42:10 My enemies’ taunts cut into me to the bone, 1
as they say to me all day long, “Where is your God?” 2
55:12 Indeed, 3 it is not an enemy who insults me,
or else I could bear it;
it is not one who hates me who arrogantly taunts me, 4
or else I could hide from him.
57:3 May he send help from heaven and deliver me 5
from my enemies who hurl insults! 6 (Selah)
May God send his loyal love and faithfulness!
69:9 Certainly 7 zeal for 8 your house 9 consumes me;
I endure the insults of those who insult you. 10
74:10 How long, O God, will the adversary hurl insults?
Will the enemy blaspheme your name forever?
74:18 Remember how 11 the enemy hurls insults, O Lord, 12
and how a foolish nation blasphemes your name!
79:12 Pay back our neighbors in full! 13
May they be insulted the same way they insulted you, O Lord! 14
1 tc Heb “with a shattering in my bones my enemies taunt me.” A few medieval Hebrew
2 sn “Where is your God?” The enemies ask this same question in v. 3.
3 tn Or “for.”
4 tn Heb “[who] magnifies against me.” See Pss 35:26; 38:16.
5 tn Heb “may he send from heaven and deliver me.” The prefixed verbal forms are understood as jussives expressing the psalmist’s prayer. The second verb, which has a vav (ו) conjunctive prefixed to it, probably indicates purpose. Another option is to take the forms as imperfects expressing confidence, “he will send from heaven and deliver me” (cf. NRSV).
6 tn Heb “he hurls insults, one who crushes me.” The translation assumes that this line identifies those from whom the psalmist seeks deliverance. (The singular is representative; the psalmist is surrounded by enemies, see v. 4.) Another option is to understand God as the subject of the verb חָרַף (kharaf), which could then be taken as a homonym of the more common root חָרַף (“insult”) meaning “confuse.” In this case “one who crushes me” is the object of the verb. One might translate, “he [God] confuses my enemies.”
7 tn Or “for.” This verse explains that the psalmist’s suffering is due to his allegiance to God.
8 tn Or “devotion to.”
9 sn God’s house, the temple, here represents by metonymy God himself.
10 tn Heb “the insults of those who insult you fall upon me.”
9 tn Heb “remember this.”
10 tn Or “[how] the enemy insults the
11 tn Heb “Return to our neighbors sevenfold into their lap.” The number seven is used rhetorically to express the thorough nature of the action. For other rhetorical/figurative uses of the Hebrew phrase שִׁבְעָתַיִם (shiv’atayim, “seven times”) see Gen 4:15, 24; Ps 12:6; Prov 6:31; Isa 30:26.
12 tn Heb “their reproach with which they reproached you, O Lord.”