Psalms 121:1

Psalm 121 ¹ 

A song of ascents. ² 

121:1 I look up ³  toward the hills.

From where ⁴  does my help come?

Psalms 123:1

Psalm 123 ⁵ 

A song of ascents. ⁶ 

123:1 I look up ⁷  toward you,

the one enthroned ⁸  in heaven.

Psalms 130:1-2

Psalm 130 ⁹ 

A song of ascents. ¹⁰ 

130:1 From the deep water ¹¹  I cry out to you, O Lord.

130:2 O Lord, listen to me! ¹² 

Pay attention to ¹³  my plea for mercy!

Jonah 2:2-4

2:2 and said,

“I ¹⁴  called out to the Lord from my distress,

and he answered me; ¹⁵ 

from the belly of Sheol ¹⁶  I cried out for help,

and you heard my prayer. ¹⁷ 

2:3 You threw me ¹⁸  into the deep waters, ¹⁹ 

into the middle ²⁰  of the sea; ²¹ 

the ocean current ²²  engulfed ²³  me;

all the mighty waves ²⁴  you sent ²⁵  swept ²⁶  over me. ²⁷ 

2:4 I thought ²⁸  I had been banished from your sight, ²⁹ 

that I would never again ³⁰  see your holy temple! ³¹ 

Luke 18:13

18:13 The tax collector, however, stood ³²  far off and would not even look up ³³  to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, be merciful ³⁴  to me, sinner that I am!’ ³⁵ 

[121:1]  ¹ sn Psalm 121. The psalm affirms that the Lord protects his people Israel. Unless the psalmist addresses an observer (note the second person singular forms in vv. 3-8), it appears there are two or three speakers represented in the psalm, depending on how one takes v. 3. The translation assumes that speaker one talks in vv. 1-2, that speaker two responds to him with a prayer in v. 3 (this assumes the verbs are true jussives of prayer), and that speaker three responds with words of assurance in vv. 4-8. If the verbs in v. 3 are taken as a rhetorical use of the jussive, then there are two speakers. Verses 3-8 are speaker two’s response to the words of speaker one. See the note on the word “sleep” at the end of v. 3.

[121:1]  ² sn The precise significance of this title, which appears in Pss 120-134, is unclear. Perhaps worshipers recited these psalms when they ascended the road to Jerusalem to celebrate annual religious festivals. For a discussion of their background see L. C. Allen, Psalms 101-150 (WBC), 219-21.

[121:1]  ³ tn Heb “I lift my eyes.”

[121:1]  ⁴ tn The Hebrew term מֵאַיִן (me’ayin) is interrogative, not relative, in function. Rather than directly stating that his source of help descends from the hills, the psalmist is asking, “From where does my help come?” Nevertheless, the first line does indicate that he is looking toward the hills for help, probably indicating that he is looking up toward the sky in anticipation of supernatural intervention. The psalmist assumes the dramatic role of one needing help. He answers his own question in v. 2.

[123:1]  ⁵ sn Psalm 123. The psalmist, speaking for God’s people, acknowledges his dependence on God in the midst of a crisis.

[123:1]  ⁶ sn The precise significance of this title, which appears in Pss 120-134, is unclear. Perhaps worshipers recited these psalms when they ascended the road to Jerusalem to celebrate annual religious festivals. For a discussion of their background see L. C. Allen, Psalms 101-150 (WBC), 219-21.

[123:1]  ⁷ tn Heb “I lift my eyes.”

[123:1]  ⁸ tn Heb “sitting.” The Hebrew verb יָשַׁב (yashav) is here used metonymically of “sitting enthroned” (see Pss 9:7; 29:10; 55:19; 102:12).

[130:1]  ⁹ sn Psalm 130. The psalmist, confident of the Lord’s forgiveness, cries out to the Lord for help in the midst of his suffering and urges Israel to do the same.

[130:1]  ¹⁰ sn The precise significance of this title, which appears in Pss 120-134, is unclear. Perhaps worshipers recited these psalms when they ascended the road to Jerusalem to celebrate annual religious festivals. For a discussion of their background see L. C. Allen, Psalms 101-150 (WBC), 219-21.

[130:1]  ¹¹ tn Heb “depths,” that is, deep waters (see Ps 69:2, 14; Isa 51:10), a metaphor for the life-threatening danger faced by the psalmist.

