Psalms 31:5

31:5 Into your hand I entrust my life; ¹ 

you will rescue ²  me, O Lord, the faithful God.

Psalms 77:6

77:6 I said, “During the night I will remember the song I once sang;

I will think very carefully.”

I tried to make sense of what was happening. ³ 

[31:5]  ¹ tn Heb “my spirit.” The noun רוּחַ (ruakh, “spirit”) here refers to the animating spirit that gives the psalmist life.

[31:5]  ² tn Or “redeem.” The perfect verbal form is understood here as anticipatory, indicating rhetorically the psalmist’s certitude and confidence that God will intervene. The psalmist is so confident of God’s positive response to his prayer that he can describe his deliverance as if it had already happened. Another option is to take the perfect as precative, expressing a wish or request (“rescue me”; cf. NIV). See IBHS 494-95 §30.5.4c, d. However, not all grammarians are convinced that the perfect is used as a precative in biblical Hebrew.

[77:6]  ³ tn Heb “I will remember my song in the night, with my heart I will reflect. And my spirit searched.” As in v. 4, the words of v. 6a are understood as what the psalmist said earlier. Consequently the words “I said” are supplied in the translation for clarification (see v. 10). The prefixed verbal form with vav (ו) consecutive at the beginning of the final line is taken as sequential to the perfect “I thought” in v. 6.