Psalms 78:15

78:15 He broke open rocks in the wilderness,

and gave them enough water to fill the depths of the sea. ¹ 

Psalms 36:6

36:6 Your justice is like the highest mountains, ² 

your fairness like the deepest sea;

you preserve ³  mankind and the animal kingdom. ⁴ 

Psalms 62:2

62:2 He alone is my protector ⁵  and deliverer.

He is my refuge; ⁶  I will not be upended. ⁷ 

Psalms 89:7

89:7 a God who is honored ⁸  in the great angelic assembly, ⁹ 

and more awesome than ¹⁰  all who surround him?

Psalms 110:6

110:6 He executes judgment ¹¹  against ¹²  the nations;

he fills the valleys with corpses; ¹³ 

he shatters their heads over the vast battlefield. ¹⁴ 

[78:15]  ¹ tn Heb “and caused them to drink, like the depths, abundantly.”

[36:6]  ² tn Heb “mountains of God.” The divine name אֵל (’el, “God”) is here used in an idiomatic manner to indicate the superlative.

[36:6]  ³ tn Or “deliver.”

[36:6]  ⁴ sn God’s justice/fairness is firm and reliable like the highest mountains and as abundant as the water in the deepest sea. The psalmist uses a legal metaphor to describe God’s preservation of his creation. Like a just judge who vindicates the innocent, God protects his creation from destructive forces.

[62:2]  ³ tn Heb “my high rocky summit.”

[62:2]  ⁴ tn Or “my elevated place” (see Ps 18:2).

[62:2]  ⁵ tn The Hebrew text adds רַבָּה (rabbah, “greatly”) at the end of the line. It is unusual for this adverb to follow a negated verb. Some see this as qualifying the assertion to some degree, but this would water down the affirmation too much (see v. 6b, where the adverb is omitted). If the adverb has a qualifying function, it would suggest that the psalmist might be upended, though not severely. This is inconsistent with the confident mood of the psalm. The adverb probably has an emphatic force here, “I will not be greatly upended” meaning “I will not be annihilated.”

[89:7]  ⁴ tn Heb “feared.”

[89:7]  ⁵ tn Heb “in the great assembly of the holy ones.”

[89:7]  ⁶ tn Or perhaps “feared by.”

[110:6]  ⁵ tn The imperfect verbal forms in vv. 6-7 are understood here as descriptive-dramatic or as generalizing, though they could be taken as future.

[110:6]  ⁶ tn Or “among.”

[110:6]  ⁷ tn Heb “he fills [with] corpses,” but one expects a double accusative here. The translation assumes an emendation to גְוִיּוֹת גֵאָיוֹת(בִּ) מִלֵּא or מִלֵּא גֵאָיוֹת גְּוִיוֹת (for a similar construction see Ezek 32:5). In the former case גֵאָיוֹת(ge’ayot) has accidentally dropped from the text due to homoioteleuton; in the latter case it has dropped out due to homoioarcton.

[110:6]  ⁸ tn Heb “he strikes [the verb is מָחַץ (makhats), translated “strikes down” in v. 5] head[s] over a great land.” The Hebrew term רַבָּה (rabbah, “great”) is here used of distance or spatial measurement (see 1 Sam 26:13).