Psalms 5:7

5:7 But as for me, ¹  because of your great faithfulness I will enter your house; ² 

I will bow down toward your holy temple as I worship you. ³ 

Psalms 31:6

31:6 I hate those who serve worthless idols, ⁴ 

but I trust in the Lord.

Psalms 35:13

35:13 When they were sick, I wore sackcloth, ⁵ 

and refrained from eating food. ⁶ 

(If I am lying, may my prayers go unanswered!) ⁷ 

Psalms 38:13

38:13 But I am like a deaf man – I hear nothing;

I am like a mute who cannot speak. ⁸ 

Psalms 52:8

52:8 But I ⁹  am like a flourishing ¹⁰  olive tree in the house of God;

I continually ¹¹  trust in God’s loyal love.

Psalms 73:28

73:28 But as for me, God’s presence is all I need. ¹² 

I have made the sovereign Lord my shelter,

as ¹³  I declare all the things you have done.

[5:7]  ¹ sn But as for me. By placing the first person pronoun at the beginning of the verse, the psalmist highlights the contrast between the evildoers’ actions and destiny, outlined in the preceding verses, with his own.

[5:7]  ² sn I will enter your house. The psalmist is confident that God will accept him into his presence, in contrast to the evildoers (see v. 5).

[5:7]  ³ tn Heb “in fear [of] you.” The Hebrew noun יִרְאָה (yir’ah, “fear”), when used of fearing God, is sometimes used metonymically for what it ideally produces: “worship, reverence, piety.”

[31:6]  ⁴ tn Heb “the ones who observe vain things of falsehood.” See Jonah 2:9.

[35:13]  ⁷ tn Heb “as for me, when they were sick, my clothing was sackcloth.” Sackcloth was worn by mourners. When the psalmist’s enemies were sick, he was sorry for their misfortune and mourned for them.

[35:13]  ⁸ sn Fasting was also a practice of mourners. By refraining from normal activities, such as eating food, the mourner demonstrated the sincerity of his sorrow.

[35:13]  ⁹ tn Heb “and my prayer upon my chest will return.” One could translate, “but my prayer was returning upon my chest,” but the use of the imperfect verbal form sets this line apart from the preceding and following lines (vv. 13a, 14), which use the perfect to describe the psalmist’s past actions.

[38:13]  ¹⁰ sn I am like a deaf man…like a mute. The psalmist is like a deaf mute; he is incapable of defending himself and is vulnerable to his enemies’ deception (see v. 14).

[52:8]  ¹³ tn The disjunctive construction (vav [ו] + subject) highlights the contrast between the evildoer’s destiny (vv. 5-7) and that of the godly psalmist’s security.

[52:8]  ¹⁴ tn Or “luxuriant, green, leafy.”

[52:8]  ¹⁵ tn Or, hyperbolically, “forever and ever.”

[73:28]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “but as for me, the nearness of God for me [is] good.”

[73:28]  ¹⁷ tn The infinitive construct with -לְ (lÿ) is understood here as indicating an attendant circumstance. Another option is to take it as indicating purpose (“so that I might declare”) or result (“with the result that I declare”).