Psalms 100:3

100:3 Acknowledge that the Lord is God!

He made us and we belong to him; ¹ 

we are his people, the sheep of his pasture.

Psalms 111:10

111:10 To obey the Lord is the fundamental principle for wise living; ² 

all who carry out his precepts acquire good moral insight. ³ 

He will receive praise forever. ⁴ 

Psalms 138:8

138:8 The Lord avenges me. ⁵ 

O Lord, your loyal love endures.

Do not abandon those whom you have made! ⁶ 

Psalms 139:14-16

139:14 I will give you thanks because your deeds are awesome and amazing. ⁷ 

You knew me thoroughly; ⁸ 

139:15 my bones were not hidden from you,

when ⁹  I was made in secret

and sewed together in the depths of the earth. ¹⁰ 

139:16 Your eyes saw me when I was inside the womb. ¹¹ 

All the days ordained for me

were recorded in your scroll

before one of them came into existence. ¹² 

Job 10:8-11

Contradictions in God’s Dealings

10:8 “Your hands have shaped ¹³  me and made me,

but ¹⁴  now you destroy me completely. ¹⁵ 

10:9 Remember that you have made me as with ¹⁶  the clay;

will ¹⁷  you return me to dust?

10:10 Did you not pour ¹⁸  me out like milk,

and curdle ¹⁹  me like cheese? ²⁰ 

10:11 You clothed ²¹  me with skin and flesh

and knit me together ²²  with bones and sinews.

[100:3]  ¹ tn The present translation (like most modern translations) follows the Qere (marginal reading), which reads literally, “and to him [are] we.” The Kethib (consonantal text) has “and not we.” The suffixed preposition לו (“to him”) was confused aurally with the negative particle לא because the two sound identical.

[111:10]  ² tn Heb “the beginning of wisdom [is] the fear of the Lord.”

[111:10]  ³ tn Heb “good sense [is] to all who do them.” The third masculine plural pronominal suffix must refer back to the “precepts” mentioned in v. 7. In the translation the referent has been specified for clarity. The phrase שֵׂכֶל טוֹב (shekhel tov) also occurs in Prov 3:4; 13:15 and 2 Chr 30:22.

[111:10]  ⁴ tn Heb “his praise stands forever.”

[138:8]  ⁵ tn Heb “avenges on my behalf.” For the meaning “to avenge” for the verb גָּמַר (gamar), see HALOT 197-98 s.v. גמר.

[138:8]  ⁶ tn Heb “the works of your hands.” Many medieval Hebrew mss read the singular, “work of your hands.”

[139:14]  ⁷ tc Heb “because awesome things, I am distinct, amazing [are] your works.” The text as it stands is syntactically problematic and makes little, if any, sense. The Niphal of פָּלָה (pala’) occurs elsewhere only in Exod 33:16. Many take the form from פָלָא (pala’; see GKC 216 §75.qq), which in the Niphal perfect means “to be amazing” (see 2 Sam 1:26; Ps 118:23; Prov 30:18). Some, following the LXX and some other ancient witnesses, also prefer to emend the verb from first to second person, “you are amazing” (see L. C. Allen, Psalms 101-150 [WBC], 249, 251). The present translation assumes the text conflates two variants: נפלאים, the otherwise unattested masculine plural participle of פָלָא, and נִפְלָאוֹת (nifla’ot), the usual (feminine) plural form of the Niphal participle. The latter has been changed to a verb by later scribes in an attempt to accommodate it syntactically. The original text likely read, נוראות נפלאותים מעשׂיך (“your works [are] awesome [and] amazing”).

[139:14]  ⁸ tc Heb “and my being knows very much.” Better parallelism is achieved (see v. 15a) if one emends יֹדַעַת (yoda’at), a Qal active participle, feminine singular form, to יָדַעְתָּ (yada’ta), a Qal perfect second masculine singular perfect. See L. C. Allen, Psalms 101-150 (WBC), 252.

