36:5 O Lord, your loyal love reaches to the sky; 1
your faithfulness to the clouds. 2
85:10 Loyal love and faithfulness meet; 3
deliverance and peace greet each other with a kiss. 4
89:2 For I say, “Loyal love is permanently established; 5
in the skies you set up your faithfulness.” 6
89:5 O Lord, the heavens 7 praise your amazing deeds,
as well as your faithfulness in the angelic assembly. 8
103:11 For as the skies are high above the earth,
so his loyal love towers 9 over his faithful followers. 10
55:9 for just as the sky 11 is higher than the earth,
so my deeds 12 are superior to 13 your deeds
and my plans 14 superior to your plans.
7:18 There is no other God like you! 15
You 16 forgive sin
and pardon 17 the rebellion
of those who remain among your people. 18
You do not remain angry forever, 19
but delight in showing loyal love.
7:19 You will once again 20 have mercy on us;
you will conquer 21 our evil deeds;
you will hurl our 22 sins into the depths of the sea. 23
7:20 You will be loyal to Jacob
and extend your loyal love to Abraham, 24
which you promised on oath to our ancestors 25
in ancient times. 26
2:4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of his great love with which he loved us, 2:5 even though we were dead in transgressions, made us alive together with Christ – by grace you are saved! 27 – 2:6 and he raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, 2:7 to demonstrate in the coming ages 28 the surpassing wealth of his grace in kindness toward 29 us in Christ Jesus.
1 tn Heb “[is] in the heavens.”
2 sn The Lord’s loyal love/faithfulness is almost limitless. He is loyal and faithful to his creation and blesses mankind and the animal kingdom with physical life and sustenance (vv. 6-9).
3 tn The psalmist probably uses the perfect verbal forms in v. 10 in a dramatic or rhetorical manner, describing what he anticipates as if it were already occurring or had already occurred.
4 sn Deliverance and peace greet each other with a kiss. The psalmist personifies these abstract qualities to emphasize that God’s loyal love and faithfulness will yield deliverance and peace for his people.
5 tn Heb “built.”
6 sn You set up your faithfulness. This may allude to the Lord’s heavenly throne, which symbolizes his just rule and from which the Lord decrees his unconditional promises (see vv. 8, 14).
7 tn As the following context makes clear, the personified “heavens” here stand by metonymy for the angelic beings that surround God’s heavenly throne.
8 tn Heb “in the assembly of the holy ones.” The phrase “holy ones” sometimes refers to God’s people (Ps 34:9) or to their priestly leaders (2 Chr 35:3), but here it refers to God’s heavenly assembly and the angels that surround his throne (see vv. 6-7).
9 tn For this sense of the verb גָבַר (gavar), see L. C. Allen, Psalms 101-150 (WBC), 17, 19.
10 tn Heb “those who fear him.”
11 tn Or “the heavens.” The Hebrew term שָׁמַיִם (shamayim) may be translated “heavens” or “sky” depending on the context.
12 tn Heb “ways” (so many English versions).
13 tn Heb “are higher than.”
14 tn Or “thoughts” (so many English versions).
15 tn Heb “Who is a God like you?” The rhetorical question expects the answer, “No one!”
16 tn Heb “one who.” The prayer moves from direct address (second person) in v. 18a to a descriptive (third person) style in vv. 18b-19a and then back to direct address (second person) in vv. 19b-20. Due to considerations of English style and the unfamiliarity of the modern reader with alternation of persons in Hebrew poetry, the entire section has been rendered as direct address (second person) in the translation.
17 tn Heb “pass over.”
18 tn Heb “of the remnant of his inheritance.”
19 tn Heb “he does not keep hold of his anger forever.”
20 tn The verb יָשׁוּב (yashuv, “he will return”) is here used adverbially in relation to the following verb, indicating that the
21 tn Some prefer to read יִכְבֹּס (yikhbos, “he will cleanse”; see HALOT 459 s.v. כבס pi). If the MT is taken as it stands, sin is personified as an enemy that the
22 tn Heb “their sins,” but the final mem (ם) may be enclitic rather than a pronominal suffix. In this case the suffix from the preceding line (“our”) may be understood as doing double duty.
23 sn In this metaphor the
24 tn More literally, “You will extend loyalty to Jacob, and loyal love to Abraham.
25 tn Heb “our fathers.” The Hebrew term refers here to more distant ancestors, not immediate parents.
26 tn Heb “which you swore [or, “pledged”] to our fathers from days of old.”
27 tn Or “by grace you have been saved.” The perfect tense in Greek connotes both completed action (“you have been saved”) and continuing results (“you are saved”).
28 tn Or possibly “to the Aeons who are about to come.”
29 tn Or “upon.”