Psalms 18:37-42

18:37 I chase my enemies and catch ¹  them;

I do not turn back until I wipe them out.

18:38 I beat them ²  to death; ³ 

they fall at my feet. ⁴ 

18:39 You give me strength ⁵  for battle;

you make my foes kneel before me. ⁶ 

18:40 You make my enemies retreat; ⁷ 

I destroy those who hate me. ⁸ 

18:41 They cry out, but there is no one to help them; ⁹ 

they cry out to the Lord, ¹⁰  but he does not answer them.

18:42 I grind them as fine windblown dust; ¹¹ 

I beat them underfoot ¹²  like clay ¹³  in the streets.

Psalms 21:8-10

21:8 You ¹⁴  prevail over ¹⁵  all your enemies;

your power is too great for those who hate you. ¹⁶ 

21:9 You burn them up like a fiery furnace ¹⁷  when you appear; ¹⁸ 

the Lord angrily devours them; ¹⁹ 

the fire consumes them.

21:10 You destroy their offspring ²⁰  from the earth,

their descendants ²¹  from among the human race. ²² 

Psalms 69:22-28

69:22 May their dining table become a trap before them!

May it be a snare for that group of friends! ²³ 

69:23 May their eyes be blinded! ²⁴ 

Make them shake violently! ²⁵ 

69:24 Pour out your judgment ²⁶  on them!

May your raging anger ²⁷  overtake them!

69:25 May their camp become desolate,

their tents uninhabited! ²⁸ 

69:26 For they harass ²⁹  the one whom you discipline; ³⁰ 

they spread the news about the suffering of those whom you punish. ³¹ 

69:27 Hold them accountable for all their sins! ³² 

Do not vindicate them! ³³ 

69:28 May their names be deleted from the scroll of the living! ³⁴ 

Do not let their names be listed with the godly! ³⁵ 

Psalms 109:6-20

109:6 ³⁶ Appoint an evil man to testify against him! ³⁷ 

May an accuser stand ³⁸  at his right side!

109:7 When he is judged, he will be found ³⁹  guilty! ⁴⁰ 

Then his prayer will be regarded as sinful.

109:8 May his days be few! ⁴¹ 

May another take his job! ⁴² 

109:9 May his children ⁴³  be fatherless,

and his wife a widow!

109:10 May his children ⁴⁴  roam around begging,

asking for handouts as they leave their ruined home! ⁴⁵ 

109:11 May the creditor seize ⁴⁶  all he owns!

May strangers loot his property! ⁴⁷ 

109:12 May no one show him kindness! ⁴⁸ 

May no one have compassion ⁴⁹  on his fatherless children!

109:13 May his descendants ⁵⁰  be cut off! ⁵¹ 

May the memory of them be wiped out by the time the next generation arrives! ⁵² 

109:14 May his ancestors’ ⁵³  sins be remembered by the Lord!

May his mother’s sin not be forgotten! ⁵⁴ 

109:15 May the Lord be constantly aware of them, ⁵⁵ 

and cut off the memory of his children ⁵⁶  from the earth!

109:16 For he never bothered to show kindness; ⁵⁷ 

he harassed the oppressed and needy,

and killed the disheartened. ⁵⁸ 

109:17 He loved to curse ⁵⁹  others, so those curses have come upon him. ⁶⁰ 

He had no desire to bless anyone, so he has experienced no blessings. ⁶¹ 

109:18 He made cursing a way of life, ⁶² 

so curses poured into his stomach like water

and seeped into his bones like oil. ⁶³ 

109:19 May a curse attach itself to him, like a garment one puts on, ⁶⁴ 

or a belt ⁶⁵  one wears continually!

109:20 May the Lord repay my accusers in this way, ⁶⁶ 

those who say evil things about ⁶⁷  me! ⁶⁸ 

Luke 19:27

19:27 But as for these enemies of mine who did not want me to be their king, ⁶⁹  bring them here and slaughter ⁷⁰  them ⁷¹  in front of me!’”

[18:37]  ¹ tn 2 Sam 22:38 reads “destroy.”

[18:38]  ² tn Or “smash them.” 2 Sam 22:39 reads, “and I wiped them out and smashed them.”

