Isaiah 37:4

37:4 Perhaps the Lord your God will hear all these things the chief adviser has spoken on behalf of his master, the king of Assyria, who sent him to taunt the living God. ¹  When the Lord your God hears, perhaps he will punish him for the things he has said. ²  So pray for this remnant that remains.’” ³ 

Isaiah 37:2

37:2 Eliakim the palace supervisor, Shebna the scribe, and the leading priests, ⁴  clothed in sackcloth, sent this message to the prophet Isaiah son of Amoz:

Isaiah 16:12

16:12 When the Moabites plead with all their might at their high places, ⁵ 

and enter their temples to pray, their prayers will be ineffective! ⁶ 

Psalms 10:14-15

10:14 You have taken notice, ⁷ 

for ⁸  you always see ⁹  one who inflicts pain and suffering. ¹⁰ 

The unfortunate victim entrusts his cause to you; ¹¹ 

you deliver ¹²  the fatherless. ¹³ 

10:15 Break the arm ¹⁴  of the wicked and evil man!

Hold him accountable for his wicked deeds, ¹⁵ 

which he thought you would not discover. ¹⁶ 

Psalms 74:10

74:10 How long, O God, will the adversary hurl insults?

Will the enemy blaspheme your name forever?

Psalms 74:22

74:22 Rise up, O God! Defend your honor! ¹⁷ 

Remember how fools insult you all day long! ¹⁸ 

Psalms 79:12

79:12 Pay back our neighbors in full! ¹⁹ 

May they be insulted the same way they insulted you, O Lord! ²⁰ 

Psalms 89:50-51

89:50 Take note, O Lord, ²¹  of the way your servants are taunted, ²² 

and of how I must bear so many insults from people! ²³ 

89:51 Your enemies, O Lord, hurl insults;

they insult your chosen king as they dog his footsteps. ²⁴ 

[37:4]  ¹ tn Heb “all the words of the chief adviser whom his master, the king of Assyria, sent to taunt the living God.”

[37:4]  ² tn Heb “and rebuke the words which the Lord your God hears.”

[37:4]  ³ tn Heb “and lift up a prayer on behalf of the remnant that is found.”

[37:2]  ⁴ tn Heb “elders of the priests” (so KJV, NAB, NASB); NCV “the older priests”; NRSV, TEV, CEV “the senior priests.”

[16:12]  ⁵ tn The verb that introduces this verse serves as a discourse particle and is untranslated; see note on “in the future” in 2:2.

[16:12]  ⁶ tn Heb “when he appears, when he grows tired, Moab on the high places, and enters his temple to pray, he will not prevail.” It is possible that “when he grows tired” is an explanatory gloss for the preceding “when he appears.”

[10:14]  ⁷ tn Heb “you see.” One could translate the perfect as generalizing, “you do take notice.”

[10:14]  ⁸ tn If the preceding perfect is taken as generalizing, then one might understand כִּי (ki) as asseverative: “indeed, certainly.”

[10:14]  ⁹ tn Here the imperfect emphasizes God’s typical behavior.

[10:14]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “destruction and suffering,” which here refers metonymically to the wicked, who dish out pain and suffering to their victims.

[10:14]  ¹¹ tn Heb “to give into your hand, upon you, he abandons, [the] unfortunate [one].” The syntax is awkward and the meaning unclear. It is uncertain who or what is being given into God’s hand. Elsewhere the idiom “give into the hand” means to deliver into one’s possession. If “to give” goes with what precedes (as the accentuation of the Hebrew text suggests), then this may refer to the wicked man being delivered over to God for judgment. The present translation assumes that “to give” goes with what follows (cf. NEB, NIV, NRSV). The verb יַעֲזֹב (ya’azov) here has the nuance “entrust” (see Gen 39:6; Job 39:11); the direct object (“[his] cause”) is implied.

[10:14]  ¹² tn Or “help.”

[10:14]  ¹³ tn Heb “[for] one who is fatherless, you are a deliverer.” The noun יָתוֹם (yatom) refers to one who has lost his father (not necessarily his mother, see Ps 109:9).

[10:15]  ¹⁴ sn The arm symbolizes the strength of the wicked, which they use to oppress and exploit the weak.

[10:15]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “you seek his wickedness.” As in v. 13, the verb דָרַשׁ (darash, “seek”) is used here in the sense of “seek an accounting.” One could understand the imperfect as describing a fact, “you hold him accountable,” or as anticipating divine judgment, “you will hold him accountable.” However, since the verb is in apparent parallelism with the preceding imperative (“break”), it is better to understand the imperfect as expressing the psalmist’s desire or request.

[10:15]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “you will not find.” It is uncertain how this statement relates to what precedes. Some take בַל (bal), which is used as a negative particle in vv. 4, 6, 11, 18, as asseverative here, “Indeed find (i.e., judge his wickedness).” The translation assumes that the final words are an asyndetic relative clause which refers back to what the wicked man boasted in God’s face (“you will not find [i.e., my wickedness]”). See v. 13.

[74:22]  ¹⁷ tn Or “defend your cause.”

[74:22]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “remember your reproach from a fool all the day.”

[79:12]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “Return to our neighbors sevenfold into their lap.” The number seven is used rhetorically to express the thorough nature of the action. For other rhetorical/figurative uses of the Hebrew phrase שִׁבְעָתַיִם (shiv’atayim, “seven times”) see Gen 4:15, 24; Ps 12:6; Prov 6:31; Isa 30:26.

[79:12]  ²⁰ tn Heb “their reproach with which they reproached you, O Lord.”

[89:50]  ²¹ tc Many medieval Hebrew mss read here יְהוָה (yehvah, “the Lord”).

[89:50]  ²² tn Heb “remember, O Lord, the taunt against your servants.” Many medieval Hebrew mss read the singular here, “your servant” (that is, the psalmist).

[89:50]  ²³ tn Heb “my lifting up in my arms [or “against my chest”] all of the many, peoples.” The term רַבִּים (rabbim, “many”) makes no apparent sense here. For this reason some emend the text to רִבֵי (rivey, “attacks by”), a defectively written plural construct form of רִיב (riv, “dispute; quarrel”).

[89:51]  ²⁴ tn Heb “[by] which your enemies, O Lord, taunt, [by] which they taunt [at] the heels of your anointed one.”