139:17 How difficult it is for me to fathom your thoughts about me, O God! 1
How vast is their sum total! 2
For the music director, a psalm of David.
139:1 O Lord, you examine me 4 and know.
2:6 “I myself 5 have installed 6 my king
on Zion, my holy hill.”
2:7 The king says, 7 “I will announce the Lord’s decree. He said to me: 8
‘You are my son! 9 This very day I have become your father!
2:2 The kings of the earth 10 form a united front; 11
the rulers collaborate 12
against the Lord and his anointed king. 13
1:4 Not so with the wicked!
Instead 14 they are like wind-driven chaff. 15
1 tn Heb “and to me how precious are your thoughts, O God.” The Hebrew verb יָקַר (yaqar) probably has the sense of “difficult [to comprehend]” here (see HALOT 432 s.v. יקר qal.1 and note the use of Aramaic יַקִּר in Dan 2:11). Elsewhere in the immediate context the psalmist expresses his amazement at the extent of God’s knowledge about him (see vv. 1-6, 17b-18).
2 tn Heb “how vast are their heads.” Here the Hebrew word “head” is used of the “sum total” of God’s knowledge of the psalmist.
3 sn Psalm 139. The psalmist acknowledges that God, who created him, is aware of his every action and thought. He invites God to examine his motives, for he is confident they are pure.
4 tn The statement is understood as generalizing – the psalmist describes what God typically does.
5 tn The first person pronoun appears before the first person verbal form for emphasis, reflected in the translation by “myself.”
6 tn Or perhaps “consecrated.”
7 tn The words “the king says” are supplied in the translation for clarification. The speaker is the Lord’s chosen king.
8 tn Or “I will relate the decree. The
9 sn ‘You are my son!’ The Davidic king was viewed as God’s “son” (see 2 Sam 7:14; Ps 89:26-27). The idiom reflects ancient Near Eastern adoption language associated with covenants of grant, by which a lord would reward a faithful subject by elevating him to special status, referred to as “sonship.” Like a son, the faithful subject received an “inheritance,” viewed as an unconditional, eternal gift. Such gifts usually took the form of land and/or an enduring dynasty. See M. Weinfeld, “The Covenant of Grant in the Old Testament and in the Ancient Near East,” JAOS 90 (1970): 184-203, for general discussion and some striking extra-biblical parallels.
10 sn The expression kings of the earth refers somewhat hyperbolically to the kings who had been conquered by and were subject to the Davidic king.
11 tn Or “take their stand.” The Hebrew imperfect verbal form describes their action as underway.
12 tn Or “conspire together.” The verbal form is a Niphal from יָסַד (yasad). BDB 413-14 s.v. יָסַד defines the verb as “establish, found,” but HALOT 417 s.v. II יסד proposes a homonym meaning “get together, conspire” (an alternate form of סוּד, sud).
13 tn Heb “and against his anointed one.” The Davidic king is the referent (see vv. 6-7).
14 tn Here the Hebrew expression כִּי־אִם (ki-’im, “instead,” cf. v. 2) introduces a contrast between the prosperity of the godly depicted in v. 3 and the destiny of the wicked described in v. 4.
15 tn Heb “[they are] like the chaff which [the] wind blows about.” The Hebrew imperfect verbal form draws attention to the typical nature of the action described.