Psalms 95:6

95:6 Come! Let’s bow down and worship! ¹ 

Let’s kneel before the Lord, our creator!

Psalms 119:73

י (Yod)

119:73 Your hands made me and formed me. ² 

Give me understanding so that I might learn ³  your commands.

Psalms 139:13-24

139:13 Certainly ⁴  you made my mind and heart; ⁵ 

you wove me together ⁶  in my mother’s womb.

139:14 I will give you thanks because your deeds are awesome and amazing. ⁷ 

You knew me thoroughly; ⁸ 

139:15 my bones were not hidden from you,

when ⁹  I was made in secret

and sewed together in the depths of the earth. ¹⁰ 

139:16 Your eyes saw me when I was inside the womb. ¹¹ 

All the days ordained for me

were recorded in your scroll

before one of them came into existence. ¹² 

139:17 How difficult it is for me to fathom your thoughts about me, O God! ¹³ 

How vast is their sum total! ¹⁴ 

139:18 If I tried to count them,

they would outnumber the grains of sand.

Even if I finished counting them,

I would still have to contend with you. ¹⁵ 

139:19 If only ¹⁶  you would kill the wicked, O God!

Get away from me, you violent men! ¹⁷ 

139:20 They ¹⁸  rebel against you ¹⁹  and act deceitfully; ²⁰ 

your enemies lie. ²¹ 

139:21 O Lord, do I not hate those who hate you,

and despise those who oppose you? ²² 

139:22 I absolutely hate them, ²³ 

they have become my enemies!

139:23 Examine me, and probe my thoughts! ²⁴ 

Test me, and know my concerns! ²⁵ 

139:24 See if there is any idolatrous tendency ²⁶  in me,

and lead me in the reliable ancient path! ²⁷ 

Psalms 149:2

149:2 Let Israel rejoice in their Creator!

Let the people ²⁸  of Zion delight in their king! ²⁹ 

Job 10:8-13

Contradictions in God’s Dealings

10:8 “Your hands have shaped ³⁰  me and made me,

but ³¹  now you destroy me completely. ³² 

10:9 Remember that you have made me as with ³³  the clay;

will ³⁴  you return me to dust?

10:10 Did you not pour ³⁵  me out like milk,

and curdle ³⁶  me like cheese? ³⁷ 

10:11 You clothed ³⁸  me with skin and flesh

and knit me together ³⁹  with bones and sinews.

10:12 You gave me ⁴⁰  life and favor, ⁴¹ 

and your intervention ⁴²  watched over my spirit.

10:13 “But these things ⁴³  you have concealed in your heart;

I know that this ⁴⁴  is with you: ⁴⁵ 

Ecclesiastes 12:1

Fear God Now Because Old Age and Death Come Quickly

12:1 So remember ⁴⁶  your Creator in the days of your youth –

before ⁴⁷  the difficult ⁴⁸  days come,

and the years draw near when you will say, “I have no pleasure in them”;

Ephesians 2:10

2:10 For we are his workmanship, having been created in Christ Jesus for good works that God prepared beforehand so we may do them. ⁴⁹ 

Ephesians 2:1

New Life Individually

2:1 And although you were ⁵⁰  dead ⁵¹  in your transgressions and sins,

Ephesians 4:19

4:19 Because they are callous, they have given themselves over to indecency for the practice of every kind of impurity with greediness. ⁵² 

[95:6]  ¹ tn Heb “kneel down.”

[119:73]  ² tn Heb “made me and established me.” The two verbs also appear together in Deut 32:6, where God, compared to a father, is said to have “made and established” Israel.

[119:73]  ³ tn The cohortative verbal form with vav (ו) conjunctive indicates purpose/result after the preceding imperative.

[139:13]  ⁴ tn Or “for.”

[139:13]  ⁵ tn Heb “my kidneys.” The kidneys were sometimes viewed as the seat of one’s emotions and moral character (cf. Pss 7:9; 26:2). A number of translations, recognizing that “kidneys” does not communicate this idea to the modern reader, have generalized the concept: “inmost being” (NAB, NIV); “inward parts” (NASB, NRSV); “the delicate, inner parts of my body” (NLT). In the last instance, the focus is almost entirely on the physical body rather than the emotions or moral character. The present translation, by using a hendiadys (one concept expressed through two terms), links the concepts of emotion (heart) and moral character (mind).

[139:13]  ⁶ tn The Hebrew verb סָכַךְ (sakhakh, “to weave together”) is an alternate form of שָׂכַךְ (sakhakh, “to weave”) used in Job 10:11.

