Psalms 37:35-36

37:35 I have seen ruthless evil men ¹ 

growing in influence, like a green tree grows in its native soil. ² 

37:36 But then one passes by, and suddenly they have disappeared! ³ 

I looked for them, but they could not be found.

Psalms 73:17-20

73:17 Then I entered the precincts of God’s temple, ⁴ 

and understood the destiny of the wicked. ⁵ 

73:18 Surely ⁶  you put them in slippery places;

you bring them down ⁷  to ruin.

73:19 How desolate they become in a mere moment!

Terrifying judgments make their demise complete! ⁸ 

73:20 They are like a dream after one wakes up. ⁹ 

O Lord, when you awake ¹⁰  you will despise them. ¹¹ 

Psalms 90:5-6

90:5 You bring their lives to an end and they “fall asleep.” ¹² 

In the morning they are like the grass that sprouts up;

90:6 in the morning it glistens ¹³  and sprouts up;

at evening time it withers ¹⁴  and dries up.

Psalms 92:7

92:7 When the wicked sprout up like grass,

and all the evildoers glisten, ¹⁵ 

it is so that they may be annihilated. ¹⁶ 

Psalms 129:5-7

129:5 May all who hate Zion

be humiliated and turned back!

129:6 May they be like the grass on the rooftops

which withers before one can even pull it up, ¹⁷ 

129:7 which cannot fill the reaper’s hand,

or the lap of the one who gathers the grain!

Job 20:5-9

20:5 that the elation of the wicked is brief, ¹⁸ 

the joy of the godless ¹⁹  lasts but a moment. ²⁰ 

20:6 Even though his stature ²¹  reaches to the heavens

and his head touches the clouds,

20:7 he will perish forever, like his own excrement; ²² 

those who used to see him will say, ‘Where is he?’

20:8 Like a dream he flies away, never again to be found, ²³ 

and like a vision of the night he is put to flight.

20:9 People ²⁴  who had seen him will not see him again,

and the place where he was

will recognize him no longer.

James 1:10-11

1:10 But the rich person’s pride should be in his humiliation, because he will pass away like a wildflower in the meadow. ²⁵  1:11 For the sun rises with its heat and dries up the meadow; the petal of the flower falls off and its beauty is lost forever. ²⁶  So also the rich person in the midst of his pursuits will wither away.

James 1:1

Salutation

1:1 From James, ²⁷  a slave ²⁸  of God and the Lord Jesus Christ, to the twelve tribes dispersed abroad. ²⁹  Greetings!

James 1:24

1:24 For he gazes at himself and then goes out and immediately forgets ³⁰  what sort of person he was.

[37:35]  ¹ tn The Hebrew uses the representative singular again here.

[37:35]  ² tn Heb “being exposed [?] like a native, luxuriant.” The Hebrew form מִתְעָרֶה (mit’areh) appears to be a Hitpael participle from עָרָה (’arah, “be exposed”), but this makes no sense in this context. Perhaps the form is a dialectal variant of מִתְעָלָה (“giving oneself an air of importance”; see Jer 51:3), from עָלָה (’alah, “go up”; see P. C. Craigie, Psalms 1-50 [WBC], 296). The noun אֶזְרָח (’ezrakh, “native, full citizen”) refers elsewhere to people, but here, where it is collocated with “luxuriant, green,” it probably refers to a tree growing in native soil.

[37:36]  ³ tn Heb “and he passes by and, look, he is not [there].” The subject of the verb “passes by” is probably indefinite, referring to any passerby. Some prefer to change the form to first person, “and I passed by” (cf. NEB; note the first person verbal forms in preceding verse and in the following line).

[73:17]  ⁴ tn The plural of the term מִקְדָּשׁ (miqdash) probably refers to the temple precincts (see Ps 68:35; Jer 51:51).

[73:17]  ⁵ tn Heb “I discerned their end.” At the temple the psalmist perhaps received an oracle of deliverance announcing his vindication and the demise of the wicked (see Ps 12) or heard songs of confidence (for example, Ps 11), wisdom psalms (for example, Pss 1, 37), and hymns (for example, Ps 112) that describe the eventual downfall of the proud and wealthy.

[73:18]  ⁶ tn The use of the Hebrew term אַךְ (’akh, “surely”) here literarily counteracts its use in v. 13. The repetition draws attention to the contrast between the two statements, the first of which expresses the psalmist’s earlier despair and the second his newly discovered confidence.

[73:18]  ⁷ tn Heb “cause them to fall.”

