Psalms 11:2

11:2 For look, the wicked ¹  prepare ²  their bows, ³ 

they put their arrows on the strings,

to shoot in the darkness ⁴  at the morally upright. ⁵ 

Psalms 14:4

14:4 All those who behave wickedly ⁶  do not understand – ⁷ 

those who devour my people as if they were eating bread,

and do not call out to the Lord.

Psalms 25:5

25:5 Guide me into your truth ⁸  and teach me.

For you are the God who delivers me;

on you I rely all day long.

Psalms 45:7

45:7 You love ⁹  justice and hate evil. ¹⁰ 

For this reason God, your God ¹¹  has anointed you ¹² 

with the oil of joy, ¹³  elevating you above your companions. ¹⁴ 

Psalms 57:4

57:4 I am surrounded by lions;

I lie down ¹⁵  among those who want to devour me; ¹⁶ 

men whose teeth are spears and arrows,

whose tongues are a sharp sword. ¹⁷ 

Psalms 59:12

59:12 They speak sinful words. ¹⁸ 

So let them be trapped by their own pride

and by the curses and lies they speak!

Psalms 62:9

62:9 Men are nothing but a mere breath;

human beings are unreliable. ¹⁹ 

When they are weighed in the scales,

all of them together are lighter than air. ²⁰ 

Psalms 67:1

Psalm 67 ²¹ 

For the music director; to be accompanied by stringed instruments; a psalm, a song.

67:1 May God show us his favor ²²  and bless us! ²³ 

May he smile on us! ²⁴  (Selah)

Psalms 67:4

67:4 Let foreigners ²⁵  rejoice and celebrate!

For you execute justice among the nations,

and govern the people living on earth. ²⁶  (Selah)

Psalms 68:4

68:4 Sing to God! Sing praises to his name!

Exalt the one who rides on the clouds! ²⁷ 

For the Lord is his name! ²⁸ 

Rejoice before him!

Psalms 89:19

89:19 Then you ²⁹  spoke through a vision to your faithful followers ³⁰  and said:

“I have energized a warrior; ³¹ 

I have raised up a young man ³²  from the people.

Psalms 137:7

137:7 Remember, O Lord, what the Edomites did

on the day Jerusalem fell. ³³ 

They said, “Tear it down, tear it down, ³⁴ 

right to its very foundation!”

[11:2]  ¹ tn In the psalms the “wicked” (רְשָׁעִים, rÿsha’im) are typically proud, practical atheists (Ps 10:2, 4, 11) who hate God’s commands, commit sinful deeds, speak lies and slander (Ps 50:16-20), and cheat others (Ps 37:21). They oppose God and threaten his people (Ps 3:8).

[11:2]  ² tn The Hebrew imperfect verbal form depicts the enemies’ hostile action as underway.

[11:2]  ³ tn Heb “a bow.”

[11:2]  ⁴ sn In the darkness. The enemies’ attack, the precise form of which is not indicated, is compared here to a night ambush by archers; the psalmist is defenseless against this deadly attack.

[11:2]  ⁵ tn Heb “pure of heart.” The “heart” is here viewed as the seat of one’s moral character and motives. The “pure of heart” are God’s faithful followers who trust in and love the Lord and, as a result, experience his deliverance (see Pss 7:10; 32:11; 36:10; 64:10; 94:15; 97:11).

[14:4]  ⁶ tn Heb “all the workers of wickedness.” See Pss 5:5; 6:8.

[14:4]  ⁷ tn Heb “Do they not understand?” The rhetorical question (rendered in the translation as a positive affirmation) expresses the psalmist’s amazement at their apparent lack of understanding. This may refer to their lack of moral understanding, but it more likely refers to their failure to anticipate God’s defense of his people (see vv. 5-7).

[25:5]  ¹¹ sn The Lord’s commandments are referred to as truth here because they are a trustworthy and accurate expression of the divine will.

[45:7]  ¹⁶ sn To love justice means to actively promote it.

[45:7]  ¹⁷ sn To hate evil means to actively oppose it.

[45:7]  ¹⁸ tn For other examples of the repetition of Elohim, “God,” see Pss 43:4; 48:8, 14; 50:7; 51:14; 67:7. Because the name Yahweh (“Lord”) is relatively rare in Pss 42-83, where the name Elohim (“God”) predominates, this compounding of Elohim may be an alternative form of the compound name “the Lord my/your/our God.”

[45:7]  ¹⁹ sn Anointed you. When read in the light of the preceding context, the anointing is most naturally taken as referring to the king’s coronation. However, the following context (vv. 8-9) focuses on the wedding ceremony, so some prefer to see this anointing as part of the king’s preparations for the wedding celebration. Perhaps the reference to his anointing at his coronation facilitates the transition to the description of the wedding, for the king was also anointed on this occasion.

[45:7]  ²⁰ sn The phrase oil of joy alludes to the fact that the coronation of the king, which was ritually accomplished by anointing his head with olive oil, was a time of great celebration and renewed hope. (If one understands the anointing in conjunction with the wedding ceremony, the “joy” would be that associated with the marriage.) The phrase “oil of joy” also appears in Isa 61:3, where mourners are granted “oil of joy” in conjunction with their deliverance from oppression.