[18:38]  ³ tn Heb “until they are unable to rise.” 2 Sam 22:39 reads, “until they do not rise.”

[18:38]  ⁴ sn They fall at my feet. For ancient Near Eastern parallels, see O. Keel, The Symbolism of the Biblical World, 294-97.

[18:39]  ⁵ tn Heb “clothed me.” See v. 32.

[18:39]  ⁶ tn Heb “you make those who rise against me kneel beneath me.”

[18:40]  ⁷ tn Heb “and [as for] my enemies, you give to me [the] back [or “neck”].” The idiom “give [the] back” means “to cause [one] to turn the back and run away.” Cf. Exod 23:27.

[18:40]  ⁸ sn Those who hate me. See v. 17, where it is the Lord who delivered the psalmist from those who hated him.

[18:41]  ⁹ tn Heb “but there is no deliverer.”

[18:41]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “to the Lord.” The words “they cry out” are supplied in the translation because they are understood by ellipsis (see the preceding line).

[18:42]  ¹¹ tn Heb “I pulverize them like dust upon the face of the wind.” The phrase “upon the face of” here means “before.” 2 Sam 22:43 reads, “like dust of the earth.”

[18:42]  ¹² tc Ps 18:42 reads, “I empty them out” (Hiphil of ריק), while 2 Sam 22:43 reads, “I crush them, I stomp on them” (juxtaposing the synonyms דקק and רקע). It is likely that the latter is a conflation of variants. One, but not both, of the verbs in 2 Sam 22:43 is probably original; “empty out” does not form as good a parallel with “grind, pulverize” in the parallel line.

[18:42]  ¹³ tn Or “mud.”

[21:8]  ¹⁴ tn The king is now addressed. One could argue that the Lord is still being addressed, but v. 9 militates against this proposal, for there the Lord is mentioned in the third person and appears to be distinct from the addressee (unless, of course, one takes “Lord” in v. 9 as vocative; see the note on “them” in v. 9b). Verse 7 begins this transition to a new addressee by referring to both the king and the Lord in the third person (in vv. 1-6 the Lord is addressed and only the king referred to in the third person).

[21:8]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “your hand finds.” The idiom pictures the king grabbing hold of his enemies and defeating them (see 1 Sam 23:17). The imperfect verbal forms in vv. 8-12 may be translated with the future tense, as long as the future is understood as generalizing.

[21:8]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “your right hand finds those who hate you.”

[21:9]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “you make them like a furnace of fire.” Although many modern translations retain the literal Hebrew, the statement is elliptical. The point is not that he makes them like a furnace, but like an object burned in a furnace (cf. NEB, “at your coming you shall plunge them into a fiery furnace”).

[21:9]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “at the time of your face.” The “face” of the king here refers to his angry presence. See Lam 4:16.

[21:9]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “the Lord, in his anger he swallows them, and fire devours them.” Some take “the Lord” as a vocative, in which case he is addressed in vv. 8-9a. But this makes the use of the third person in v. 9b rather awkward, though the king could be the subject (see vv. 1-7).

[21:10]  ²⁰ tn Heb “fruit.” The next line makes it clear that offspring is in view.

[21:10]  ²¹ tn Heb “seed.”

[21:10]  ²² tn Heb “sons of man.”

[69:22]  ²³ tc Heb “and to the friends for a snare.” The plural of שָׁלוֹם (shalom, “peace”) is used in Ps 55:20 of one’s “friends.” If the reading of the MT is retained here, the term depicts the psalmist’s enemies as a close-knit group of friends who are bound together by their hatred for the psalmist. Some prefer to revocalize the text as וּלְשִׁלּוּמִים (ulÿshillumim, “and for retribution”). In this case the noun stands parallel to פַּח (pakh, “trap”) and מוֹקֵשׁ (moqesh, “snare”), and one might translate, “may their dining table become a trap before them, [a means of] retribution and a snare” (cf. NIV).

[69:23]  ²⁴ tn Heb “may their eyes be darkened from seeing.”

[69:23]  ²⁵ tn Heb “make their hips shake continually.”

