Psalms 50:3

50:3 Our God approaches and is not silent; ¹ 

consuming fire goes ahead of him

and all around him a storm rages. ² 

Psalms 68:4

68:4 Sing to God! Sing praises to his name!

Exalt the one who rides on the clouds! ³ 

For the Lord is his name! ⁴ 

Rejoice before him!

Psalms 106:23

106:23 He threatened ⁵  to destroy them,

but ⁶  Moses, his chosen one, interceded with him ⁷ 

and turned back his destructive anger. ⁸ 

[50:3]  ¹ tn According to GKC 322 §109.e, the jussive (note the negative particle אַל, ’al) is used rhetorically here “to express the conviction that something cannot or should not happen.”

[50:3]  ² tn Heb “fire before him devours, and around him it is very stormy.”

[68:4]  ³ tn Traditionally the Hebrew term עֲרָבוֹת (’aravot) is taken as “steppe-lands” (often rendered “deserts”), but here the form is probably a homonym meaning “clouds.” Verse 33, which depicts God as the one who “rides on the sky” strongly favors this (see as well Deut 33:26), as does the reference in v. 9 to God as the source of rain. The term עֲרָבָה (’aravah, “cloud”) is cognate with Akkadian urpatu/erpetu and with Ugaritic ’rpt. The phrase rkb ’rpt (“one who rides on the clouds”) appears in Ugaritic mythological texts as an epithet of the storm god Baal. The nonphonemic interchange of the bilabial consonants b and p is attested elsewhere in roots common to Hebrew and Ugaritic, though the phenomenon is relatively rare.

[68:4]  ⁴ tc Heb “in the Lord his name.” If the MT is retained, the preposition -בְ (bet) is introducing the predicate (the so-called bet of identity), “the Lord is his name.” However, some prefer to emend the text to כִּי יָהּ שְׁמוֹ (ki yah shÿmo, “for Yah is his name”). This emendation, reflected in the present translation, assumes a confusion of bet (ב) and kaf (כ) and haplography of yod (י).

[106:23]  ⁵ tn Heb “and he said.”

[106:23]  ⁶ tn Heb “if not,” that is, “[and would have] if [Moses] had not.”

[106:23]  ⁷ tn Heb “stood in the gap before him.”

[106:23]  ⁸ tn Heb “to turn back his anger from destroying.”