[139:15]  ⁹ tc The Hebrew term אֲשֶׁר (’asher, “which”) should probably be emended to כֲּאַשֶׁר (ka’asher, “when”). The kaf (כ) may have been lost by haplography (note the kaf at the end of the preceding form).

[139:15]  ¹⁰ sn The phrase depths of the earth may be metaphorical (euphemistic) or it may reflect a prescientific belief about the origins of the embryo deep beneath the earth’s surface (see H. W. Wolff, Anthropology of the Old Testament, 96-97). Job 1:21 also closely associates the mother’s womb with the earth.

[139:16]  ¹¹ tn Heb “Your eyes saw my shapeless form.” The Hebrew noun גֹּלֶם (golem) occurs only here in the OT. In later Hebrew the word refers to “a lump, a shapeless or lifeless substance,” and to “unfinished matter, a vessel wanting finishing” (Jastrow 222 s.v. גּוֹלֶם). The translation employs the dynamic rendering “when I was inside the womb” to clarify that the speaker was still in his mother’s womb at the time he was “seen” by God.

[139:16]  ¹² tn Heb “and on your scroll all of them were written, [the] days [which] were formed, and [there was] not one among them.” This “scroll” may be the “scroll of life” mentioned in Ps 69:28 (see the note on the word “living” there).

[10:8]  ¹³ tn The root עָצַב (’atsav) is linked by some to an Arabic word meaning “to cut out, hew.” The derived word עֲצַבִּים (’atsabbim) means “idols.” Whatever the precise meaning, the idea is that God formed or gave shape to mankind in creation.

[10:8]  ¹⁴ tn The verb in this part is a preterite with the vav (ו) consecutive. However, here it has merely an external connection with the preceding perfects, so that in reality it presents an antithesis (see GKC 327 §111.e).

[10:8]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “together round about and you destroy me.” The second half of this verse is very difficult. Most commentators follow the LXX and connect the first two words with the second colon as the MT accents indicate (NJPS, “then destroyed every part of me”), rather than with the first colon (“and made me complete,” J. E. Hartley, Job [NICOT], 185). Instead of “together” some read “after.” Others see in סָבִיב (saviv) not so much an adjectival use but a verbal or adverbial use: “you turn and destroy” or “you destroy utterly (all around).” This makes more sense than “turn.” In addition, the verb form in the line is the preterite with vav consecutive; this may be another example of the transposition of the copula (see 4:6). For yet another option (“You have engulfed me about altogether”), see R. Fuller, “Exodus 21:22: The Miscarriage Interpretation and the Personhood of the Fetus,” JETS 37 (1994): 178.

[10:9]  ¹⁶ tn The preposition “like” creates a small tension here. So some ignore the preposition and read “clay” as an adverbial accusative of the material (GKC 371 §117.hh but cf. 379 §119.i with reference to beth essentiae: “as it were, by clay”). The NIV gets around the problem with a different meaning for the verb: “you molded me like clay.” Some suggest the meaning was “as [with] clay” (in the same manner that we have “as [in] the day of Midian” [Isa 9:4]).

[10:9]  ¹⁷ tn The text has a conjunction: “and to dust….”

[10:10]  ¹⁸ tn The verb נָתַךְ (natakh) means “to flow,” and in the Hiphil, “to cause to flow.”

[10:10]  ¹⁹ tn This verb קָפָא (qafa’) means “to coagulate.” In the Hiphil it means “to stiffen; to congeal.”

[10:10]  ²⁰ tn The verbs in v. 10 are prefixed conjugations; since the reference is to the womb, these would need to be classified as preterites.

[10:11]  ²¹ tn The skin and flesh form the exterior of the body and so the image of “clothing” is appropriate. Once again the verb is the prefixed conjugation, expressing what God did.

[10:11]  ²² tn This verb is found only here (related nouns are common) and in the parallel passage of Ps 139:13. The word סָכַךְ (sakhakh), here a Poel prefixed conjugation (preterite), means “to knit together.” The implied comparison is that the bones and sinews form the tapestry of the person (compare other images of weaving the life).