Psalms 22:1-3

Psalm 22 ¹ 

For the music director; according to the tune “Morning Doe;” ²  a psalm of David.

22:1 My God, my God, why have you abandoned me? ³ 

I groan in prayer, but help seems far away. ⁴ 

22:2 My God, I cry out during the day,

but you do not answer,

and during the night my prayers do not let up. ⁵ 

22:3 You are holy;

you sit as king receiving the praises of Israel. ⁶ 

Psalms 30:7-8

30:7 O Lord, in your good favor you made me secure. ⁷ 

Then you rejected me ⁸  and I was terrified.

30:8 To you, O Lord, I cried out;

I begged the Lord for mercy: ⁹ 

Psalms 34:6

34:6 This oppressed man cried out and the Lord heard;

he saved him ¹⁰  from all his troubles.

Psalms 50:15

50:15 Pray to me when you are in trouble! ¹¹ 

I will deliver you, and you will honor me!” ¹² 

Psalms 118:5

118:5 In my distress ¹³  I cried out to the Lord.

The Lord answered me and put me in a wide open place. ¹⁴ 

Psalms 130:1-2

Psalm 130 ¹⁵ 

A song of ascents. ¹⁶ 

130:1 From the deep water ¹⁷  I cry out to you, O Lord.

130:2 O Lord, listen to me! ¹⁸ 

Pay attention to ¹⁹  my plea for mercy!

Psalms 130:2

130:2 O Lord, listen to me! ²⁰ 

Pay attention to ²¹  my plea for mercy!

Psalms 33:12-13

33:12 How blessed ²²  is the nation whose God is the Lord,

the people whom he has chosen to be his special possession. ²³ 

33:13 The Lord watches ²⁴  from heaven;

he sees all people. ²⁵ 

Isaiah 37:15-20

37:15 Hezekiah prayed before the Lord: 37:16 “O Lord who commands armies, O God of Israel, who is enthroned on the cherubim! ²⁶  You alone are God over all the kingdoms of the earth. You made the sky ²⁷  and the earth. 37:17 Pay attention, Lord, and hear! Open your eyes, Lord, and observe! Listen to this entire message Sennacherib sent and how he taunts the living God! ²⁸  37:18 It is true, Lord, that the kings of Assyria have destroyed all the nations ²⁹  and their lands. 37:19 They have burned the gods of the nations, ³⁰  for they are not really gods, but only the product of human hands manufactured from wood and stone. That is why the Assyrians could destroy them. ³¹  37:20 Now, O Lord our God, rescue us from his power, so all the kingdoms of the earth may know that you alone are the Lord.” ³² 

Isaiah 38:1-3

The Lord Hears Hezekiah’s Prayer

38:1 In those days Hezekiah was stricken with a terminal illness. ³³  The prophet Isaiah son of Amoz visited him and told him, “This is what the Lord says, ‘Give instructions to your household, for you are about to die; you will not get well.’” 38:2 Hezekiah turned his face to the wall and prayed to the Lord, 38:3 “Please, Lord. Remember how I have served you ³⁴  faithfully and with wholehearted devotion, ³⁵  and how I have carried out your will.” ³⁶  Then Hezekiah wept bitterly. ³⁷ 

John 2:2

2:2 and Jesus and his disciples were also invited to the wedding. ³⁸ 

[22:1]  ¹ sn Psalm 22. The psalmist cries out to the Lord for deliverance from his dangerous enemies, who have surrounded him and threaten his life. Confident that the Lord will intervene, he then vows to thank the Lord publicly for his help and anticipates a time when all people will recognize the Lord’s greatness and worship him.

[22:1]  ² tn Heb “according to the doe of the dawn.” Apparently this refers to a particular musical tune or style.

[22:1]  ³ sn From the psalmist’s perspective it seems that God has abandoned him, for he fails to answer his cry for help (vv. 1b-2).

[22:1]  ⁴ tn Heb “far from my deliverance [are] the words of my groaning.” The Hebrew noun שְׁאָגָה (shÿ’agah) and its related verb שָׁאַג (sha’ag) are sometimes used of a lion’s roar, but they can also describe human groaning (see Job 3:24 and Pss 32:3 and 38:8.

[22:2]  ⁵ tn Heb “there is no silence to me.”

[22:3]  ⁶ tn Heb “[O] one who sits [on] the praises of Israel.” The verb “receiving” is supplied in the translation for clarity. The metaphorical language pictures the Lord as sitting enthroned as king in his temple, receiving the praises that his people Israel offer up to him.

[30:7]  ⁷ tn Heb “in your good favor you caused to stand for my mountain strength.” Apparently this means “you established strength for my mountain” (“mountain” in this case representing his rule, which would be centered on Mt. Zion) or “you established strength as my mountain” (“mountain” in this case being a metaphor for security).