[69:24]  ²⁶ tn Heb “anger.” “Anger” here refers metonymically to divine judgment, which is the practical effect of God’s anger.

[69:24]  ²⁷ tn Heb “the rage of your anger.” The phrase “rage of your anger” employs an appositional genitive. Synonyms are joined in a construct relationship to emphasize the single idea. For a detailed discussion of the grammatical point with numerous examples, see Y. Avishur, “Pairs of Synonymous Words in the Construct State (and in Appositional Hendiadys) in Biblical Hebrew,” Semitics 2 (1971), 17-81.

[69:25]  ²⁸ tn Heb “in their tents may there not be one who dwells.”

[69:26]  ²⁹ tn Or “persecute”; Heb “chase.”

[69:26]  ³⁰ tn Heb “for you, the one whom you strike, they chase.”

[69:26]  ³¹ tn Heb “they announce the pain of your wounded ones” (i.e., “the ones whom you wounded,” as the parallel line makes clear).

[69:27]  ³² tn Heb “place sin upon their sin.”

[69:27]  ³³ tn Heb “let them not come into your vindication.”

[69:28]  ³⁴ tn Heb “let them be wiped out of the scroll of the living.”

[69:28]  ³⁵ tn Heb “and with the godly let them not be written.”

[109:6]  ³⁶ sn In vv. 6-19 the psalmist calls on God to judge his enemies severely. Some attribute this curse-list to the psalmist’s enemies rather than the psalmist. In this case one should paraphrase v. 6: “They say about me, ‘Appoint an evil man, etc.’” Those supporting this line of interpretation point out that vv. 2-5 and 20 refer to the enemies’ attack on the psalmist being a verbal one. Furthermore in vv. 1-5, 20 the psalmist speaks of his enemies in the plural, while vv. 6-19 refer to an individual. This use of the singular in vv. 6-19 could be readily explained if this is the psalmist’s enemies’ curse on him. However, it is much more natural to understand vv. 6-19 as the psalmist’s prayer against his enemies. There is no introductory quotation formula in v. 6 to indicate that the psalmist is quoting anyone, and the statement “may the Lord repay my accusers in this way” in v. 20 most naturally appears to be a fitting conclusion to the prayer in vv. 6-19. But what about the use of the singular in vv. 6-19? Often in the psalms the psalmist will describe his enemies as a group, but then speak of them as an individual as well, as if viewing his adversaries collectively as one powerful foe. See, for example, Ps 7, where the psalmist uses both the plural (vv. 1, 6) and the singular (vv. 2, 4-5) in referring to enemies. Perhaps by using the singular in such cases, the psalmist wants to single out each enemy for individual attention, or perhaps he has one especially hostile enemy in mind who epitomizes the opposition of the whole group. This may well be the case in Ps 109. Perhaps we should understand the singular throughout vv. 6-19 in the sense of “each and every one.” For a lengthy and well-reasoned defense of the opposite view – that vv. 6-19 are a quotation of what the enemies said about the psalmist – see L. C. Allen, Psalms 101-150 (WBC), 72-73.

[109:6]  ³⁷ tn Heb “appoint against him an evil [man].”

[109:6]  ³⁸ tn The prefixed verbal form is taken as a jussive here (note the imperative in the preceding line).

[109:7]  ³⁹ tn The prefixed verbal form could be taken as a jussive, but the use of the imperfect form in the following line suggests that v. 7 anticipates the outcome of the accusation envisioned in v. 6.

[109:7]  ⁴⁰ tn Heb “he will go out [as] a criminal” (that is, guilty).

[109:8]  ⁴¹ tn The prefixed verbal forms (except those with vav [ו] consecutive) in vv. 8-20 are taken as jussives of prayer. Note the distinct jussive forms used in vv. 12-13, 15, 19.

[109:8]  ⁴² tn The Hebrew noun פְּקֻדָּה (pÿquddah) can mean “charge” or “office,” though BDB 824 s.v. suggests that here it refers to his possessions.

[109:9]  ⁴³ tn Or “sons.”

[109:10]  ⁴⁴ tn Or “sons.”