[139:14]  ⁷ tc Heb “because awesome things, I am distinct, amazing [are] your works.” The text as it stands is syntactically problematic and makes little, if any, sense. The Niphal of פָּלָה (pala’) occurs elsewhere only in Exod 33:16. Many take the form from פָלָא (pala’; see GKC 216 §75.qq), which in the Niphal perfect means “to be amazing” (see 2 Sam 1:26; Ps 118:23; Prov 30:18). Some, following the LXX and some other ancient witnesses, also prefer to emend the verb from first to second person, “you are amazing” (see L. C. Allen, Psalms 101-150 [WBC], 249, 251). The present translation assumes the text conflates two variants: נפלאים, the otherwise unattested masculine plural participle of פָלָא, and נִפְלָאוֹת (nifla’ot), the usual (feminine) plural form of the Niphal participle. The latter has been changed to a verb by later scribes in an attempt to accommodate it syntactically. The original text likely read, נוראות נפלאותים מעשׂיך (“your works [are] awesome [and] amazing”).

[139:14]  ⁸ tc Heb “and my being knows very much.” Better parallelism is achieved (see v. 15a) if one emends יֹדַעַת (yoda’at), a Qal active participle, feminine singular form, to יָדַעְתָּ (yada’ta), a Qal perfect second masculine singular perfect. See L. C. Allen, Psalms 101-150 (WBC), 252.

[139:15]  ⁹ tc The Hebrew term אֲשֶׁר (’asher, “which”) should probably be emended to כֲּאַשֶׁר (ka’asher, “when”). The kaf (כ) may have been lost by haplography (note the kaf at the end of the preceding form).

[139:15]  ¹⁰ sn The phrase depths of the earth may be metaphorical (euphemistic) or it may reflect a prescientific belief about the origins of the embryo deep beneath the earth’s surface (see H. W. Wolff, Anthropology of the Old Testament, 96-97). Job 1:21 also closely associates the mother’s womb with the earth.

[139:16]  ¹¹ 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]  ¹² 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).

[139:17]  ¹³ tn Heb “and to me how precious are your thoughts, O God.” The Hebrew verb יָקַר (yaqar) probably has the sense of “difficult [to comprehend]” here (see HALOT 432 s.v. יקר qal.1 and note the use of Aramaic יַקִּר in Dan 2:11). Elsewhere in the immediate context the psalmist expresses his amazement at the extent of God’s knowledge about him (see vv. 1-6, 17b-18).

[139:17]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “how vast are their heads.” Here the Hebrew word “head” is used of the “sum total” of God’s knowledge of the psalmist.

[139:18]  ¹⁵ tc Heb “I awake and I [am] still with you.” A reference to the psalmist awaking from sleep makes little, if any, sense contextually. For this reason some propose an emendation to הֲקִצּוֹתִי (haqitsoti), a Hiphil perfect form from an otherwise unattested verb קָצַץ (qatsats) understood as a denominative of קֵץ (qets, “end”). See L. C. Allen, Psalms 101-150 (WBC), 252-53.

[139:19]  ¹⁶ tn The Hebrew particle אִם (’im, “if”) and following prefixed verbal form here express a wish (see Pss 81:8; 95:7, as well as GKC 321 §109.b).

[139:19]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “men of bloodshed.”

[139:20]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “who.”

[139:20]  ¹⁹ tc Heb “they speak [of] you.” The suffixed form of the verb אָמַר (’amar, “to speak”) is peculiar. The translation assumes an emendation to יַמְרֻךָ (yamrukha), a Hiphil form from מָרָה (marah, “to rebel”; see Ps 78:40).

[139:20]  ²⁰ tn Heb “by deceit.”

[139:20]  ²¹ tc Heb “lifted up for emptiness, your cities.” The Hebrew text as it stands makes no sense. The form נָשֻׂא (nasu’; a Qal passive participle) should be emended to נָשְׂאוּ (nosÿu; a Qal perfect, third common plural, “[they] lift up”). Many emend עָרֶיךָ (’arekha, “your cities”) to עָלֶיךָ (’alekha, “against you”), but it is preferable to understand the noun as an Aramaism and translate “your enemies” (see Dan 4:16 and L. C. Allen, Psalms 101-150 [WBC], 253).

