A prayer of David.
17:1 Lord, consider my just cause! 2
Pay attention to my cry for help!
Listen to the prayer
I sincerely offer! 3
43:4 Then I will go 4 to the altar of God,
to the God who gives me ecstatic joy, 5
so that I express my thanks to you, 6 O God, my God, with a harp.
71:6 I have leaned on you since birth; 7
you pulled me 8 from my mother’s womb.
I praise you continually. 9
77:2 In my time of trouble I sought 10 the Lord.
I kept my hand raised in prayer throughout the night. 11
I 12 refused to be comforted.
1 sn Psalm 17. The psalmist asks God to intervene on his behalf because his life is threatened by dangerous enemies. He appeals to divine justice, for he is certain of his own innocence. Because he is innocent, he expects to encounter God and receive an assuring word.
2 tn Heb “hear,
3 tn Heb “Listen to my prayer, [made] without lips of deceit.”
4 tn The cohortative expresses the psalmist’s resolve. Prefixed with the vav (ו) conjunctive it also expresses the result or outcome of the preceding verbs “lead” and “escort.”
5 tn Heb “to God, the joy of my happiness.” The phrase “joy of my happiness” employs an appositional genitive. Synonyms are joined in a construct relationship to emphasize the degree of the psalmist’s joy. For a detailed discussion of the grammatical point with numerous examples, see Y. Avishur, “Pairs of Synonymous Words in the Construct State (and in Appositional Hendiadys) in Biblical Hebrew,” Semitics 2 (1971): 17-81.
6 tn The cohortative with vav (ו) conjunctive probably indicates purpose (“so that”) or intention.
7 tn Heb “from the womb.”
8 tc The form in the MT is derived from גָזָה (gazah, “to cut off”), perhaps picturing God as the one who severed the psalmist’s umbilical cord. Many interpreters and translators prefer to emend the text to גֹחִי (gokhiy), from גוּח (gukh) or גִיח, (gikh, “pull out”; see Ps 22:9; cf. the present translation) or to עוּזִּי (’uzziy, “my strength”; cf. NEB “my protector since I left my mother’s womb”).
9 tn Heb “in you [is] my praise continually.”
10 tn Here the psalmist refers back to the very recent past, when he began to pray for divine help.
11 tn Heb “my hand [at] night was extended and was not growing numb.” The verb נָגַר (nagar), which can mean “flow” in certain contexts, here has the nuance “be extended.” The imperfect form (תָפוּג, tafug, “to be numb”) is used here to describe continuous action in the past.
12 tn Or “my soul.” The Hebrew term נֶפֶשׁ (nefesh) with a pronominal suffix is often equivalent to a pronoun, especially in poetry (see BDB 660 s.v. נֶפֶשׁ 4.a).