Psalms 18:48-50

18:48 He delivers me ¹  from my enemies;

you snatch me away ²  from those who attack me; ³ 

you rescue me from violent men.

18:49 So I will give you thanks before the nations, ⁴  O Lord!

I will sing praises to you! ⁵ 

18:50 He ⁶  gives his chosen king magnificent victories; ⁷ 

he is faithful ⁸  to his chosen ruler, ⁹ 

to David and his descendants ¹⁰  forever.” ¹¹ 

Psalms 37:39-40

37:39 But the Lord delivers the godly; ¹² 

he protects them in times of trouble. ¹³ 

37:40 The Lord helps them and rescues them;

he rescues them from evil men and delivers them, ¹⁴ 

for they seek his protection.

Psalms 144:10

144:10 the one who delivers ¹⁵  kings,

and rescued David his servant from a deadly ¹⁶  sword.

Isaiah 10:24-25

10:24 So ¹⁷  here is what the sovereign master, the Lord who commands armies, says: “My people who live in Zion, do not be afraid of Assyria, even though they beat you with a club and lift their cudgel against you as Egypt did. ¹⁸  10:25 For very soon my fury ¹⁹  will subside, and my anger will be directed toward their destruction.”

Isaiah 31:4-5

The Lord Will Defend Zion

31:4 Indeed, this is what the Lord says to me:

“The Lord will be like a growling lion,

like a young lion growling over its prey. ²⁰ 

Though a whole group of shepherds gathers against it,

it is not afraid of their shouts

or intimidated by their yelling. ²¹ 

In this same way the Lord who commands armies will descend

to do battle on Mount Zion and on its hill. ²² 

31:5 Just as birds hover over a nest, ²³ 

so the Lord who commands armies will protect Jerusalem. ²⁴ 

He will protect and deliver it;

as he passes over ²⁵  he will rescue it.

Isaiah 33:22

33:22 For the Lord, our ruler,

the Lord, our commander,

the Lord, our king –

he will deliver us.

Hosea 1:7

1:7 But I will have pity on the nation ²⁶  of Judah. ²⁷  I will deliver them by the Lord their God; I will not deliver them by the warrior’s bow, by sword, by military victory, ²⁸  by chariot horses, or by chariots.” ²⁹ 

[18:48]  ¹ tn Heb “[the one who] delivers me.” 2 Sam 22:49 reads “and [the one who] brings me out.”

[18:48]  ² tn Heb “lifts me up.” In light of the preceding and following references to deliverance, the verb רום probably here refers to being rescued from danger (see Ps 9:13). However, it could mean “exalt, elevate” here, indicating that the Lord has given the psalmist victory over his enemies and forced them to acknowledge the psalmist’s superiority (cf. NIV, NRSV).

[18:48]  ³ tn Heb “from those who rise against me.”

[18:49]  ⁴ sn I will give you thanks before the nations. This probably alludes to the fact that the psalmist will praise the Lord in the presence of the defeated nations when they, as his subjects, bring their tribute payments. Ideally the Davidic king was to testify to the nations of God’s greatness. See J. H. Eaton, Kingship and the Psalms (SBT), 182-85.

[18:49]  ⁵ tn Heb “to your name.” God’s “name” refers metonymically to his divine characteristics as suggested by his name, in this case “Lord,” the primary name of Israel’s covenant God which suggests his active presence with his people (see Exod 3:12-15).

[18:50]  ⁶ tn Or “the one who.”

[18:50]  ⁷ tn Heb “magnifies the victories of his king.” “His king” refers to the psalmist, the Davidic king whom God has chosen to rule Israel.

[18:50]  ⁸ tn Heb “[the one who] does loyalty.”

[18:50]  ⁹ tn Heb “his anointed [one],” i.e., the psalmist/Davidic king. See Ps 2:2.

[18:50]  ¹⁰ tn Or “offspring”; Heb “seed.”

[18:50]  ¹¹ sn If David is the author of the psalm (see the superscription), then he here anticipates that God will continue to demonstrate loyalty to his descendants who succeed him. If the author is a later Davidic king, then he views the divine favor he has experienced as the outworking of God’s faithful promises to David his ancestor.

[37:39]  ¹² tn Heb “and the deliverance of the godly [ones] [is] from the Lord.”

[37:39]  ¹³ tn Heb “[he is] their place of refuge in a time of trouble.”

[37:40]  ¹⁴ tn The prefixed verbal forms with vav (ו) consecutive carry on the generalizing tone of the preceding verse.

[144:10]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “grants deliverance to.”

[144:10]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “harmful.”

[10:24]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “therefore.” The message that follows is one of encouragement, for it focuses on the eventual destruction of the Assyrians. Consequently “therefore” relates back to vv. 5-21, not to vv. 22-23, which must be viewed as a brief parenthesis in an otherwise positive speech.

[10:24]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “in the way [or “manner”] of Egypt.”

[10:25]  ¹⁹ tc The Hebrew text has simply “fury,” but the pronominal element can be assumed on the basis of what immediately follows (see “my anger” in the clause). It is possible that the suffixed yod (י) has been accidentally dropped by virtual haplography. Note that a vav (ו) is prefixed to the form that immediately follows; yod and vav are very similar in later script phases.

[31:4]  ²⁰ tn Heb “As a lion growls, a young lion over its prey.” In the Hebrew text the opening comparison is completed later in the verse (“so the Lord will come down…”), after a parenthesis describing how fearless the lion is. The present translation divides the verse into three sentences for English stylistic reasons.

[31:4]  ²¹ tn Heb “Though there is summoned against it fullness of shepherds, by their voice it is not terrified, and to their noise it does not respond.”

[31:4]  ²² tn Some prefer to translate the phrase לִצְבֹּא עַל (litsbo’ ’al) as “fight against,” but the following context pictures the Lord defending, not attacking, Zion.

[31:5]  ²³ tn Heb “just as birds fly.” The words “over a nest” are supplied in the translation for clarification.

[31:5]  ²⁴ map For location see Map5 B1; Map6 F3; Map7 E2; Map8 F2; Map10 B3; JP1 F4; JP2 F4; JP3 F4; JP4 F4.

[31:5]  ²⁵ tn The only other occurrence of this verb is in Exod 12:13, 23, 27, where the Lord “passes over” (i.e., “spares”) the Israelite households as he comes to judge their Egyptian oppressors. The noun פֶּסַח (pesakh, “Passover”) is derived from the verb. The use of the verb in Isa 31:5 is probably an intentional echo of the Exodus event. As in the days of Moses the Lord will spare his people as he comes to judge their enemies.

[1:7]  ²⁶ tn Heb “house”; cf. NCV, TEV, NLT “the people of Judah.”

[1:7]  ²⁷ tn The word order in this line is rhetorical, emphasizing the divine decision to withhold pity from Israel but to bestow it on Judah. The accusative direct object, which is introduced by a disjunctive vav (to denote contrast), appears before the verb: וְאֶת־בֵּית יְהוּדָה אֲרַחֵם (vé’et-bet yéhudah ’arakhem, “but upon the house of Judah I will show pity”).

[1:7]  ²⁸ tn Heb “by war” (so NAB, NRSV, TEV); KJV, NASB, NIV “battle.”

[1:7]  ²⁹ sn These military weapons are examples of the metonymy of adjunct (the specific weapons named) for subject (warfare).