Psalms 94:17-18

94:17 If the Lord had not helped me,

I would have laid down in the silence of death. ¹ 

94:18 If I say, “My foot is slipping,”

your loyal love, O Lord, supports me.

¹ tn Heb “If the Lord [were] not my help, quickly my life would have lain down in silence.” The psalmist, perhaps speaking as the nation’s representative, recalls God’s past intervention. For other examples of conditional sentences with the term לוּלֵי (luley, “if not”) in the protasis and a perfect verbal form in the apodosis, see Pss 119:92 and 124:2-5.