98:3 He remains loyal and faithful to the family of Israel. 1
All the ends of the earth see our God deliver us. 2
139:16 Your eyes saw me when I was inside the womb. 3
All the days ordained for me
were recorded in your scroll
before one of them came into existence. 4
1 tn Heb “he remembers his loyal love and his faithfulness to the house of Israel.”
2 tn Heb “the deliverance of our God,” with “God” being a subjective genitive (= God delivers).
3 tn Heb “Your eyes saw my shapeless form.” The Hebrew noun גֹּלֶם (golem) occurs only here in the OT. In later Hebrew the word refers to “a lump, a shapeless or lifeless substance,” and to “unfinished matter, a vessel wanting finishing” (Jastrow 222 s.v. גּוֹלֶם). The translation employs the dynamic rendering “when I was inside the womb” to clarify that the speaker was still in his mother’s womb at the time he was “seen” by God.
4 tn Heb “and on your scroll all of them were written, [the] days [which] were formed, and [there was] not one among them.” This “scroll” may be the “scroll of life” mentioned in Ps 69:28 (see the note on the word “living” there).