[109:10]  ⁴⁵ tn Heb “and roaming, may his children roam and beg, and seek from their ruins.” Some, following the LXX, emend the term וְדָרְשׁוּ (vÿdoreshu, “and seek”) to יְגֹרְשׁוּ (yÿgoreshu; a Pual jussive, “may they be driven away” [see Job 30:5; cf. NIV, NRSV]), but דָּרַשׁ (darash) nicely parallels שִׁאֵלוּ (shi’elu, “and beg”) in the preceding line.

[109:11]  ⁴⁶ tn Heb “lay snares for” (see Ps 38:12).

[109:11]  ⁴⁷ tn Heb “the product of his labor.”

[109:12]  ⁴⁸ tn Heb “may there not be for him one who extends loyal love.”

[109:12]  ⁴⁹ tn Perhaps this refers to being generous (see Ps 37:21).

[109:13]  ⁵⁰ tn Or “offspring.”

[109:13]  ⁵¹ sn On the expression cut off see Ps 37:28.

[109:13]  ⁵² tn Heb “in another generation may their name be wiped out.”

[109:14]  ⁵³ tn Or “fathers’ sins.”

[109:14]  ⁵⁴ tn Heb “not be wiped out.”

[109:15]  ⁵⁵ tn Heb “may they [that is, the sins mentioned in v. 14] be before the Lord continually.”

[109:15]  ⁵⁶ tn Heb “their memory.” The plural pronominal suffix probably refers back to the children mentioned in v. 13, and for clarity this has been specified in the translation.

[109:16]  ⁵⁷ tn Heb “he did not remember to do loyal love.”

[109:16]  ⁵⁸ tn Heb “and he chased an oppressed and needy man, and one timid of heart to put [him] to death.”

[109:17]  ⁵⁹ sn A curse in OT times consists of a formal appeal to God to bring judgment down upon another. Curses were sometimes justified (such as the one spoken by the psalmist here in vv. 6-19), but when they were not, the one pronouncing the curse was in danger of bringing the anticipated judgment down upon himself.

[109:17]  ⁶⁰ tn Heb “and he loved a curse and it came [upon] him.” A reference to the evil man experiencing a curse seems premature here, for the psalmist is asking God to bring judgment on his enemies. For this reason some (cf. NIV, NRSV) prefer to repoint the vav (ו) on “it came” as conjunctive and translate the verb as a jussive of prayer (“may it come upon him!”). The prefixed form with vav consecutive in the next line is emended in the same way and translated, “may it be far from him.” However, the psalmist may be indicating that the evil man’s lifestyle has already begun to yield its destructive fruit.

[109:17]  ⁶¹ tn Heb “and he did not delight in a blessing and it is far from him.”

[109:18]  ⁶² tn Heb “he put on a curse as [if it were] his garment.”

[109:18]  ⁶³ tn Heb “and it came like water into his inner being, and like oil into his bones.” This may refer to this individual’s appetite for cursing. For him cursing was as refreshing as drinking water or massaging oneself with oil. Another option is that the destructive effects of a curse are in view. In this case a destructive curse invades his very being, like water or oil. Some who interpret the verse this way prefer to repoint the vav (ו) on “it came” to a conjunctive vav and interpret the prefixed verb as a jussive, “may it come!”

[109:19]  ⁶⁴ tn Heb “may it be for him like a garment one puts on.”

[109:19]  ⁶⁵ tn The Hebrew noun מֵזַח (mezakh, “belt; waistband”) occurs only here in the OT. The form apparently occurs in Isa 23:10 as well, but an emendation is necessary there.

[109:20]  ⁶⁶ tn Heb “[may] this [be] the repayment to my accusers from the Lord.”

[109:20]  ⁶⁷ tn Or “against.”

[109:20]  ⁶⁸ tn The Hebrew term נֶפֶשׁ (nefesh, “being; soul”) with a pronominal suffix is often equivalent to a pronoun, especially in poetry (see BDB 660 s.v. נֶפֶשׁ 4.a).

[19:27]  ⁶⁹ tn Grk “to rule over them.”

[19:27]  ⁷⁰ tn This term, when used of people rather than animals, has some connotations of violence and mercilessness (L&N 20.72).

[19:27]  ⁷¹ sn Slaughter them. To reject the king is to face certain judgment from him.