[30:7]  ⁸ tn Heb “you hid your face.” The idiom “hide the face” can mean “ignore” (see Pss 10:11; 13:1; 51:9) or, as here, carry the stronger idea of “reject” (see Ps 88:14).

[30:8]  ⁹ tn The prefixed verbal forms in v. 8 are probably preterites; the psalmist recalls that he prayed in his time of crisis.

[34:6]  ¹⁰ tn The pronoun refers back to “this oppressed man,” namely, the psalmist.

[50:15]  ¹¹ tn Heb “call [to] me in a day of trouble.”

[50:15]  ¹² sn In vv. 7-15 the Lord makes it clear that he was not rebuking Israel because they had failed to offer sacrifices (v. 8a). On the contrary, they had been faithful in doing so (v. 8b). However, their understanding of the essence of their relationship with God was confused. Apparently they believed that he needed/desired such sacrifices and that offering them would ensure their prosperity. But the Lord owns all the animals of the world and did not need Israel’s meager sacrifices (vv. 9-13). Other aspects of the relationship were more important to the Lord. He desired Israel to be thankful for his blessings (v. 14a), to demonstrate gratitude for his intervention by repaying the vows they made to him (v. 14b), and to acknowledge their absolute dependence on him (v. 15a). Rather than viewing their sacrifices as somehow essential to God’s well-being, they needed to understand their dependence on him.

[118:5]  ¹³ tn Heb “from the distress.” The noun מֵצַר (metsar, “straits; distress”) occurs only here and in Lam 1:3. In Ps 116:3 מצר should probably be emended to מְצָדֵי (mÿtsadey, “snares of”).

[118:5]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “the Lord answered me in a wide open place.”

[130:1]  ¹⁵ sn Psalm 130. The psalmist, confident of the Lord’s forgiveness, cries out to the Lord for help in the midst of his suffering and urges Israel to do the same.

[130:1]  ¹⁶ sn The precise significance of this title, which appears in Pss 120-134, is unclear. Perhaps worshipers recited these psalms when they ascended the road to Jerusalem to celebrate annual religious festivals. For a discussion of their background see L. C. Allen, Psalms 101-150 (WBC), 219-21.

[130:1]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “depths,” that is, deep waters (see Ps 69:2, 14; Isa 51:10), a metaphor for the life-threatening danger faced by the psalmist.

[130:2]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “my voice.”

[130:2]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “may your ears be attentive to the voice of.”

[130:2]  ²⁰ tn Heb “my voice.”

[130:2]  ²¹ tn Heb “may your ears be attentive to the voice of.”

[33:12]  ²² tn The Hebrew noun is an abstract plural. The word often refers metonymically to the happiness that God-given security and prosperity produce (see Pss 1:1; 2:12; 34:9; 41:1; 65:4; 84:12; 89:15; 106:3; 112:1; 127:5; 128:1; 144:15).

[33:12]  ²³ tn Heb “inheritance.”

[33:13]  ²⁴ tn The Hebrew perfect verbal forms in v. 13 state general facts.

[33:13]  ²⁵ tn Heb “all the sons of men.”

[37:16]  ²⁶ sn Cherubim (singular “cherub”) refers to the images of winged angelic creatures that were above the ark of the covenant.

[37:16]  ²⁷ tn Or “the heavens.” The Hebrew term שָׁמַיִם (shamayim) may be translated “heavens” or “sky” depending on the context.

[37:17]  ²⁸ tn Heb “Hear all the words of Sennacherib which he sent to taunt the living God.”

[37:18]  ²⁹ tn The Hebrew text here has “all the lands,” but the parallel text in 2 Kgs 19:17 has “the nations.”

[37:19]  ³⁰ tn Heb “and they put their gods in the fire.”

[37:19]  ³¹ tn Heb “so they destroyed them” (NASB similar).

[37:20]  ³² tn The parallel text in 2 Kgs 19:19 reads, “that you, Lord, are the only God.”

[38:1]  ³³ tn Heb “was sick to the point of dying”; NRSV “became sick and was at the point of death.”

[38:3]  ³⁴ tn Heb “walked before you.” For a helpful discussion of the background and meaning of this Hebrew idiom, see M. Cogan and H. Tadmor, II Kings (AB), 254.

[38:3]  ³⁵ tn Heb “and with a complete heart”; KJV, ASV “with a perfect heart.”

[38:3]  ³⁶ tn Heb “and that which is good in your eyes I have done.”

[38:3]  ³⁷ tn Heb “wept with great weeping”; NCV “cried loudly”; TEV “began to cry bitterly.”

[2:2]  ³⁸ sn There is no clue to the identity of the bride and groom, but in all probability either relatives or friends of Jesus’ family were involved, since Jesus’ mother and both Jesus and his disciples were invited to the celebration. The attitude of Mary in approaching Jesus and asking him to do something when the wine ran out also suggests that familial obligations were involved.