Psalms 36:1-4

Psalm 36 ¹ 

For the music director; written by the Lord’s servant, David; an oracle. ² 

36:1 An evil man is rebellious to the core. ³ 

He does not fear God, ⁴ 

36:2 for he is too proud

to recognize and give up his sin. ⁵ 

36:3 The words he speaks are sinful and deceitful;

he does not care about doing what is wise and right. ⁶ 

36:4 He plans ways to sin while he lies in bed;

he is committed to a sinful lifestyle; ⁷ 

he does not reject what is evil. ⁸ 

Psalms 94:4-8

94:4 They spew out threats ⁹  and speak defiantly;

all the evildoers boast. ¹⁰ 

94:5 O Lord, they crush your people;

they oppress the nation that belongs to you. ¹¹ 

94:6 They kill the widow and the one residing outside his native land,

and they murder the fatherless. ¹² 

94:7 Then they say, “The Lord does not see this;

the God of Jacob does not take notice of it.” ¹³ 

94:8 Take notice of this, ¹⁴  you ignorant people! ¹⁵ 

You fools, when will you ever understand?

Genesis 6:5

6:5 But the Lord saw ¹⁶  that the wickedness of humankind had become great on the earth. Every inclination ¹⁷  of the thoughts ¹⁸  of their minds ¹⁹  was only evil ²⁰  all the time. ²¹ 

Genesis 6:11-12

6:11 The earth was ruined ²²  in the sight of ²³  God; the earth was filled with violence. ²⁴  6:12 God saw the earth, and indeed ²⁵  it was ruined, ²⁶  for all living creatures ²⁷  on the earth were sinful. ²⁸ 

Isaiah 1:4

1:4 ²⁹ The sinful nation is as good as dead, ³⁰ 

the people weighed down by evil deeds.

They are offspring who do wrong,

children ³¹  who do wicked things.

They have abandoned the Lord,

and rejected the Holy One of Israel. ³² 

They are alienated from him. ³³ 

[36:1]  ¹ sn Psalm 36. Though evil men plan to harm others, the psalmist is confident that the Lord is the just ruler of the earth who gives and sustains all life. He prays for divine blessing and protection and anticipates God’s judgment of the wicked.

[36:1]  ² tn In the Hebrew text the word נאם (“oracle”) appears at the beginning of the next verse (v. 2 in the Hebrew text because the superscription is considered v. 1). The resulting reading, “an oracle of rebellion for the wicked [is] in the midst of my heart” (cf. NIV) apparently means that the psalm, which foresees the downfall of the wicked, is a prophetic oracle about the rebellion of the wicked which emerges from the soul of the psalmist. One could translate, “Here is a poem written as I reflected on the rebellious character of evil men.” Another option, followed in the translation above, is to attach נאם (nÿ’um, “oracle”) with the superscription. For another example of a Davidic poem being labeled an “oracle,” see 2 Sam 23:1.

[36:1]  ³ tn Heb “[the] rebellion of an evil man [is] in the midst of my heart.” The translation assumes a reading “in the midst of his heart” (i.e., “to the core”) instead of “in the midst of my heart,” a change which finds support in a a few medieval Hebrew mss, the Hebrew text of Origen’s Hexapla, and the Syriac.

[36:1]  ⁴ tn Heb “there is no dread of God before his eyes.” The phrase “dread of God” refers here to a healthy respect for God which recognizes that he will punish evil behavior.

[36:2]  ⁵ tn Heb “for it causes to be smooth to him in his eyes to find his sin to hate.” The meaning of the Hebrew text is unclear. Perhaps the point is this: His rebellious attitude makes him reject any notion that God will hold him accountable. His attitude also prevents him from recognizing and repudiating his sinful ways.

[36:3]  ⁶ tn Heb “he ceases to exhibit wisdom to do good.” The Hiphil forms are exhibitive, indicating the outward expression of an inner attitude.

[36:4]  ⁷ tn Heb “he takes a stand in a way [that is] not good.” The word “way” here refers metaphorically to behavior or life style.

[36:4]  ⁸ tn The three imperfect verbal forms in v. 4 highlight the characteristic behavior of the typical evildoer.

[94:4]  ⁹ tn Heb “they gush forth [words].”

[94:4]  ¹⁰ tn The Hitpael of אָמַר (’amar) occurs only here (and perhaps in Isa 61:6).

[94:5]  ¹¹ tn Or “your inheritance.”

[94:6]  ¹² tn The Hebrew noun יָתוֹם (yatom) refers to one who has lost his father (not necessarily his mother, see Ps 109:9). Because they were so vulnerable and were frequently exploited, fatherless children are often mentioned as epitomizing the oppressed (see Pss 10:14; 68:5; 82:3; 146:9; as well as Job 6:27; 22:9; 24:3, 9; 29:12; 31:17, 21).

[94:7]  ¹³ tn Heb “does not understand.”

[94:8]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “understand.” The verb used in v. 7 is repeated here for rhetorical effect. The people referred to here claim God is ignorant of their actions, but the psalmist corrects their faulty viewpoint.

[94:8]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “[you] brutish among the people.”

[6:5]  ¹⁶ sn The Hebrew verb translated “saw” (רָאָה, ra’ah), used here of God’s evaluation of humankind’s evil deeds, contrasts with God’s evaluation of creative work in Gen 1, when he observed that everything was good.

