Psalms 11:1

Psalm 11 ¹ 

For the music director; by David.

11:1 In the Lord I have taken shelter. ² 

How can you say to me, ³ 

“Flee to a mountain like a bird! ⁴ 

Psalms 40:10

40:10 I have not failed to tell about your justice; ⁵ 

I spoke about your reliability and deliverance;

I have not neglected to tell the great assembly about your loyal love and faithfulness. ⁶ 

Psalms 42:8

42:8 By day the Lord decrees his loyal love, ⁷ 

and by night he gives me a song, ⁸ 

a prayer ⁹  to the living God.

Psalms 69:20

69:20 Their insults are painful ¹⁰  and make me lose heart; ¹¹ 

I look ¹²  for sympathy, but receive none, ¹³ 

for comforters, but find none.

Psalms 86:14

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

a gang ¹⁵  of ruthless men, who do not respect you, seek my life. ¹⁶ 

Psalms 89:1

Psalm 89 ¹⁷ 

A well-written song ¹⁸  by Ethan the Ezrachite.

89:1 I will sing continually ¹⁹  about the Lord’s faithful deeds;

to future generations I will proclaim your faithfulness. ²⁰ 

Psalms 95:10

95:10 For forty years I was continually disgusted ²¹  with that generation,

and I said, ‘These people desire to go astray; ²² 

they do not obey my commands.’ ²³ 

Psalms 104:35

104:35 May sinners disappear ²⁴  from the earth,

and the wicked vanish!

Praise the Lord, O my soul!

Praise the Lord!

Psalms 139:15

139:15 my bones were not hidden from you,

when ²⁵  I was made in secret

and sewed together in the depths of the earth. ²⁶ 

[11:1]  ¹ sn Psalm 11. The psalmist rejects the advice to flee from his dangerous enemies. Instead he affirms his confidence in God’s just character and calls down judgment on evildoers.

[11:1]  ² tn The Hebrew perfect verbal form probably refers here to a completed action with continuing results.

[11:1]  ³ tn The pronominal suffix attached to נֶפֶשׁ (nefesh) is equivalent to a personal pronoun. See Ps 6:3.

[11:1]  ⁴ tc The MT is corrupt here. The Kethib (consonantal text) reads: “flee [masculine plural!] to your [masculine plural!] mountain, bird.” The Qere (marginal reading) has “flee” in a feminine singular form, agreeing grammatically with the addressee, the feminine noun “bird.” Rather than being a second masculine plural pronominal suffix, the ending כֶם- (-khem) attached to “mountain” is better interpreted as a second feminine singular pronominal suffix followed by an enclitic mem (ם). “Bird” may be taken as vocative (“O bird”) or as an adverbial accusative of manner (“like a bird”). Either way, the psalmist’s advisers compare him to a helpless bird whose only option in the face of danger is to fly away to an inaccessible place.

[40:10]  ⁵ tn Heb “your justice I have not hidden in the midst of my heart.”

[40:10]  ⁶ tn Heb “I have not hidden your loyal love and reliability.”

[42:8]  ⁹ sn The psalmist believes that the Lord has not abandoned him, but continues to extend his loyal love. To this point in the psalm, the author has used the name “God,” but now, as he mentions the divine characteristic of loyal love, he switches to the more personal divine name Yahweh (rendered in the translation as “the Lord”).

[42:8]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “his song [is] with me.”

[42:8]  ¹¹ tc A few medieval Hebrew mss read תְּהִלָּה (tÿhillah, “praise”) instead of תְּפִלָּה (tÿfillah, “prayer”).

[69:20]  ¹³ tn Heb “break my heart.” The “heart” is viewed here as the origin of the psalmist’s emotions.

[69:20]  ¹⁴ tn The verb form appears to be a Qal preterite from an otherwise unattested root נוּשׁ (nush), which some consider an alternate form of אָנַשׁ (’anash, “be weak; be sick”; see BDB 60 s.v. I אָנַשׁ). Perhaps the form should be emended to a Niphal, וָאֵאָנְשָׁה (va’e’onshah, “and I am sick”). The Niphal of אָנַשׁ occurs in 2 Sam 12:15, where it is used to describe David’s sick child.

[69:20]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “wait.”

[69:20]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “and I wait for sympathy, but there is none.” The form נוּד (nud) is an infinitive functioning as a verbal noun:, “sympathizing.” Some suggest emending the form to a participle נָד (nad, “one who shows sympathy”). The verb נוּד (nud) also has the nuance “show sympathy” in Job 2:11; 42:11 and Isa 51:19.

[86:14]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “rise up against me.”

[86:14]  ¹⁸ tn Or “assembly.”

[86:14]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “seek my life and do not set you before them.” See Ps 54:3.

[89:1]  ²¹ sn Psalm 89. The psalmist praises God as the sovereign creator of the world. He recalls God’s covenant with David, but then laments that the promises of the covenant remain unrealized. The covenant promised the Davidic king military victories, but the king has now been subjected to humiliating defeat.

[89:1]  ²² tn The meaning of the Hebrew term מַשְׂכִּיל (maskil) is uncertain. See the note on the phrase “well-written song” in the superscription of Ps 88.

[89:1]  ²³ tn Or “forever.”

[89:1]  ²⁴ tn Heb “to a generation and a generation I will make known your faithfulness with my mouth.”

[95:10]  ²⁵ tn The prefixed verbal form is either a preterite or an imperfect. If the latter, it emphasizes the ongoing nature of the condition in the past. The translation reflects this interpretation of the verbal form.

[95:10]  ²⁶ tn Heb “a people, wanderers of heart [are] they.”

[95:10]  ²⁷ tn Heb “and they do not know my ways.” In this context the Lord’s “ways” are his commands, viewed as a pathway from which his people, likened to wayward sheep (see v. 7), wander.

[104:35]  ²⁹ tn Or “be destroyed.”

[139:15]  ³³ 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]  ³⁴ 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.