By David.
28:1 To you, O Lord, I cry out!
My protector, 2 do not ignore me! 3
If you do not respond to me, 4
I will join 5 those who are descending into the grave. 6
30:9 “What 7 profit is there in taking my life, 8
in my descending into the Pit? 9
Can the dust of the grave 10 praise you?
Can it declare your loyalty? 11
143:7 Answer me quickly, Lord!
My strength is fading. 12
Do not reject me, 13
or I will join 14 those descending into the grave. 15
17:1 My spirit is broken, 16
my days have faded out, 17
the grave 18 awaits me.
38:17 “Look, the grief I experienced was for my benefit. 19
You delivered me 20 from the pit of oblivion. 21
For you removed all my sins from your sight. 22
38:18 Indeed 23 Sheol does not give you thanks;
death does not 24 praise you.
Those who descend into the pit do not anticipate your faithfulness.
2:6 I went down 28 to the very bottoms 29 of the mountains; 30
the gates 31 of the netherworld 32 barred me in 33 forever; 34
but you brought me 35 up from the Pit, 36 O Lord, my God.
“I 37 called out to the Lord from my distress,
and he answered me; 38
from the belly of Sheol 39 I cried out for help,
and you heard my prayer. 40
1:9 For this reason we also, from the day we heard about you, 41 have not ceased praying for you and asking God 42 to fill 43 you with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding,
1 sn Psalm 28. The author looks to the Lord for vindication, asks that the wicked be repaid in full for their evil deeds, and affirms his confidence that the Lord will protect his own.
2 tn Heb “my rocky summit.” The Lord is compared to a rocky summit where one can find protection from enemies. See Ps 18:2.
3 tn Heb “do not be deaf from me.”
4 tn Heb “lest [if] you are silent from me.”
5 tn Heb “I will be equal with.”
6 tn Heb “the pit.” The noun בּוֹר (bor, “pit, cistern”) is sometimes used of the grave and/or the realm of the dead.
7 sn The following two verses (vv. 9-10) contain the prayer (or an excerpt of the prayer) that the psalmist offered to the Lord during his crisis.
8 tn Heb “What profit [is there] in my blood?” “Blood” here represents his life.
9 tn The Hebrew term שָׁחַת (shakhat, “pit”) is often used as a title for Sheol (see Pss 16:10; 49:9; 55:24; 103:4).
10 tn Heb “dust.” The words “of the grave” are supplied in the translation for clarification.
11 tn The rhetorical questions anticipate the answer, “Of course not!”
12 tn Heb “my spirit is failing.”
13 tn Heb “do not hide your face from me.” The idiom “hide the face” (1) can mean “ignore” (see Pss 10:11; 13:1; 51:9) or (2) can carry the stronger idea of “reject” (see Pss 30:7; 88:14).
14 tn Heb “I will be equal with.”
15 tn Heb “the pit.” The Hebrew noun בּוֹר (bor, “pit; cistern”) is sometimes used of the grave and/or the realm of the dead. See Ps 28:1.
16 tn The verb חָבַל (khaval, “to act badly”) in the Piel means “to ruin.” The Pual translation with “my spirit” as the subject means “broken” in the sense of finished (not in the sense of humbled as in Ps 51).
17 tn The verb זָעַךְ (za’aq, equivalent of Aramaic דָעַק [da’aq]) means “to be extinguished.” It only occurs here in the Hebrew.
18 tn The plural “graves” could be simply an intensification, a plural of extension (see GKC 397 §124.c), or a reference to the graveyard. Coverdale had: “I am harde at deathes dore.” The Hebrew expression simply reads “graves for me.” It probably means that graves await him.
19 tn Heb “Look, for peace bitterness was to me bitter”; NAB “thus is my bitterness transformed into peace.”
20 tc The Hebrew text reads, “you loved my soul,” but this does not fit syntactically with the following prepositional phrase. חָשַׁקְתָּ (khashaqta, “you loved”), may reflect an aural error; most emend the form to חָשַׂכְת, (khasakht, “you held back”).
21 tn בְּלִי (bÿli) most often appears as a negation, meaning “without,” suggesting the meaning “nothingness, oblivion,” here. Some translate “decay” or “destruction.”
22 tn Heb “for you threw behind your back all my sins.”
23 tn Or “For” (KJV, NAB, NASB, NIV, NRSV, NLT).
24 tn The negative particle is understood by ellipsis in this line. See GKC 483 §152.z.
25 tn Heb “to the people of antiquity.”
26 tn Heb “like.” The translation assumes an emendation of the preposition כְּ (kÿ, “like”), to בְּ (bÿ, “in, among”).
27 tn Heb “and I will place beauty.” This reading makes little sense; many, following the lead of the LXX, emend the text to read “nor will you stand” with the negative particle before the preceding verb understood by ellipsis; see L. C. Allen, Ezekiel (WBC), 2:73. D. I. Block (Ezekiel [NICOT], 2:47) offers another alternative, taking the apparent first person verb form as an archaic second feminine form and translating “nor radiate splendor.”
28 tn Jonah began going “down” (יָרַד, yarad) in chap. 1 (vv. 3, 5; see also 1:15; 2:2-3).
