Psalms 10:1

Psalm 10 ¹ 

10:1 Why, Lord, do you stand far off?

Why do you pay no attention during times of trouble? ² 

Psalms 13:1-2

Psalm 13 ³ 

For the music director; a psalm of David.

13:1 How long, Lord, will you continue to ignore me? ⁴ 

How long will you pay no attention to me? ⁵ 

13:2 How long must I worry, ⁶ 

and suffer in broad daylight? ⁷ 

How long will my enemy gloat over me? ⁸ 

Psalms 102:10

102:10 because of your anger and raging fury.

Indeed, ⁹  you pick me up and throw me away.

Psalms 104:29

104:29 When you ignore them, they panic. ¹⁰ 

When you take away their life’s breath, they die

and return to dust.

Psalms 143:7

143:7 Answer me quickly, Lord!

My strength is fading. ¹¹ 

Do not reject me, ¹² 

or I will join ¹³  those descending into the grave. ¹⁴ 

Job 30:26-31

30:26 But when I hoped for good, trouble came;

when I expected light, then darkness came.

30:27 My heart ¹⁵  is in turmoil ¹⁶  unceasingly; ¹⁷ 

the days of my affliction confront me.

30:28 I go about blackened, ¹⁸  but not by the sun;

in the assembly I stand up and cry for help.

30:29 I have become a brother to jackals

and a companion of ostriches. ¹⁹ 

30:30 My skin has turned dark on me; ²⁰ 

my body ²¹  is hot with fever. ²² 

30:31 My harp is used for ²³  mourning

and my flute for the sound of weeping.

Isaiah 38:17

38:17 “Look, the grief I experienced was for my benefit. ²⁴ 

You delivered me ²⁵  from the pit of oblivion. ²⁶ 

For you removed all my sins from your sight. ²⁷ 

[10:1]  ¹ sn Psalm 10. Many Hebrew mss and the ancient Greek version (LXX) combine Psalms 9 and 10 into a single psalm. Taken in isolation, Psalm 10 is a petition for help in which the psalmist urges the Lord to deliver him from his dangerous enemies, whom he describes in vivid and terrifying detail. The psalmist concludes with confidence; he is certain that God’s justice will prevail.

[10:1]  ² tn Heb “you hide for times in trouble.” The interrogative “why” is understood by ellipsis; note the preceding line. The Hiphil verbal form “hide” has no expressed object. Some supply “your eyes” by ellipsis (see BDB 761 s.v. I עָלַם Hiph and HALOT 835 s.v. I עלם hif) or emend the form to a Niphal (“you hide yourself,” see BHS, note c; cf. NEB, NIV, NRSV).

[13:1]  ³ sn Psalm 13. The psalmist, who is close to death, desperately pleads for God’s deliverance and affirms his trust in God’s faithfulness.

[13:1]  ⁴ tn Heb “will you forget me continually.”

[13:1]  ⁵ tn Heb “will you hide your face from me.”

[13:2]  ⁶ tn Heb “How long will I put counsel in my being?”

[13:2]  ⁷ tn Heb “[with] grief in my heart by day.”

[13:2]  ⁸ tn Heb “be exalted over me.” Perhaps one could translate, “How long will my enemy defeat me?”

[102:10]  ⁹ tn Or “for.”

[104:29]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “you hide your face, they are terrified.”

[143:7]  ¹¹ tn Heb “my spirit is failing.”

[143:7]  ¹² tn Heb “do not hide your face from me.” The idiom “hide the face” (1) can mean “ignore” (see Pss 10:11; 13:1; 51:9) or (2) can carry the stronger idea of “reject” (see Pss 30:7; 88:14).

[143:7]  ¹³ tn Heb “I will be equal with.”

[143:7]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “the pit.” The Hebrew noun בּוֹר (bor, “pit; cistern”) is sometimes used of the grave and/or the realm of the dead. See Ps 28:1.

[30:27]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “my loins,” “my bowels” (archaic), “my innermost being.” The latter option is reflected in the translation; some translations take the inner turmoil to be literal (NIV: “The churning inside me never stops”).

[30:27]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “boils.”

[30:27]  ¹⁷ tn The last clause reads “and they [it] are not quiet” or “do not cease.” The clause then serves adverbially for the sentence – “unceasingly.”

[30:28]  ¹⁸ tn The construction uses the word קֹדֵר (qoder) followed by the Piel perfect of הָלַךְ (halakh, “I go about”). The adjective “blackened” refers to Job’s skin that has been marred by the disease. Adjectives are often used before verbs to describe some bodily condition (see GKC 374-75 §118.n).

[30:29]  ¹⁹ sn The point of this figure is that Job’s cries of lament are like the howls and screeches of these animals, not that he lives with them. In Job 39:13 the female ostrich is called “the wailer.”

[30:30]  ²⁰ tn The MT has “become dark from upon me,” prompting some editions to supply the verb “falls from me” (RSV, NRSV), or “peels” (NIV).

[30:30]  ²¹ tn The word “my bones” may be taken as a metonymy of subject, the bony framework indicating the whole body.

[30:30]  ²² tn The word חֹרֶב (khorev) also means “heat.” The heat in this line is not that of the sun, but obviously a fever.

[30:31]  ²³ tn The verb הָיָה (hayah, “to be”) followed by the preposition ל (lamed) means “to serve the purpose of” (see Gen 1:14ff., 17:7, etc.).

[38:17]  ²⁴ tn Heb “Look, for peace bitterness was to me bitter”; NAB “thus is my bitterness transformed into peace.”

[38:17]  ²⁵ tc The Hebrew text reads, “you loved my soul,” but this does not fit syntactically with the following prepositional phrase. חָשַׁקְתָּ (khashaqta, “you loved”), may reflect an aural error; most emend the form to חָשַׂכְת, (khasakht, “you held back”).

[38:17]  ²⁶ tn בְּלִי (bÿli) most often appears as a negation, meaning “without,” suggesting the meaning “nothingness, oblivion,” here. Some translate “decay” or “destruction.”

[38:17]  ²⁷ tn Heb “for you threw behind your back all my sins.”