1 Kings 8:28-30

8:28 But respond favorably to ¹  your servant’s prayer and his request for help, O Lord my God. Answer ²  the desperate prayer ³  your servant is presenting to you ⁴  today. 8:29 Night and day may you watch over this temple, the place where you promised you would live. ⁵  May you answer your servant’s prayer for this place. ⁶  8:30 Respond to the request of your servant and your people Israel for this place. ⁷  Hear from inside your heavenly dwelling place ⁸  and respond favorably. ⁹ 

Psalms 18:6

18:6 In my distress I called to the Lord;

I cried out to my God. ¹⁰ 

From his heavenly temple ¹¹  he heard my voice;

he listened to my cry for help. ¹² 

Psalms 27:4

27:4 I have asked the Lord for one thing –

this is what I desire!

I want to live ¹³  in the Lord’s house ¹⁴  all the days of my life,

so I can gaze at the splendor ¹⁵  of the Lord

and contemplate in his temple.

Jonah 2:4

2:4 I thought ¹⁶  I had been banished from your sight, ¹⁷ 

that I would never again ¹⁸  see your holy temple! ¹⁹ 

Jonah 2:7

2:7 When my life ²⁰  was ebbing away, ²¹  I called out to ²²  the Lord,

and my prayer came to your holy temple. ²³ 

Habakkuk 2:20

2:20 But the Lord is in his majestic palace. ²⁴ 

The whole earth is speechless in his presence!” ²⁵ 

[8:28]  ¹ tn Heb “turn to.”

[8:28]  ² tn Heb “by listening to.”

[8:28]  ³ tn Heb “the loud cry and the prayer.”

[8:28]  ⁴ tn Heb “praying before you.”

[8:29]  ⁵ tn Heb “so your eyes might be open toward this house night and day, toward the place about which you said, ‘My name will be there.’”

[8:29]  ⁶ tn Heb “by listening to the prayer which your servant is praying concerning this place.”

[8:30]  ⁷ tn Heb “listen to the request of your servant and your people Israel which they are praying concerning this place.”

[8:30]  ⁸ tn Heb “and you, hear inside your dwelling place, inside heaven.” The precise nuance of the preposition אֶל (’el), used here with the verb “hear,” is unclear. One expects the preposition “from,” which appears in the parallel text in 2 Chr 6:21. The nuance “inside; among” is attested for אֶל (see Gen 23:19; 1 Sam 10:22; Jer 4:3), but in each case a verb of motion is employed with the preposition, unlike 1 Kgs 8:30. The translation above (“from inside”) is based on the demands of the immediate context rather than attested usage elsewhere.

[8:30]  ⁹ tn Heb “hear and forgive.”

[18:6]  ¹⁰ tn In this poetic narrative context the four prefixed verbal forms in v. 6 are best understood as preterites indicating past tense, not imperfects.

[18:6]  ¹¹ tn Heb “from his temple.” Verse 10, which pictures God descending from the sky, indicates that the heavenly temple is in view, not the earthly one.

[18:6]  ¹² tc Heb “and my cry for help before him came into his ears.” 2 Sam 22:7 has a shorter reading, “my cry for help, in his ears.” It is likely that Ps 18:6 MT as it now stands represents a conflation of two readings: (1) “my cry for help came before him,” (2) “my cry for help came into his ears.” See F. M. Cross and D. N. Freedman, Studies in Ancient Yahwistic Poetry (SBLDS), 144, n. 13.

[27:4]  ¹³ tn Heb “my living.”

[27:4]  ¹⁴ sn The Lord’s house. This probably refers to the tabernacle (if one accepts Davidic authorship) or the temple (see Judg 19:18; 1 Sam 1:7, 24; 2 Sam 12:20; 1 Kgs 7:12, 40, 45, 51).

[27:4]  ¹⁵ tn Or “beauty.”

[2:4]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “And I said.” The verb אָמַר (’amar, “to say”) is sometimes used to depict inner speech and thoughts of a character (HALOT 66 s.v. אמר 4; BDB 56 s.v. אָמַר 2; e.g., Gen 17:17; Ruth 4:4; 1 Sam 20:26; Esth 6:6). While many English versions render this “I said” (KJV, NKJV, NAB, ASV, NASB, NIV, NLT), several nuance it “I thought” (JPS, NJPS, NEB, REB, NJB, TEV, CEV).

[2:4]  ¹⁷ tn Or “I have been expelled from your attention”; Heb “from in front of your eyes.” See also Ps 31:22; Lam 3:54-56.

