Psalms 71:6

71:6 I have leaned on you since birth; ¹ 

you pulled me ²  from my mother’s womb.

I praise you continually. ³ 

Psalms 139:16

139:16 Your eyes saw me when I was inside the womb. ⁴ 

All the days ordained for me

were recorded in your scroll

before one of them came into existence. ⁵ 

[71:6]  ¹ tn Heb “from the womb.”

[71:6]  ² tc The form in the MT is derived from גָזָה (gazah, “to cut off”), perhaps picturing God as the one who severed the psalmist’s umbilical cord. Many interpreters and translators prefer to emend the text to גֹחִי (gokhiy), from גוּח (gukh) or גִיח, (gikh, “pull out”; see Ps 22:9; cf. the present translation) or to עוּזִּי (’uzziy, “my strength”; cf. NEB “my protector since I left my mother’s womb”).

[71:6]  ³ tn Heb “in you [is] my praise continually.”

[139:16]  ⁴ tn Heb “Your eyes saw my shapeless form.” The Hebrew noun גֹּלֶם (golem) occurs only here in the OT. In later Hebrew the word refers to “a lump, a shapeless or lifeless substance,” and to “unfinished matter, a vessel wanting finishing” (Jastrow 222 s.v. גּוֹלֶם). The translation employs the dynamic rendering “when I was inside the womb” to clarify that the speaker was still in his mother’s womb at the time he was “seen” by God.

[139:16]  ⁵ tn Heb “and on your scroll all of them were written, [the] days [which] were formed, and [there was] not one among them.” This “scroll” may be the “scroll of life” mentioned in Ps 69:28 (see the note on the word “living” there).