[6:5]  ¹⁷ tn The noun יֵצֶר (yetser) is related to the verb יָצָר (yatsar, “to form, to fashion [with a design]”). Here it refers to human plans or intentions (see Gen 8:21; 1 Chr 28:9; 29:18). People had taken their God-given capacities and used them to devise evil. The word יֵצֶר (yetser) became a significant theological term in Rabbinic literature for what might be called the sin nature – the evil inclination (see also R. E. Murphy, “Yeser in the Qumran Literature,” Bib 39 [1958]: 334-44).

[6:5]  ¹⁸ tn The related verb הָשָׁב (hashav) means “to think, to devise, to reckon.” The noun (here) refers to thoughts or considerations.

[6:5]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “his heart” (referring to collective “humankind”). The Hebrew term לֵב (lev, “heart”) frequently refers to the seat of one’s thoughts (see BDB 524 s.v. לֵב). In contemporary English this is typically referred to as the “mind.”

[6:5]  ²⁰ sn Every inclination of the thoughts of their minds was only evil. There is hardly a stronger statement of the wickedness of the human race than this. Here is the result of falling into the “knowledge of good and evil”: Evil becomes dominant, and the good is ruined by the evil.

[6:5]  ²¹ tn Heb “all the day.”

[6:11]  ²² tn Apart from Gen 6:11-12, the Niphal form of this verb occurs in Exod 8:20 HT (8:24 ET), where it describes the effect of the swarms of flies on the land of Egypt; Jer 13:7 and 18:4, where it is used of a “ruined” belt and “marred” clay pot, respectively; and Ezek 20:44, where it describes Judah’s morally “corrupt” actions. The sense “morally corrupt” fits well in Gen 6:11 because of the parallelism (note “the earth was filled with violence”). In this case “earth” would stand by metonymy for its sinful inhabitants. However, the translation “ruined” works just as well, if not better. In this case humankind’s sin is viewed has having an adverse effect upon the earth. Note that vv. 12b-13 make a distinction between the earth and the living creatures who live on it.

[6:11]  ²³ tn Heb “before.”

[6:11]  ²⁴ tn The Hebrew word translated “violence” refers elsewhere to a broad range of crimes, including unjust treatment (Gen 16:5; Amos 3:10), injurious legal testimony (Deut 19:16), deadly assault (Gen 49:5), murder (Judg 9:24), and rape (Jer 13:22).

[6:12]  ²⁵ tn Or “God saw how corrupt the earth was.”

[6:12]  ²⁶ tn The repetition in the text (see v. 11) emphasizes the point.

[6:12]  ²⁷ tn Heb “flesh.” Since moral corruption is in view here, most modern western interpreters understand the referent to be humankind. However, the phrase “all flesh” is used consistently of humankind and the animals in Gen 6-9 (6:17, 19; 7:15-16, 21; 8:17; 9:11, 15-17), suggesting that the author intends to picture all living creatures, humankind and animals, as guilty of moral failure. This would explain why the animals, not just humankind, are victims of the ensuing divine judgment. The OT sometimes views animals as morally culpable (Gen 9:5; Exod 21:28-29; Jonah 3:7-8). The OT also teaches that a person’s sin can contaminate others (people and animals) in the sinful person’s sphere (see the story of Achan, especially Josh 7:10). So the animals could be viewed here as morally contaminated because of their association with sinful humankind.

[6:12]  ²⁸ tn Heb “had corrupted its way.” The third masculine singular pronominal suffix on “way” refers to the collective “all flesh.” The construction “corrupt one’s way” occurs only here (though Ezek 16:47 uses the Hiphil in an intransitive sense with the preposition בְּ [bet, “in”] followed by “ways”). The Hiphil of שָׁחָת (shakhat) means “to ruin, to destroy, to corrupt,” often as here in a moral/ethical sense. The Hebrew term דֶּרֶךְ (derekh, “way”) here refers to behavior or moral character, a sense that it frequently carries (see BDB 203 s.v. דֶּרֶךְ 6.a).

[1:4]  ²⁹ sn Having summoned the witnesses and announced the Lord’s accusation against Israel, Isaiah mourns the nation’s impending doom. The third person references to the Lord in the second half of the verse suggest that the quotation from the Lord (cf. vv. 2-3) has concluded.

[1:4]  ³⁰ tn Heb “Woe [to the] sinful nation.” The Hebrew term הוֹי, (hoy, “woe, ah”) was used in funeral laments (see 1 Kgs 13:30; Jer 22:18; 34:5) and carries the connotation of death. In highly dramatic fashion the prophet acts out Israel’s funeral in advance, emphasizing that their demise is inevitable if they do not repent soon.

[1:4]  ³¹ tn Or “sons” (NASB). The prophet contrasts four terms of privilege – nation, people, offspring, children – with four terms that depict Israel’s sinful condition in Isaiah’s day – sinful, evil, wrong, wicked (see J. A. Motyer, The Prophecy of Isaiah, 43).

[1:4]  ³² sn Holy One of Israel is one of Isaiah’s favorite divine titles for God. It pictures the Lord as the sovereign king who rules over his covenant people and exercises moral authority over them.

[1:4]  ³³ tn Heb “they are estranged backward.” The LXX omits this statement, which presents syntactical problems and seems to be outside the synonymous parallelistic structure of the verse.