Psalms 10:2

10:2 The wicked arrogantly chase the oppressed; ¹ 

the oppressed are trapped ²  by the schemes the wicked have dreamed up. ³ 

Psalms 36:11

36:11 Do not let arrogant men overtake me,

or let evil men make me homeless! ⁴ 

Psalms 40:4

40:4 How blessed ⁵  is the one ⁶  who trusts in the Lord ⁷ 

and does not seek help from ⁸  the proud or from liars! ⁹ 

Psalms 86:14

86:14 O God, arrogant men attack me; ¹⁰ 

a gang ¹¹  of ruthless men, who do not respect you, seek my life. ¹² 

Psalms 124:5

124:5 The raging water

would have overwhelmed us. ¹³ 

Psalms 140:5

140:5 Proud men hide a snare for me;

evil men ¹⁴  spread a net by the path;

they set traps for me. (Selah)

Exodus 18:11

18:11 Now I know that the Lord is greater than all the gods, for in the thing in which they dealt proudly against them he has destroyed them.” ¹⁵ 

James 4:6

4:6 But he gives greater grace. Therefore it says, “God opposes the proud, but he gives grace to the humble.” ¹⁶ 

[10:2]  ¹ tn Heb “because of the pride of [the] wicked he burns [i.e. hotly pursues] [the] oppressed.” The singular forms רָשָׁע (rasha’, “wicked”) and עָנִי (’aniy, “oppressed”) are collective and representative, as indicated in the next line, which uses plural verb forms to describe the actions of both.

[10:2]  ² tn The two imperfect verbal forms in v. 2 describe either what typically happens (from the psalmist’s perspective) or what the psalmist was experiencing at the time he offered this prayer.

[10:2]  ³ tn Heb “they are trapped in the schemes which they have thought up.” The referents of the two pronominal suffixes on the verbs have been specified in the translation for clarity. The referent of the first suffix (“they”) is taken as the oppressed, while the referent of the second (“they”) is taken to be the wicked (cf. NIV, which renders “wicked” in the previous line as a collective singular). Others take the referent of both occurrences of “they” in the line to be the wicked (cf. NRSV, “let them be caught in the schemes they have devised”).

[36:11]  ⁴ tn Heb “let not a foot of pride come to me, and let not the hand of the evil ones cause me to wander as a fugitive.”

[40:4]  ⁵ tn The Hebrew noun is an abstract plural. The word often refers metonymically to the happiness that God-given security and prosperity produce (see Pss 1:1, 3; 2:12; 34:9; 41:1; 65:4; 84:12; 89:15; 106:3; 112:1; 127:5; 128:1; 144:15).

[40:4]  ⁶ tn Heb “man.” See the note on the word “one” in Ps 1:1.

[40:4]  ⁷ tn Heb “who has made the Lord his [object of] trust.”

[40:4]  ⁸ tn Heb “and does not turn toward.”

[40:4]  ⁹ tn Heb “those falling away toward a lie.”

[86:14]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “rise up against me.”

[86:14]  ¹¹ tn Or “assembly.”

[86:14]  ¹² tn Heb “seek my life and do not set you before them.” See Ps 54:3.

[124:5]  ¹³ tn Heb “then they would have passed over our being, the raging waters.”

[140:5]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “and ropes,” but many prefer to revocalize the noun as a participle (חֹבְלִים, khovÿlim) from the verb חָבַל (khaval, “act corruptly”).

[18:11]  ¹⁵ tn The end of this sentence seems not to have been finished, or it is very elliptical. In the present translation the phrase “he has destroyed them” is supplied. Others take the last prepositional phrase to be the completion and supply only a verb: “[he was] above them.” U. Cassuto (Exodus, 216) takes the word “gods” to be the subject of the verb “act proudly,” giving the sense of “precisely (כִּי, ki) in respect of these things of which the gods of Egypt boasted – He is greater than they (עֲלֵיהֶם, ‘alehem).” He suggests rendering the clause, “excelling them in the very things to which they laid claim.”

[4:6]  ¹⁶ sn A quotation from Prov 3:34.