Psalms 62:7

62:7 God delivers me and exalts me;

God is my strong protector and my shelter. ¹ 

Psalms 142:4-5

142:4 Look to the right and see!

No one cares about me. ² 

I have nowhere to run; ³ 

no one is concerned about my life. ⁴ 

142:5 I cry out to you, O Lord;

I say, “You are my shelter,

my security ⁵  in the land of the living.”

Jeremiah 16:19

16:19 Then I said, ⁶ 

“Lord, you give me strength and protect me.

You are the one I can run to for safety when I am in trouble. ⁷ 

Nations from all over the earth

will come to you and say,

‘Our ancestors had nothing but false gods –

worthless idols that could not help them at all. ⁸ 

[62:7]  ¹ tn Heb “upon God [is] my deliverance and my glory, the high rocky summit of my strength, my shelter [is] in God.”

[142:4]  ² tn Heb “there is no one who recognizes me.”

[142:4]  ³ tn Heb “ a place of refuge perishes from me.”

[142:4]  ⁴ tn Heb “there is no one who seeks for the sake of my life.”

[142:5]  ⁵ tn Heb “my portion.” The psalmist compares the Lord to landed property, which was foundational to economic stability in ancient Israel.

[16:19]  ⁶ tn The words “Then I said” are not in the text. They are supplied in the translation to show the shift from God, who has been speaking to Jeremiah, to Jeremiah, who here addresses God.

[16:19]  ⁷ tn Heb “O Lord, my strength and my fortress, my refuge in the day of trouble. The literal which piles up attributes is of course more forceful than the predications. However, piling up poetic metaphors like this adds to the length of the English sentence and risks lack of understanding on the part of some readers. Some rhetorical force has been sacrificed for the sake of clarity.

[16:19]  ⁸ tn Once again the translation has sacrificed some of the rhetorical force for the sake of clarity and English style: Heb “Only falsehood did our ancestors possess, vanity and [things in which?] there was no one profiting in them.”