Ecclesiastes 5:12

5:12 The sleep of the laborer is pleasant – whether he eats little or much –

but the wealth of the rich will not allow him to sleep.

Esther 6:1

The Turning Point: The King Honors Mordecai

6:1 Throughout that night the king was unable to sleep, ¹  so he asked for the book containing the historical records ²  to be brought. As the records ³  were being read in the king’s presence,

Job 7:13-14

7:13 If ⁴  I say, ⁵  “My bed will comfort me, ⁶ 

my couch will ease ⁷  my complaint,”

7:14 then you scare me ⁸  with dreams

and terrify ⁹  me with ¹⁰  visions,

Psalms 6:6-7

6:6 I am exhausted as I groan;

all night long I drench my bed in tears; ¹¹ 

my tears saturate the cushion beneath me. ¹² 

6:7 My eyes ¹³  grow dim ¹⁴  from suffering;

they grow weak ¹⁵  because of all my enemies. ¹⁶ 

Psalms 32:4

32:4 For day and night you tormented me; ¹⁷ 

you tried to destroy me ¹⁸  in the intense heat ¹⁹  of summer. ²⁰  (Selah)

Psalms 77:2-4

77:2 In my time of trouble I sought ²¹  the Lord.

I kept my hand raised in prayer throughout the night. ²² 

I ²³  refused to be comforted.

77:3 I said, “I will remember God while I groan;

I will think about him while my strength leaves me.” ²⁴  (Selah)

77:4 You held my eyelids open; ²⁵ 

I was troubled and could not speak. ²⁶ 

Daniel 6:18

6:18 Then the king departed to his palace. But he spent the night without eating, and no diversions ²⁷  were brought to him. He was unable to sleep. ²⁸ 

Acts 14:22

14:22 They strengthened ²⁹  the souls of the disciples and encouraged them to continue ³⁰  in the faith, saying, “We must enter the kingdom ³¹  of God through many persecutions.” ³² 

[6:1]  ¹ tn Heb “and the sleep of the king fled.” In place of the rather innocuous comment of the Hebrew text, the LXX reads here, “And the Lord removed the sleep from the king.” The Greek text thus understands the statement in a more overtly theological way than does the Hebrew text, although even in the Hebrew text there may be a hint of God’s providence at work in this matter. After all, this event is crucial to the later reversal of Haman’s plot to destroy the Jewish people, and a sympathetic reader is likely to look beyond the apparent coincidence.

[6:1]  ² tn Heb “the book of the remembrances of the accounts of the days”; NAB “the chronicle of notable events.”

[6:1]  ³ tn Heb “they”; the referent (the records) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[7:13]  ⁴ tn The particle כִּי (ki) could also be translated “when,” but “if” might work better to introduce the conditional clause and to parallel the earlier reasoning of Job in v. 4 (using אִם, ’im). See GKC 336-37 §112.hh.

[7:13]  ⁵ tn The verb literally means “say,” but here the connotation must be “think” or “say to oneself” – “when I think my bed….”

[7:13]  ⁶ sn Sleep is the recourse of the troubled and unhappy. Here “bed” is metonymical for sleep. Job expects sleep to give him the comfort that his friends have not.

[7:13]  ⁷ tn The verb means “to lift up; to take away” (נָשָׂא, nasa’). When followed by the preposition בּ (bet) with the complement of the verb, the idea is “to bear a part; to take a share,” or “to share in the burden” (cf. Num 11:7). The idea then would be that the sleep would ease the complaint. It would not end the illness, but the complaining for a while.

[7:14]  ⁸ tn The Piel of חָתַת (khatat) occurs only here and in Jer 51:56 (where it is doubtful). The meaning is clearly “startle, scare.” The perfect verb with the ו (vav) is fitting in the apodosis of the conditional sentence.

[7:14]  ⁹ tn The Piel of בָּעַת (ba’at, “terrify”) is one of the characteristic words in the book of Job; it occurs in 3:5; 9:34; 13:11, 21; 15:24; 18:11; and 33:7.

[7:14]  ¹⁰ tn The prepositions בּ (bet) and מִן (min) interchange here; they express the instrument of causality. See N. Sarna, “The Interchange of the Prepositions bet and min in Biblical Hebrew,” JBL 78 (1959): 310-16. Emphasis on the instruments of terror in this verse is highlighted by the use of chiasm in which the prepositional phrases comprise the central elements (ab//b’a’). Verse 18 contains another example.