[2:4]  ¹⁸ tc Or “Yet I will look again to your holy temple” or “Surely I will look again to your holy temple.” The MT and the vast majority of ancient textual witnesses vocalize consonantal אך (’kh) as the adverb אַךְ (’akh) which functions as an emphatic asseverative “surely” (BDB 36 s.v. אַךְ 1) or an adversative “yet, nevertheless” (BDB 36 s.v. אַךְ 2; so Tg. Jonah 2:4: “However, I shall look again upon your holy temple”). These options understand the line as an expression of hopeful piety. As a positive statement, Jonah expresses hope that he will live to return to worship in Jerusalem. It may be a way of saying, “I will pray for help, even though I have been banished” (see v. 8; cf. Dan 6:10). The sole dissenter is the Greek recension of Theodotion which reads the interrogative πῶς (pws, “how?”) which reflects an alternate vocalization tradition of אֵךְ (’ekh) – a defectively written form of אֵיךְ (’ekh, “how?”; BDB 32 s.v. אֵיךְ 1). This would be translated, “How shall I again look at your holy temple?” (cf. NRSV). Jonah laments that he will not be able to worship at the temple in Jerusalem again – this is a metonymical statement (effect for cause) that he feels certain that he is about to die. It continues the expression of Jonah’s distress and separation from the Lord, begun in v. 2 and continued without relief in vv. 3-7a. The external evidence favors the MT; however, internal evidence seems to favor the alternate vocalization tradition reflected in Theodotion for four reasons. First, the form of the psalm is a declarative praise in which Jonah begins with a summary praise (v. 2), continues by recounting his past plight
(vv. 3-6a) and the Lord’s intervention (vv. 6b-7), and concludes with a lesson (v. 8) and vow to praise (v. 9). So the statement with אֵךְ in v. 4 falls within the plight – not within a declaration of confidence. Second, while the poetic parallelism of v. 4 could be antithetical (“I have been banished from your sight, yet I will again look to your holy temple”),
synonymous parallelism fits the context of the lament better (“I have been banished from your sight; Will I ever again see your holy temple?”). Third, אֵךְ is the more difficult vocalization because it is a defectively written form of אֵיךְ (“how?”) and therefore easily confused with אַךְ (“surely” or “yet, nevertheless”). Fourth, nothing in the first half of the psalm reflects any inkling of confidence on the part of Jonah that he would be delivered from imminent death. In fact, Jonah states in v. 7 that he did not turn to God in prayer until some time later when he was on the very brink of death.

[2:4]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “Will I ever see your holy temple again?” The rhetorical question expresses denial: Jonah despaired of ever seeing the temple again.

[2:7]  ²⁰ tn Heb “my soul.” The term נֶפֶשׁ (nefesh, “soul”) is often used as a metonymy for the life and the animating vitality in the body: “my life” (BDB 659 s.v. נֶפֶשׁ 3.c).

[2:7]  ²¹ tn Heb “fainting away from me.” The verb הִתְעַטֵּף (hit’attef, “to faint away”) is used elsewhere to describe (1) the onset of death when a person’s life begins to slip away (Lam 2:12), (2) the loss of one’s senses due to turmoil (Ps 107:5), and (3) the loss of all hope of surviving calamity (Pss 77:4; 142:4; 143:4; BDB 742 s.v. עַטֵף). All three options are reflected in various English versions: “when my life was ebbing away” (JPS, NJPS), “when my life was slipping away” (CEV), “when I felt my life slipping away” (TEV), “as my senses failed me” (NEB), and “when I had lost all hope” (NLT).

[2:7]  ²² tn Heb “remembered.” The verb זָכַר (zakhar) usually means “to remember, to call to mind” but it can also mean “to call out” (e.g., Nah 2:6) as in the related Akkadian verb zikaru, “to name, to mention.” The idiom “to remember the Lord” here encompasses calling to mind his character and past actions and appealing to him for help (Deut 8:18-19; Ps 42:6-8; Isa 64:4-5; Zech 10:9). Tg. Jonah 2:7 glosses the verb as “I remembered the worship of the Lord,” which somewhat misses the point.

[2:7]  ²³ sn For similar ideas see 2 Chr 30:27; Pss 77:3; 142:3; 143:4-5.

[2:20]  ²⁴ tn Or “holy temple.” The Lord’s heavenly palace, rather than the earthly temple, is probably in view here (see Ps 11:4; Mic 1:2-3). The Hebrew word ֹקדֶשׁ (qodesh, “holy”) here refers to the sovereign transcendence associated with his palace.

[2:20]  ²⁵ tn Or “Be quiet before him, all the earth!”