Psalms 16:7

16:7 I will praise ¹  the Lord who ²  guides ³  me;

yes, during the night I reflect and learn. ⁴ 

Psalms 32:8

32:8 I will instruct and teach you ⁵  about how you should live. ⁶ 

I will advise you as I look you in the eye. ⁷ 

Psalms 73:24

73:24 You guide ⁸  me by your wise advice,

and then you will lead me to a position of honor. ⁹ 

Psalms 107:11

107:11 because they had rebelled against God’s commands, ¹⁰ 

and rejected the instructions of the sovereign king. ¹¹ 

Proverbs 1:25

1:25 because ¹²  you neglected ¹³  all my advice,

and did not comply ¹⁴  with my rebuke,

Proverbs 1:30

1:30 they did not comply with my advice,

they spurned ¹⁵  all my rebuke.

Proverbs 19:20

19:20 Listen to advice ¹⁶  and receive discipline,

that ¹⁷  you may become wise ¹⁸  by the end of your life. ¹⁹ 

Ecclesiastes 8:2

8:2 Obey the king’s command, ²⁰ 

because you took ²¹  an oath before God ²²  to be loyal to him. ²³ 

[16:7]  ¹ tn Heb “bless,” that is, “proclaim as worthy of praise.”

[16:7]  ² tn Or “because.”

[16:7]  ³ tn Or “counsels, advises.”

[16:7]  ⁴ tn Heb “yes, [during] nights my kidneys instruct [or “correct”] me.” The “kidneys” are viewed here as the seat of the psalmist’s moral character (see Ps 26:2). In the quiet darkness the Lord speaks to his inner being, as it were, and enables him to grow in moral understanding.

[32:8]  ⁵ tn The second person pronominal forms in this verse are singular. The psalmist addresses each member of his audience individually (see also the note on the word “eye” in the next line). A less likely option (but one which is commonly understood) is that the Lord addresses the psalmist in vv. 8-9 (cf. NASB “I will instruct you and teach you…I will counsel you with My eye upon you”).

[32:8]  ⁶ tn Heb “I will instruct you and I will teach you in the way [in] which you should walk.”

[32:8]  ⁷ tn Heb “I will advise, upon you my eye,” that is, “I will offer advice [with] my eye upon you.” In 2 Chr 20:12 the statement “our eye is upon you” means that the speakers are looking to the Lord for intervention. Here the expression “my eye upon you” may simply mean that the psalmist will teach his pupils directly and personally.

[73:24]  ⁸ tn The imperfect verbal form here suggests this is the psalmist’s ongoing experience.

[73:24]  ⁹ tn Heb “and afterward [to] glory you will take me.” Some interpreters view this as the psalmist’s confidence in an afterlife in God’s presence and understand כָּבוֹד (cavod) as a metonymic reference to God’s presence in heaven. But this seems unlikely in the present context. The psalmist anticipates a time of vindication, when the wicked are destroyed and he is honored by God for his godly life style. The verb לָקַח (laqakh, “take”) here carries the nuance “lead, guide, conduct,” as in Num 23:14, 27-28; Josh 24:3 and Prov 24:11.

[107:11]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “the words of God.”

[107:11]  ¹¹ tn Heb “the counsel of the Most High.”

[1:25]  ¹² tn Heb “and.”

[1:25]  ¹³ tn The verb III פָּרַע means “to let go; to let alone” (BDB 828 s.v.). It can refer to unkempt hair of the head (Lev 10:6) or lack of moral restraint: “to let things run free” (Exod 32:25; Prov 28:19). Here it means “to avoid, neglect” the offer of wisdom (BDB 829 s.v. 2).

[1:25]  ¹⁴ tn The verbs are characteristic perfects or indefinite pasts. For the word “comply, consent,” see 1:20.

[1:30]  ¹⁵ tn The verb “spurned” (נָאַץ, na’ats) is parallel to “comply, accede to, be willing” (e.g., 1:10). This is how the morally stubborn fool acts (e.g., 15:5).

[19:20]  ¹⁶ sn The advice refers in all probability to the teachings of the sages that will make one wise.

[19:20]  ¹⁷ tn The proverb is one continuous thought, but the second half of the verse provides the purpose for the imperatives of the first half.

[19:20]  ¹⁸ tn The imperfect tense has the nuance of a final imperfect in a purpose clause, and so is translated “that you may become wise” (cf. NAB, NRSV).

[19:20]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “become wise in your latter end” (cf. KJV, ASV) which could obviously be misunderstood.

[8:2]  ²⁰ tc The Leningrad Codex (the basis of BHS) reads אֲנִי (’ani, 1st person common singular independent personal pronoun): “I obey the king’s command.” Other medieval Hebrew mss and all the versions (LXX, Vulgate, Targum, Syriac Peshitta) preserve an alternate textual tradition of the definite accusative marker אֶת־ (’et) introducing the direct object: אֶת־פִּי־מֶלֶךְ שְׁמוֹר (’et-pi-melekh shÿmor, “Obey the command of the king”). External evidence supports the alternate textual tradition. The MT is guilty of simple orthographic confusion between similar looking letters. The BHS editors and the Hebrew Old Testament Text Project adopt אֶת־ as the original reading. See D. Barthélemy, ed., Preliminary and Interim Report on the Hebrew Old Testament Text Project, 3:582–83.

[8:2]  ²¹ tn The phrase “you took” does not appear in the Hebrew text, but is supplied in the translation for smoothness.

[8:2]  ²² tn The genitive-construct שְׁבוּעַת אֱלֹהִים (shÿvu’at ’elohim, “an oath of God”) functions as a genitive of location (“an oath before God”) or an adjectival genitive of attribute (“a supreme oath”).

[8:2]  ²³ tn The words “to be loyal to him” do not appear in the Hebrew text, but are supplied in the translation for clarification.