[45:7]  ²¹ tn Heb “from your companions.” The “companions” are most naturally understood as others in the royal family or, more generally, as the king’s countrymen.

[57:4]  ²¹ tn The cohortative form אֶשְׁכְּבָה (’eshkÿvah, “I lie down”) is problematic, for it does not seem to carry one of the normal functions of the cohortative (resolve or request). One possibility is that the form here is a “pseudo-cohortative” used here in a gnomic sense (IBHS 576-77 §34.5.3b).

[57:4]  ²² tn The Hebrew verb לָהַט (lahat) is here understood as a hapax legomenon meaning “devour” (see HALOT 521 s.v. II להט), a homonym of the more common verb meaning “to burn.” A more traditional interpretation takes the verb from this latter root and translates, “those who are aflame” (see BDB 529 s.v.; cf. NASB “those who breathe forth fire”).

[57:4]  ²³ tn Heb “my life, in the midst of lions, I lie down, devouring ones, sons of mankind, their teeth a spear and arrows and their tongue a sharp sword.” The syntax of the verse is difficult. Another option is to take “my life” with the preceding verse. For this to make sense, one must add a verb, perhaps “and may he deliver” (cf. the LXX), before the phrase. One might then translate, “May God send his loyal love and faithfulness and deliver my life.” If one does take “my life” with v. 4, then the parallelism of v. 5 is altered and one might translate: “in the midst of lions I lie down, [among] men who want to devour me, whose teeth….”

[59:12]  ²⁶ tn Heb “the sin of their mouth [is] the word of their lips.”

[62:9]  ³¹ tn Heb “only a breath [are] the sons of mankind, a lie [are] the sons of man.” The phrases “sons of mankind” and “sons of man” also appear together in Ps 49:2. Because of the parallel line there, where “rich and poor” are mentioned, a number of interpreters and translators treat these expressions as polar opposites, בְּנֵי אָדָם (bÿney ’adam) referring to the lower classes and בְּנֵי אִישׁ (bÿney ’ish) to higher classes. But usage does not support such a view. The rare phrase בְּנֵי אִישׁ (“sons of man”) appears to refer to human beings in general in its other uses (see Pss 4:2; Lam 3:33). It is better to understand the phrases as synonymous expressions.

[62:9]  ³² tn The noun הֶבֶל (hevel), translated “a breath” earlier in the verse, appears again here.

[67:1]  ³⁶ sn Psalm 67. The psalmist prays for God’s blessing upon his people and urges the nations to praise him for he is the just ruler of the world.

[67:1]  ³⁷ tn Or “have mercy on us.”

[67:1]  ³⁸ tn The prefixed verbal forms are understood as jussives expressing the psalmist’s prayer. Note the jussive form יָאֵר (ya’er) in the next line.

[67:1]  ³⁹ tn Heb “may he cause his face to shine with us.”

[67:4]  ⁴¹ tn Or “peoples.”

[67:4]  ⁴² tn Heb “for you judge nations fairly, and [as for the] peoples in the earth, you lead them.” The imperfects are translated with the present tense because the statement is understood as a generalization about God’s providential control of the world. Another option is to understand the statement as anticipating God’s future rule (“for you will rule…and govern”).

[68:4]  ⁴⁶ tn Traditionally the Hebrew term עֲרָבוֹת (’aravot) is taken as “steppe-lands” (often rendered “deserts”), but here the form is probably a homonym meaning “clouds.” Verse 33, which depicts God as the one who “rides on the sky” strongly favors this (see as well Deut 33:26), as does the reference in v. 9 to God as the source of rain. The term עֲרָבָה (’aravah, “cloud”) is cognate with Akkadian urpatu/erpetu and with Ugaritic ’rpt. The phrase rkb ’rpt (“one who rides on the clouds”) appears in Ugaritic mythological texts as an epithet of the storm god Baal. The nonphonemic interchange of the bilabial consonants b and p is attested elsewhere in roots common to Hebrew and Ugaritic, though the phenomenon is relatively rare.

[68:4]  ⁴⁷ tc Heb “in the Lord his name.” If the MT is retained, the preposition -בְ (bet) is introducing the predicate (the so-called bet of identity), “the Lord is his name.” However, some prefer to emend the text to כִּי יָהּ שְׁמוֹ (ki yah shÿmo, “for Yah is his name”). This emendation, reflected in the present translation, assumes a confusion of bet (ב) and kaf (כ) and haplography of yod (י).

[89:19]  ⁵¹ tn The pronoun “you” refers to the Lord, who is addressed here. The quotation that follows further develops the announcement of vv. 3-4.

[89:19]  ⁵² tc Many medieval mss read the singular here, “your faithful follower.” In this case the statement refers directly to Nathan’s oracle to David (see 2 Sam 7:17).

[89:19]  ⁵³ tn Heb “I have placed help upon a warrior.”

[89:19]  ⁵⁴ tn Or perhaps “a chosen one.”

[137:7]  ⁵⁶ tn Heb “remember, O Lord, against the sons of Edom, the day of Jerusalem.”

[137:7]  ⁵⁷ tn Heb “lay [it] bare, lay [it] bare.”