Psalms 22:27

22:27 Let all the people of the earth acknowledge the Lord and turn to him! ¹ 

Let all the nations ²  worship you! ³ 

Psalms 42:4

42:4 I will remember and weep! ⁴ 

For I was once walking along with the great throng to the temple of God,

shouting and giving thanks along with the crowd as we celebrated the holy festival. ⁵ 

Psalms 42:6

42:6 I am depressed, ⁶ 

so I will pray to you while I am trapped here in the region of the upper Jordan, ⁷ 

from Hermon, ⁸  from Mount Mizar. ⁹ 

Psalms 88:5

88:5 adrift ¹⁰  among the dead,

like corpses lying in the grave,

whom you remember no more,

and who are cut off from your power. ¹¹ 

Psalms 106:7

106:7 Our ancestors in Egypt failed to appreciate your miraculous deeds,

they failed to remember your many acts of loyal love,

and they rebelled at the sea, by the Red Sea. ¹² 

Psalms 109:16

109:16 For he never bothered to show kindness; ¹³ 

he harassed the oppressed and needy,

and killed the disheartened. ¹⁴ 

Psalms 137:6-7

137:6 May my tongue stick to the roof of my mouth,

if I do not remember you,

and do not give Jerusalem priority

over whatever gives me the most joy. ¹⁵ 

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

on the day Jerusalem fell. ¹⁶ 

They said, “Tear it down, tear it down, ¹⁷ 

right to its very foundation!”

[22:27]  ¹ tn Heb “may all the ends of the earth remember and turn to the Lord.” The prefixed verbal forms in v. 27 are understood as jussives (cf. NEB). Another option (cf. NIV, NRSV) is to take the forms as imperfects and translate, “all the people of the earth will acknowledge and turn…and worship.” See vv. 29-32.

[22:27]  ² tn Heb “families of the nations.”

[22:27]  ³ tn Heb “before you.”

[42:4]  ⁴ tn Heb “These things I will remember and I will pour out upon myself my soul.” “These things” are identified in the second half of the verse as those times when the psalmist worshiped in the Lord’s temple. The two cohortative forms indicate the psalmist’s resolve to remember and weep. The expression “pour out upon myself my soul” refers to mourning (see Job 30:16).

[42:4]  ⁵ tc Heb “for I was passing by with the throng [?], I was walking with [?] them to the house of God; with a voice of a ringing shout and thanksgiving a multitude was observing a festival.” The Hebrew phrase בַּסָּךְ אֶדַּדֵּם (bassakh ’eddaddem, “with the throng [?] I was walking with [?]”) is particularly problematic. The noun סָךְ (sakh) occurs only here. If it corresponds to הָמוֹן (hamon, “multitude”) then one can propose a meaning “throng.” The present translation assumes this reading (cf. NIV, NRSV). The form אֶדַּדֵּם (“I will walk with [?]”) is also very problematic. The form can be taken as a Hitpael from דָּדָה (dadah; this verb possibly appears in Isa 38:15), but the pronominal suffix is problematic. For this reason many emend the form to ם[י]אַדִּרִ (’adirim, “nobles”) or ם-רִ[י]אַדִ (’adirim, “great,” with enclitic mem [ם]). The present translation understands the latter and takes the adjective “great” as modifying “throng.” If one emends סָךְ (sakh, “throng [?]”) to סֹךְ (sokh, “shelter”; see the Qere of Ps 27:5), then ר[י]אַדִּ (’addir) could be taken as a divine epithet, “[in the shelter of] the majestic one,” a reading which may find support in the LXX and Syriac Peshitta.

[42:6]  ⁷ tn Heb “my God, upon me my soul bows down.” As noted earlier, “my God” belongs with the end of v. 6.

[42:6]  ⁸ tn Heb “therefore I will remember you from the land of Jordan.” “Remember” is here used metonymically for prayer (see vv. 8-9). As the next line indicates, the region of the upper Jordan, where the river originates, is in view.

[42:6]  ⁹ tc Heb “Hermons.” The plural form of the name occurs only here in the OT. Some suggest the plural refers to multiple mountain peaks (cf. NASB) or simply retain the plural in the translation (cf. NEB), but the final mem (ם) is probably dittographic (note that the next form in the text begins with the letter mem) or enclitic. At a later time it was misinterpreted as a plural marker and vocalized accordingly.

[42:6]  ¹⁰ tn The Hebrew term מִצְעָר (mits’ar) is probably a proper name (“Mizar”), designating a particular mountain in the Hermon region. The name appears only here in the OT.

[88:5]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “set free.”

[88:5]  ¹¹ tn Heb “from your hand.”

[106:7]  ¹³ tn Heb “Reed Sea” (also in vv. 9, 22). “Reed Sea” (or “Sea of Reeds”) is a more accurate rendering of the Hebrew expression יָם סוּף (yam suf), traditionally translated “Red Sea.” See the note on the term “Red Sea” in Exod 13:18.

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

[109:16]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “and he chased an oppressed and needy man, and one timid of heart to put [him] to death.”

[137:6]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “if I do not lift up Jerusalem over the top of my joy.”

[137:7]  ²² tn Heb “remember, O Lord, against the sons of Edom, the day of Jerusalem.”

[137:7]  ²³ tn Heb “lay [it] bare, lay [it] bare.”