Discovery BoxPsalms 85:1-12
ContextFor the music director; written by the Korahites, a psalm.
85:1 O Lord, you showed favor to your land;
you restored the well-being of Jacob. 2
85:2 You pardoned 3 the wrongdoing of your people;
you forgave 4 all their sin. (Selah)
85:3 You withdrew all your fury;
you turned back from your raging anger. 5
85:4 Restore us, O God our deliverer!
Do not be displeased with us! 6
85:5 Will you stay mad at us forever?
Will you remain angry throughout future generations? 7
85:6 Will you not revive us once more?
Then your people will rejoice in you!
85:7 O Lord, show us your loyal love!
Bestow on us your deliverance!
85:8 I will listen to what God the Lord says. 8
For he will make 9 peace with his people, his faithful followers. 10
Yet they must not 11 return to their foolish ways.
85:9 Certainly his loyal followers will soon experience his deliverance; 12
then his splendor will again appear in our land. 13
85:10 Loyal love and faithfulness meet; 14
deliverance and peace greet each other with a kiss. 15
85:11 Faithfulness grows from the ground,
and deliverance looks down from the sky. 16
85:12 Yes, the Lord will bestow his good blessings, 17
and our land will yield 18 its crops.
[85:1] 1 sn Psalm 85. God’s people recall how he forgave their sins in the past, pray that he might now restore them to his favor, and anticipate renewed blessings.
[85:1] 2 tn Heb “you turned with a turning [toward] Jacob.” The Hebrew term שְׁבוּת (shÿvut) is apparently a cognate accusative of שׁוּב (shuv). See Pss 14:7; 53:6.
[85:2] 4 tn Heb “covered over.”
[85:3] 5 tn Heb “the rage of your anger.” The phrase “rage of your anger” employs an appositional genitive. Synonyms are joined in a construct relationship to emphasize the single idea. For a detailed discussion of the grammatical point with numerous examples, see Y. Avishur, “Pairs of Synonymous Words in the Construct State (and in Appositional Hendiadys) in Biblical Hebrew,” Semitics 2 (1971): 17-81. See Pss 69:24; 78:49.
[85:4] 6 tn Heb “break your displeasure with us.” Some prefer to emend הָפֵר (hafer, “break”) to הָסֵר (haser, “turn aside”).
[85:5] 7 tn Heb “Will your anger stretch to a generation and a generation?”
[85:8] 8 sn I will listen. Having asked for the Lord’s favor, the psalmist (who here represents the nation) anticipates a divine word of assurance.
[85:8] 9 tn Heb “speak.” The idiom “speak peace” refers to establishing or maintaining peaceful relations with someone (see Gen 37:4; Zech 9:10; cf. Ps 122:8).
[85:8] 10 tn Heb “to his people and to his faithful followers.” The translation assumes that “his people” and “his faithful followers” are viewed as identical here.
[85:8] 11 tn Or “yet let them not.” After the negative particle אֵל (’el), the prefixed verbal form is jussive, indicating the speaker’s desire or wish.
[85:9] 12 tn Heb “certainly his deliverance [is] near to those who fear him.”
[85:9] 13 tn Heb “to dwell, glory, in our land.” “Glory” is the subject of the infinitive. The infinitive with -לְ (lÿ), “to dwell,” probably indicates result here (“then”). When God delivers his people and renews his relationship with them, he will once more reveal his royal splendor in the land.
[85:10] 14 tn The psalmist probably uses the perfect verbal forms in v. 10 in a dramatic or rhetorical manner, describing what he anticipates as if it were already occurring or had already occurred.
[85:10] 15 sn Deliverance and peace greet each other with a kiss. The psalmist personifies these abstract qualities to emphasize that God’s loyal love and faithfulness will yield deliverance and peace for his people.
[85:11] 16 sn The psalmist already sees undeniable signs of God’s faithfulness and expects deliverance to arrive soon.
[85:12] 17 tn Heb “what is good.”
[85:12] 18 tn Both “bestow” and “yield” translate the same Hebrew verb (נָתַן, natan). The repetition of the word emphasizes that agricultural prosperity is the direct result of divine blessing.