[6:6]  ¹¹ tn Heb “I cause to swim through all the night my bed.”

[6:6]  ¹² tn Heb “with my tears my bed I flood/melt.”

[6:7]  ¹³ tn The Hebrew text has the singular “eye” here.

[6:7]  ¹⁴ tn Or perhaps, “are swollen.”

[6:7]  ¹⁵ tn Or perhaps, “grow old.”

[6:7]  ¹⁶ sn In his weakened condition the psalmist is vulnerable to the taunts and threats of his enemies.

[32:4]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “your hand was heavy upon me.”

[32:4]  ¹⁸ tc Heb “my [?] was turned.” The meaning of the Hebrew term לְשַׁד (lÿshad) is uncertain. A noun לָשָׁד (lashad, “cake”) is attested in Num 11:8, but it would make no sense to understand that word in this context. It is better to emend the form to לְשֻׁדִּי (lÿshuddiy, “to my destruction”) and understand “your hand” as the subject of the verb “was turned.” In this case the text reads, “[your hand] was turned to my destruction.” In Lam 3:3 the author laments that God’s “hand” was “turned” (הָפַךְ, hafakh) against him in a hostile sense.

[32:4]  ¹⁹ tn The translation assumes that the plural form indicates degree. If one understands the form as a true plural, then one might translate, “in the times of drought.”

[32:4]  ²⁰ sn Summer. Perhaps the psalmist suffered during the hot season and perceived the very weather as being an instrument of divine judgment. Another option is that he compares his time of suffering to the uncomfortable and oppressive heat of summer.

[77:2]  ²¹ tn Here the psalmist refers back to the very recent past, when he began to pray for divine help.

[77:2]  ²² tn Heb “my hand [at] night was extended and was not growing numb.” The verb נָגַר (nagar), which can mean “flow” in certain contexts, here has the nuance “be extended.” The imperfect form (תָפוּג, tafug, “to be numb”) is used here to describe continuous action in the past.

[77:2]  ²³ tn Or “my soul.” The Hebrew term נֶפֶשׁ (nefesh) with a pronominal suffix is often equivalent to a pronoun, especially in poetry (see BDB 660 s.v. נֶפֶשׁ 4.a).

[77:3]  ²⁴ tn Heb “I will remember God and I will groan, I will reflect and my spirit will grow faint.” The first three verbs are cohortatives, the last a perfect with vav (ו) consecutive. The psalmist’s statement in v. 4 could be understood as concurrent with v. 1, or, more likely, as a quotation of what he had said earlier as he prayed to God (see v. 2). The words “I said” are supplied in the translation at the beginning of the verse to reflect this interpretation (see v. 10).

[77:4]  ²⁵ tn Heb “you held fast the guards of my eyes.” The “guards of the eyes” apparently refers to his eyelids. The psalmist seems to be saying that God would not bring him relief, which would have allowed him to shut his eyes and get some sleep (see v. 2).

[77:4]  ²⁶ tn The imperfect is used in the second clause to emphasize that this was an ongoing condition in the past.

[6:18]  ²⁷ tn The meaning of Aramaic דַּחֲוָה (dakhavah) is a crux interpretum. Suggestions include “music,” “dancing girls,” “concubines,” “table,” “food” – all of which are uncertain. The translation employed here, suggested by earlier scholars, is deliberately vague. A number of recent English versions follow a similar approach with “entertainment” (e.g., NASB, NIV, NCV, TEV, CEV, NLT). On this word see further, HALOT 1849-50 s.v.; E. Vogt, Lexicon linguae aramaicae, 37.

[6:18]  ²⁸ tn Aram “his sleep fled from him.”

[14:22]  ²⁹ tn Grk “to Antioch, strengthening.” Due to the length of the Greek sentence and the tendency of contemporary English to use shorter sentences, a new sentence was started here. This participle (ἐπιστηρίζοντες, episthrizonte") and the following one (παρακαλοῦντες, parakalounte") have been translated as finite verbs connected by the coordinating conjunction “and.”

[14:22]  ³⁰ sn And encouraged them to continue. The exhortations are like those noted in Acts 11:23; 13:43. An example of such a speech is found in Acts 20:18-35. Christianity is now characterized as “the faith.”

[14:22]  ³¹ sn This reference to the kingdom of God clearly refers to its future arrival.

[14:22]  ³² tn Or “sufferings.”