Psalms 6:10

6:10 May all my enemies be humiliated ¹  and absolutely terrified! ² 

May they turn back and be suddenly humiliated!

Psalms 9:19-20

9:19 Rise up, Lord! ³ 

Don’t let men be defiant! ⁴ 

May the nations be judged in your presence!

9:20 Terrify them, Lord! ⁵ 

Let the nations know they are mere mortals! ⁶  (Selah)

Psalms 34:5

34:5 Those who look to him for help are happy;

their faces are not ashamed. ⁷ 

¹ tn The four prefixed verbal forms in this verse are understood as jussives. The psalmist concludes his prayer with an imprecation, calling judgment down on his enemies.

² tn Heb “and may they be very terrified.” The psalmist uses the same expression in v. 3 to describe the terror he was experiencing. Now he asks the Lord to turn the tables and cause his enemies to know what absolute terror feels like.

³ sn Rise up, Lord! …May the nations be judged. The psalm concludes with a petition that the Lord would continue to exercise his justice as he has done in the recent crisis.

⁴ tn Or “prevail.”

⁵ tn Heb “place, Lord, terror with regard to them.” The Hebrew term מוֹרָה (morah, “terror”) is an alternative form of מוֹרָא (mora’; a reading that appears in some mss and finds support in several ancient textual witnesses).

⁶ tn Heb “let the nations know they [are] man[kind]”; i.e., mere human beings (as opposed to God).

⁷ tc Heb “they look to him and are radiant and their faces are not ashamed.” The third person plural subject (“they”) is unidentified; there is no antecedent in the Hebrew text. For this reason some prefer to take the perfect verbal forms in the first line as imperatives, “look to him and be radiant” (cf. NEB, NRSV). Some medieval Hebrew mss and other ancient witnesses (Aquila, the Syriac, and Jerome) support an imperatival reading for the first verb. In the second line some (with support from the LXX and Syriac) change “their faces” to “your faces,” which allows one to retain more easily the jussive force of the verb (suggested by the preceding אַל [’al]): “do not let your faces be ashamed.” It is probable that the verbal construction in the second line is rhetorical, expressing the conviction that the action in view cannot or should not happen. See GKC 322 §109.e.