7:12 If a person 1 does not repent, God sharpens his sword 2
and prepares to shoot his bow. 3
7:13 He prepares to use deadly weapons against him; 4
he gets ready to shoot flaming arrows. 5
55:15 May death destroy them! 6
May they go down alive into Sheol! 7
For evil is in their dwelling place and in their midst.
27:11 When its branches get brittle, 8 they break;
women come and use them for kindling. 9
For these people lack understanding, 10
therefore the one who made them has no compassion on them;
the one who formed them has no mercy on them.
1 tn Heb “If he”; the referent (a person who is a sinner) has been specified in the translation for clarity. The subject of the first verb is understood as the sinner who fails to repent of his ways and becomes the target of God’s judgment (vv. 9, 14-16).
2 tn Heb “if he does not return, his sword he sharpens.” The referent (God) of the pronominal subject of the second verb (“sharpens”) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
3 tn Heb “his bow he treads and prepares it.” “Treading the bow” involved stepping on one end of it in order to string it and thus prepare it for battle.
4 tn Heb “and for him he prepares the weapons of death.”
5 tn Heb “his arrows into flaming [things] he makes.”
6 tc The meaning of the MT is unclear. The Kethib (consonantal text) reads יַשִּׁימָוֶת עָלֵימוֹ (yashimavet ’alemo, “May devastation [be] upon them!”). The proposed noun יַשִּׁימָוֶת occurs only here and perhaps in the place name Beth-Jeshimoth in Num 33:49. The Qere (marginal text) has יַשִּׁי מָוֶת עָלֵימוֹ (yashi mavet ’alemo). The verbal form יַשִּׁי is apparently an alternate form of יַשִּׁיא (yashi’), a Hiphil imperfect from נָשַׁא (nasha’, “deceive”). In this case one might read “death will come deceptively upon them.” This reading has the advantage of reading מָוֶת (mavet, “death”) which forms a natural parallel with “Sheol” in the next line. The present translation is based on the following reconstruction of the text: יְשִׁמֵּם מָוֶת (yeshimmem mavet). The verb assumed in the reconstruction is a Hiphil jussive third masculine singular from שָׁמַם (shamam, “be desolate”) with a third masculine plural pronominal suffix attached. This reconstruction assumes that (1) haplography has occurred in the traditional text (the original sequence of three mems [מ] was lost with only one mem remaining), resulting in the fusion of originally distinct forms in the Kethib, and (2) that עָלֵימוֹ (’alemo, “upon them”) is a later scribal addition attempting to make sense of a garbled and corrupt text. The preposition עַל (’al) does occur with the verb שָׁמַם (shamam), but in such cases the expression means “be appalled at/because of” (see Jer 49:20; 50:45). If one were to retain the prepositional phrase here, one would have to read the text as follows: יַשִּׁים מָוֶת עָלֵימוֹ (yashim mavet ’alemo, “Death will be appalled at them”). The idea seems odd, to say the least. Death is not collocated with this verb elsewhere.
7 sn Go down alive. This curse imagines a swift and sudden death for the psalmist’s enemies.
8 tn Heb “are dry” (so NASB, NIV, NRSV).
9 tn Heb “women come [and] light it.” The city is likened to a dead tree with dried up branches that is only good for firewood.
10 tn Heb “for not a people of understanding [is] he.”
11 tn Heb “he saw.”
12 tn Grk “boasts against, exults over,” in victory.