Psalms 13:2

13:2 How long must I worry, ¹ 

and suffer in broad daylight? ² 

How long will my enemy gloat over me? ³ 

Psalms 35:26

35:26 May those who want to harm me be totally embarrassed and ashamed! ⁴ 

May those who arrogantly taunt me be covered with shame and humiliation! ⁵ 

Psalms 48:2

48:2 It is lofty and pleasing to look at, ⁶ 

a source of joy to the whole earth. ⁷ 

Mount Zion resembles the peaks of Zaphon; ⁸ 

it is the city of the great king.

Psalms 63:11

63:11 But the king ⁹  will rejoice in God;

everyone who takes oaths in his name ¹⁰  will boast,

for the mouths of those who speak lies will be shut up. ¹¹ 

Psalms 111:1

Psalm 111 ¹² 

111:1 Praise the Lord!

I will give thanks to the Lord with my whole heart,

in the assembly of the godly and the congregation.

[13:2]  ¹ tn Heb “How long will I put counsel in my being?”

[13:2]  ² tn Heb “[with] grief in my heart by day.”

[13:2]  ³ tn Heb “be exalted over me.” Perhaps one could translate, “How long will my enemy defeat me?”

[35:26]  ⁴ tn Heb “may they be embarrassed and ashamed together, the ones who rejoice over my harm.”

[35:26]  ⁵ tn Heb “may they be clothed with shame and humiliation, the ones who magnify [themselves] against me.” The prefixed verbal forms in v. 26 are understood as jussives (see vv. 24b-25, where the negative particle אַל (’al) appears before the prefixed verbal forms, indicating they are jussives). The psalmist is calling down judgment on his enemies.

[48:2]  ⁷ tn Heb “beautiful of height.” The Hebrew term נוֹף (nof, “height”) is a genitive of specification after the qualitative noun “beautiful.” The idea seems to be that Mount Zion, because of its lofty appearance, is pleasing to the sight.

[48:2]  ⁸ sn A source of joy to the whole earth. The language is hyperbolic. Zion, as the dwelling place of the universal king, is pictured as the world’s capital. The prophets anticipated this idealized picture becoming a reality in the eschaton (see Isa 2:1-4).

[48:2]  ⁹ tn Heb “Mount Zion, the peaks of Zaphon.” Like all the preceding phrases in v. 2, both phrases are appositional to “city of our God, his holy hill” in v. 1, suggesting an identification in the poet’s mind between Mount Zion and Zaphon. “Zaphon” usually refers to the “north” in a general sense (see Pss 89:12; 107:3), but here, where it is collocated with “peaks,” it refers specifically to Mount Zaphon, located in the vicinity of ancient Ugarit and viewed as the mountain where the gods assembled (see Isa 14:13). By alluding to West Semitic mythology in this way, the psalm affirms that Mount Zion is the real divine mountain, for it is here that the Lord God of Israel lives and rules over the nations. See P. Craigie, Psalms 1-50 (WBC), 353, and T. N. D. Mettinger, In Search of God, 103.

[63:11]  ¹⁰ sn The psalmist probably refers to himself in the third person here.

[63:11]  ¹¹ tn Heb “who swears [an oath] by him.”

[63:11]  ¹² tn The Niphal of this verb occurs only here and in Gen 8:2, where it is used of God “stopping” or “damming up” the great deep as he brought the flood to an end.

[111:1]  ¹³ sn Psalm 111. The psalmist praises God for his marvelous deeds, especially the way in which he provides for and delivers his people. The psalm is an acrostic. After the introductory call to praise, every poetic line (twenty-two in all) begins with a successive letter of the Hebrew alphabet.