint like this, it was not at all unusual for Israel where these were often offered in the temple in the conscious presence of God before fellow worshipers. For another example of these same shifts see Ps 22 which is a prayer of David in a time of deep distress.

¹² tn See BDAG 100 s.v. ἀπεκδύομαι 2.

¹³ tn The antecedent of the Greek pronoun αὐτῷ (autw) could either be “Christ” or the “cross.” There are several reasons for choosing “the cross” as the antecedent for αὐτῷ in verse 15: (1) The nearest antecedent is τῷ σταυρῷ (tw staurw) in v. 14; (2) the idea of ἐδειγμάτισεν ἐν παρρησία (edeigmatisen en parrhsia, “made a public disgrace”) seems to be more in keeping with the idea of the cross; (3) a reference to Christ seems to miss the irony involved in the idea of triumph – the whole point is that where one would expect defeat, there came the victory; (4) if Christ is the subject of the participles in v. 15 then almost certainly the cross is the referent for αὐτῷ. Thus the best solution is to see αὐτῷ as a reference to the cross and the preposition ἐν (en) indicating “means” (i.e., by means of the cross) or possibly (though less likely) location (on the cross).