29 tc The MT לְקִצְבֵי הָרִים (lÿqitsve harim, “to the extremities [i.e., very bottoms] of the mountains”) is a bit unusual, appearing only here in the Hebrew Bible. Therefore, the BHS editors suggest a conjectural emendation of the MT’s לְקִצְבֵי (“to the extremities”) to לְקַצְוֵי (lÿqatswey, “to the ends [of the mountains])” based on orthographic confusion between vav (ו) and bet (ב). However, the phrase קצבי הרים does appear in the OT Apocrypha in Sir 16:19; therefore, it is not without precedent. Since Jonah emphasizes that he descended, as it were, to the very gates of the netherworld in the second half of this verse, it would be appropriate for Jonah to say that he went down “to the extremities [i.e., very bottoms] of the mountains” (לְקִצְבֵי הָרִים). Therefore, the MT may be retained with confidence.
30 tn Some English versions (e.g., NEB, NRSV) have connected the “bottoms of the mountains” with the preceding – “weeds were wrapped around my head at the bottoms of the mountains” – and connect “I went down” with “the earth.” Such a connection between “I went down” and “the earth” is difficult to accept. It would be more normal in Hebrew to express “I went down to the earth” with a directive ending (אַרְצָה, ’artsah) or with a Hebrew preposition before “earth” or without the definite article. The Masoretic accents, in addition, connect “ends of the mountains” with the verb “I went down” and call for a break between the verb and “earth.”
31 tn Heb “As for the earth, its bars…” This phrase is a rhetorical nominative construction (also known as casus pendens) in which the noun הָאָרֶץ (ha’arets, “the earth”) stands grammatically isolated and in an emphatic position prior to the third feminine singular suffix that picks up on it in בְּרִחֶיהָ (bÿrikheha, “its bars”; see IBHS 128-30 §8.3). This construction is used to emphasize the subject, in this case, the “bars of the netherworld.” The word translated “bars” appears elsewhere to speak of bars used in constructing the sides of the tabernacle and often of crossbars (made of wood or metal) associated with the gates of fortified cities (cf. Exod 36:31-34; Judg 16:3; 1 Kgs 4:13; Neh 3:3; Pss 107:16; 147:13; Isa 45:1-2).
32 tn Heb “the earth.” The noun אֶרֶץ (’erets) usually refers to the “earth” but here refers to the “netherworld” (e.g., Job 10:21, 22; Ps 139:15; Isa 26:19; 44:23; BDB 76 s.v. אֶרֶץ 2.g). This is parallel to the related Akkadian term irsitu used in the phrase “the land of no return,” that is, the netherworld. This refers to the place of the dead (along with “belly of Sheol,” v. 2, and “the grave,” v. 6), which is sometimes described as having “gates” (Job 38:17; Ps 107:18).
33 tn Heb “behind me.” The preposition בַּעַד (ba’ad) with a pronominal suffix and with the meaning “behind” is found also in Judg 3:23. Jonah pictures himself as closed in and so unable to escape death. Having described how far he had come (totally under water and “to the ends of mountains”), Jonah describes the way back as permanently closed against him. Just as it was impossible for a lone individual to walk through the barred gates of a walled city, so Jonah expected it was impossible for him to escape death.
34 tn Heb “As for the earth, its bars [were] against me forever.” This line is a verbless clause. The verb in the translation has been supplied for the sake of clarity and smoothness. The rhetorical nominative construction (see the note on the word “gates” earlier in this verse) has also been smoothed out in the translation.
35 tn Heb “my life.” The term חַיַּי (khayyay, “my life”) functions metonymically as a first common singular pronoun (“me”).
36 sn Jonah pictures himself as being at the very gates of the netherworld (v. 6b) and now within the Pit itself (v. 6c). He is speaking rhetorically, for he had not actually died. His point is that he was as good as dead if God did not intervene immediately. See Pss 7:15; 30:3; 103:4; Ezek 19:3-4, 8.
37 sn The eight verses of Jonah’s prayer in Hebrew contain twenty-seven first-person pronominal references to himself. There are fifteen second- or third-person references to the
38 tn Tg. Jonah 2:2 renders this interpretively: “and he heard my prayer.”
39 sn Sheol was a name for the place of residence of the dead, the underworld (see Job 7:9-10; Isa 38:17-18). Jonah pictures himself in the belly of Sheol, its very center – in other words he is as good as dead.
40 tn Heb “voice” (so KJV, NAB, NASB, NRSV); NIV “my cry.” The term קוֹל (qol, “voice”) functions as a metonymy for the content of what is uttered: cry for help in prayer.
41 tn Or “heard about it”; Grk “heard.” There is no direct object stated in the Greek (direct objects were frequently omitted in Greek when clear from the context). A direct object is expected by an English reader, however, so most translations supply one. Here, however, it is not entirely clear what the author “heard”: a number of translations supply “it” (so KJV, NASB, NRSV; NAB “this”), but this could refer back either to (1) “your love in the Spirit” at the end of v. 8, or (2) “your faith in Christ Jesus and the love that you have for all the saints” (v. 4). In light of this uncertainty, other translations supply “about you” (TEV, NIV, CEV, NLT). This is preferred by the present translation since, while it does not resolve the ambiguity entirely, it does make it less easy for the English reader to limit the reference only to “your love in the Spirit” at the end of v. 8.
42 tn The term “God” does not appear in the Greek text, but the following reference to “the knowledge of his will” makes it clear that “God” is in view as the object of the “praying and asking,” and should therefore be included in the English translation for clarity.
43 tn The ἵνα (Jina) clause has been translated as substantival, indicating the content of the prayer and asking. The idea of purpose may also be present in this clause.