[130:2]  ¹² tn Heb “my voice.”

[130:2]  ¹³ tn Heb “may your ears be attentive to the voice of.”

[2:2]  ¹⁴ sn The eight verses of Jonah’s prayer in Hebrew contain twenty-seven first-person pronominal references to himself. There are fifteen second- or third-person references to the Lord.

[2:2]  ¹⁵ tn Tg. Jonah 2:2 renders this interpretively: “and he heard my prayer.”

[2:2]  ¹⁶ sn Sheol was a name for the place of residence of the dead, the underworld (see Job 7:9-10; Isa 38:17-18). Jonah pictures himself in the belly of Sheol, its very center – in other words he is as good as dead.

[2:2]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “voice” (so KJV, NAB, NASB, NRSV); NIV “my cry.” The term קוֹל (qol, “voice”) functions as a metonymy for the content of what is uttered: cry for help in prayer.

[2:3]  ¹⁸ tn Or “You had thrown me.” Verse 3 begins the detailed description of Jonah’s plight, which resulted from being thrown into the sea.

[2:3]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “the deep” (so KJV, NAB, NASB, NIV, NRSV); NLT “into the ocean depths.”

[2:3]  ²⁰ tn Heb “heart” (so many English versions); CEV “to the (+ very TEV) bottom of the sea.”

[2:3]  ²¹ tc The BHS editors suggest deleting either מְצוּלָה (mÿtsulah, “into the deep”) or בִּלְבַב יַמִּים (bilvav yammim, “into the heart of the sea”). They propose that one or the other is a scribal gloss on the remaining term. However, the use of an appositional phrase within a poetic colon is not unprecedented in Hebrew poetry. The MT is therefore best retained.

[2:3]  ²² tn Or “the stream”; KJV, ASV, NRSV “the flood.” The Hebrew word נָהָר (nahar) is used in parallel with יַם (yam, “sea”) in Ps 24:2 (both are plural) to describe the oceans of the world and in Ps 66:6 to speak of the sea crossed by Israel in the exodus from Egypt.

[2:3]  ²³ tn Heb “surrounded” (so NRSV); NAB “enveloped.”

[2:3]  ²⁴ tn Heb “your breakers and your waves.” This phrase is a nominal hendiadys; the first noun functions as an attributive adjective modifying the second noun: “your breaking waves.”

[2:3]  ²⁵ tn Heb “your… your…” The 2nd person masculine singular suffixes on מִשְׁבָּרֶיךָ וְגַלֶּיךָ (mishbarekha vÿgallekha, “your breakers and your waves”) function as genitives of source. Just as God had hurled a violent wind upon the sea (1:4) and had sovereignly sent the large fish to swallow him (1:17 [2:1 HT]), Jonah viewed God as sovereignly responsible for afflicting him with sea waves that were crashing upon his head, threatening to drown him. Tg. Jonah 2:3 alters the 2nd person masculine singular suffixes to 3rd person masculine singular suffixes to make them refer to the sea and not to God, for the sake of smoothness: “all the gales of the sea and its billows.”

[2:3]  ²⁶ tn Heb “crossed”; KJV, NAB, NASB, NRSV “passed.”

[2:3]  ²⁷ sn Verses 3 and 5 multiply terms describing Jonah’s watery plight. The images used in v. 3 appear also in 2 Sam 22:5-6; Pss 42:7; 51:11; 69:1-2, 14-15; 88:6-7; 102:10.

[2:4]  ²⁸ 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]  ²⁹ 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]  ³⁰ 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]  ³¹ tn Heb “Will I ever see your holy temple again?” The rhetorical question expresses denial: Jonah despaired of ever seeing the temple again.

[18:13]  ³² tn Grk “standing”; the Greek participle has been translated as a finite verb.

[18:13]  ³³ tn Grk “even lift up his eyes” (an idiom).

[18:13]  ³⁴ tn The prayer is a humble call for forgiveness. The term for mercy (ἱλάσκομαι, Jilaskomai) is associated with the concept of a request for atonement (BDAG 473-74 s.v. 1; Ps 51:1, 3; 25:11; 34:6, 18).

[18:13]  ³⁵ tn Grk “the sinner.” The tax collector views himself not just as any sinner but as the worst of all sinners. See ExSyn 222-23.