Psalms 128:2

128:2 You ¹  will eat what you worked so hard to grow. ² 

You will be blessed and secure. ³ 

Psalms 18:8

18:8 Smoke ascended from ⁴  his nose; ⁵ 

fire devoured as it came from his mouth; ⁶ 

he hurled down fiery coals. ⁷ 

Psalms 50:3

50:3 Our God approaches and is not silent; ⁸ 

consuming fire goes ahead of him

and all around him a storm rages. ⁹ 

[128:2]  ¹ tn The psalmist addresses the representative God-fearing man, as indicated by the references to “your wife” (v. 3) and “the man” (v. 4), as well as the second masculine singular pronominal and verbal forms in vv. 2-6.

[128:2]  ² tn Heb “the work of your hands, indeed you will eat.”

[128:2]  ³ tn Heb “how blessed you [will be] and it will be good for you.”

[18:8]  ⁴ tn Heb “within”; or “[from] within.” For a discussion of the use of the preposition -בְּ (bÿ) here, see R. B. Chisholm, “An Exegetical and Theological Study of Psalm 18/2 Samuel 22” (Th.D. diss., Dallas Theological Seminary, 1983), 163-64.

[18:8]  ⁵ tn Or “in his anger.” The noun אַף (’af) can carry the abstract meaning “anger,” but the parallelism (note “from his mouth”) suggests the more concrete meaning “nose” here. See also v. 15, “the powerful breath of your nose.”

[18:8]  ⁶ tn Heb “fire from his mouth devoured.” In this poetic narrative context the prefixed verbal form is best understood as a preterite indicating past tense, not an imperfect. Note the two perfect verbal forms in the verse.

[18:8]  ⁷ tn Heb “coals burned from him.” Perhaps the psalmist pictures God’s fiery breath igniting coals (cf. Job 41:21), which he then hurls as weapons (cf. Ps 120:4).

[50:3]  ⁷ tn According to GKC 322 §109.e, the jussive (note the negative particle אַל, ’al) is used rhetorically here “to express the conviction that something cannot or should not happen.”

[50:3]  ⁸ tn Heb “fire before him devours, and around him it is very stormy.”