5:7 But as for me, 1 because of your great faithfulness I will enter your house; 2
I will bow down toward your holy temple as I worship you. 3
17:15 As for me, because I am innocent I will see your face; 4
when I awake you will reveal yourself to me. 5
35:13 When they were sick, I wore sackcloth, 6
and refrained from eating food. 7
(If I am lying, may my prayers go unanswered!) 8
24:1 Joshua assembled all the Israelite tribes at Shechem. He summoned Israel’s elders, rulers, judges, and leaders, and they appeared before God.
12:23 the king of Dor – near Naphath Dor – (one),
the king of Goyim – near Gilgal – (one),
12:1 Now these are the kings of the land whom the Israelites defeated and drove from their land 17 on the east side of the Jordan, 18 from the Arnon Valley to Mount Hermon, including all the eastern Arabah:
21:4 Is my 21 complaint against a man? 22
If so, 23 why should I not be impatient? 24
1 sn But as for me. By placing the first person pronoun at the beginning of the verse, the psalmist highlights the contrast between the evildoers’ actions and destiny, outlined in the preceding verses, with his own.
2 sn I will enter your house. The psalmist is confident that God will accept him into his presence, in contrast to the evildoers (see v. 5).
3 tn Heb “in fear [of] you.” The Hebrew noun יִרְאָה (yir’ah, “fear”), when used of fearing God, is sometimes used metonymically for what it ideally produces: “worship, reverence, piety.”
4 tn Heb “I, in innocence, I will see your face.” To “see” God’s “face” means to have access to his presence and to experience his favor (see Ps 11:7; see also Job 33:26 [where רָאָה (ra’ah), not חָזַה (khazah), is used]). Here, however, the psalmist may be anticipating a mystical experience. See the following note on the word “me.”
5 tn Heb “I will be satisfied, when I awake, [with] your form.” The noun תְּמוּנָה (tÿmunah) normally carries the nuance “likeness” or “form.” In Job 4:16 it refers to a ghostlike spiritual entity (see v. 15) that revealed itself to Eliphaz during the night. The psalmist may anticipate a mystical encounter with God in which he expects to see a manifestation of God’s presence (i.e., a theophany), perhaps in conjunction with an oracle of deliverance. During the quiet darkness of the night, God examines the psalmist’s inner motives and finds them to be pure (see v. 3). The psalmist is confident that when he awakens, perhaps sometime during the night or in the morning, he will be visited by God and assured of vindication.
6 tn Heb “as for me, when they were sick, my clothing was sackcloth.” Sackcloth was worn by mourners. When the psalmist’s enemies were sick, he was sorry for their misfortune and mourned for them.
7 sn Fasting was also a practice of mourners. By refraining from normal activities, such as eating food, the mourner demonstrated the sincerity of his sorrow.
8 tn Heb “and my prayer upon my chest will return.” One could translate, “but my prayer was returning upon my chest,” but the use of the imperfect verbal form sets this line apart from the preceding and following lines (vv. 13a, 14), which use the perfect to describe the psalmist’s past actions.
9 tn Heb “if it is bad in your eyes.”
10 tn Or “to serve.”
11 tn Or “will serve.”
12 tn Heb “your fathers.”
13 tn Or “served.”
14 tn Heb “the river,” referring to the Euphrates. This has been specified in the translation for clarity; see v. 3.
15 tn Heb “house.”
16 tn Or “will serve.”
17 tn Heb “and took possession of their land.”
18 tn Heb “beyond the Jordan, toward the rising of the sun.”
19 tn Heb “to their tents.”
20 tn Heb “blessed.”
21 tn The addition of the independent pronoun at the beginning of the sentence (“Is it I / against a man / my complaint”) strengthens the pronominal suffix on “complaint” (see GKC 438 §135.f).
22 sn The point seems to be that if his complaint were merely against men he might expect sympathy from other men; but no one dares offer him sympathy when his complaint is against God. So he will give free expression to his spirit (H. H. Rowley, Job [NCBC], 147).
23 tn On disjunctive interrogatives, see GKC 475 §150.g.
24 tn Heb “why should my spirit/breath not be short” (see Num 21:4; Judg 16:16).