[73:19]  ⁸ tn Heb “they come to an end, they are finished, from terrors.”

[73:20]  ⁹ tn Heb “like a dream from awakening.” They lack any real substance; their prosperity will last for only a brief time.

[73:20]  ¹⁰ sn When you awake. The psalmist compares God’s inactivity to sleep and the time of God’s judgment to his awakening from sleep.

[73:20]  ¹¹ tn Heb “you will despise their form.” The Hebrew term צֶלֶם (tselem, “form; image”) also suggests their short-lived nature. Rather than having real substance, they are like the mere images that populate one’s dreams. Note the similar use of the term in Ps 39:6.

[90:5]  ¹² tn Heb “you bring them to an end [with] sleep.” The Hebrew verb זָרַם (zaram) has traditionally been taken to mean “flood” or “overwhelm” (note the Polel form of a root זרם in Ps 77:17, where the verb is used of the clouds pouring down rain). However, the verb form here is Qal, not Polel, and is better understood as a homonym meaning “to make an end [of life].” The term שֵׁנָה (shenah, “sleep”) can be taken as an adverbial accusative; it is a euphemism here for death (see Ps 76:5-6).

[90:6]  ¹³ tn Or “flourishes.” The verb is used of a crown shining in Ps 132:18. Perhaps here in Ps 90:6 it refers to the glistening of the grass in the morning dew.

[90:6]  ¹⁴ tn The Polel form of this verb occurs only here. Perhaps the form should be emended to a Qal (which necessitates eliminating the final lamed [ל] as dittographic). See Ps 37:2.

[92:7]  ¹⁵ tn Or “flourish.”

[92:7]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “in order that they might be destroyed permanently.”

[129:6]  ¹⁷ tn The Hebrew verb שָׁלַף (shalaf) normally means “to draw [a sword]” or “to pull.” BDB 1025 s.v. suggests the meaning “to shoot up” here, but it is more likely that the verb here means “to pluck; to pull up,” a nuance attested for this word in later Hebrew and Aramaic (see Jastrow 1587 s.v. שָׁלַף).

[20:5]  ¹⁸ tn The expression in the text is “quite near.” This indicates that it is easily attained, and that its end is near.

[20:5]  ¹⁹ tn For the discussion of חָנֵף (khanef, “godless”) see Job 8:13.

[20:5]  ²⁰ tn The phrase is “until a moment,” meaning it is short-lived. But see J. Barr, “Hebrew ’ad, especially at Job 1:18 and Neh 7:3,” JSS 27 (1982): 177-88.

[20:6]  ²¹ tn The word שִׂיא (si’) has been connected with the verb נָשָׂא (nasa’, “to lift up”), and so interpreted here as “pride.” The form is parallel to “head” in the next part, and so here it refers to his stature, the part that rises up and is crowned. But the verse does describe the pride of such a person, with his head in the heavens.

[20:7]  ²² tn There have been attempts to change the word here to “like a whirlwind,” or something similar. But many argue that there is no reason to remove a coarse expression from Zophar.

[20:8]  ²³ tn Heb “and they do not find him.” The verb has no expressed subject, and so here is equivalent to a passive. The clause itself is taken adverbially in the sentence.

[20:9]  ²⁴ tn Heb “the eye that had seen him.” Here a part of the person (the eye, the instrument of vision) is put by metonymy for the entire person.

[1:10]  ²⁵ tn Grk “a flower of grass.”

[1:11]  ²⁶ tn Or “perishes,” “is destroyed.”

[1:1]  ²⁷ tn Grk “James.” The word “From” is not in the Greek text, but has been supplied to indicate the sender of the letter.

[1:1]  ²⁸ tn Traditionally, “servant” or “bondservant.” Though δοῦλος (doulos) is normally translated “servant,” the word does not bear the connotation of a free individual serving another. BDAG notes that “‘servant’ for ‘slave’ is largely confined to Biblical transl. and early American times…in normal usage at the present time the two words are carefully distinguished” (BDAG 260 s.v.). The most accurate translation is “bondservant” (sometimes found in the ASV for δοῦλος), in that it often indicates one who sells himself into slavery to another. But as this is archaic, few today understand its force.

[1:1]  ²⁹ tn Grk “to the twelve tribes in the Diaspora.” The Greek term διασπορά (diaspora, “dispersion”) refers to Jews not living in Palestine but “dispersed” or scattered among the Gentiles.

[1:24]  ³⁰ tn Grk “and he has gone out and immediately has forgotten.”