[139:21]  ²² tc Heb “who raise themselves up against you.” The form וּבִתְקוֹמְמֶיךָ (uvitqomÿmekha) should be emended to וּבְמִתְקוֹמְמֶיךָ (uvÿmitqomÿmekha), a Hitpolel participle (the prefixed mem [מ] of the participle is accidentally omitted in the MT, though a few medieval Hebrew mss have it).

[139:22]  ²³ tn Heb “[with] completeness of hatred I hate them.”

[139:23]  ²⁴ tn Heb “and know my heart.”

[139:23]  ²⁵ tn The Hebrew noun שַׂרְעַפַּי (sar’apay, “concerns”) is used of “worries” in Ps 94:19.

[139:24]  ²⁶ tn Many understand the Hebrew term עֹצֶב (’otsev) as a noun meaning “pain,” and translate the phrase דֶּרֶךְ עֹצֶב (derekh ’otsev) as “of pain,” but this makes little sense here. (Some interpret it to refer to actions which bring pain to others.) It is preferable to take עֹצֶב as “idol” (see HALOT 865 s.v. I עֹצֶב) and understand “way of an idol” to refer to idolatrous actions or tendency. See L. C. Allen, Psalms 101-150 (WBC), 253.

[139:24]  ²⁷ tn Heb “in the path of antiquity.” This probably refers to the moral path prescribed by the Lord at the beginning of Israel’s history. See Jer 6:16; 18:15, as well as L. C. Allen, Psalms 101-150 (WBC), 253.

[149:2]  ²⁸ tn Heb “sons.”

[149:2]  ²⁹ sn The Lord is the king here, as the parallelism in the previous line (“their creator”) indicates.

[10:8]  ³⁰ tn The root עָצַב (’atsav) is linked by some to an Arabic word meaning “to cut out, hew.” The derived word עֲצַבִּים (’atsabbim) means “idols.” Whatever the precise meaning, the idea is that God formed or gave shape to mankind in creation.

[10:8]  ³¹ tn The verb in this part is a preterite with the vav (ו) consecutive. However, here it has merely an external connection with the preceding perfects, so that in reality it presents an antithesis (see GKC 327 §111.e).

[10:8]  ³² tn Heb “together round about and you destroy me.” The second half of this verse is very difficult. Most commentators follow the LXX and connect the first two words with the second colon as the MT accents indicate (NJPS, “then destroyed every part of me”), rather than with the first colon (“and made me complete,” J. E. Hartley, Job [NICOT], 185). Instead of “together” some read “after.” Others see in סָבִיב (saviv) not so much an adjectival use but a verbal or adverbial use: “you turn and destroy” or “you destroy utterly (all around).” This makes more sense than “turn.” In addition, the verb form in the line is the preterite with vav consecutive; this may be another example of the transposition of the copula (see 4:6). For yet another option (“You have engulfed me about altogether”), see R. Fuller, “Exodus 21:22: The Miscarriage Interpretation and the Personhood of the Fetus,” JETS 37 (1994): 178.

[10:9]  ³³ tn The preposition “like” creates a small tension here. So some ignore the preposition and read “clay” as an adverbial accusative of the material (GKC 371 §117.hh but cf. 379 §119.i with reference to beth essentiae: “as it were, by clay”). The NIV gets around the problem with a different meaning for the verb: “you molded me like clay.” Some suggest the meaning was “as [with] clay” (in the same manner that we have “as [in] the day of Midian” [Isa 9:4]).

[10:9]  ³⁴ tn The text has a conjunction: “and to dust….”

[10:10]  ³⁵ tn The verb נָתַךְ (natakh) means “to flow,” and in the Hiphil, “to cause to flow.”

[10:10]  ³⁶ tn This verb קָפָא (qafa’) means “to coagulate.” In the Hiphil it means “to stiffen; to congeal.”

[10:10]  ³⁷ tn The verbs in v. 10 are prefixed conjugations; since the reference is to the womb, these would need to be classified as preterites.

[10:11]  ³⁸ tn The skin and flesh form the exterior of the body and so the image of “clothing” is appropriate. Once again the verb is the prefixed conjugation, expressing what God did.

[10:11]  ³⁹ tn This verb is found only here (related nouns are common) and in the parallel passage of Ps 139:13. The word סָכַךְ (sakhakh), here a Poel prefixed conjugation (preterite), means “to knit together.” The implied comparison is that the bones and sinews form the tapestry of the person (compare other images of weaving the life).

[10:12]  ⁴⁰ tn Heb “you made with me.”

[10:12]  ⁴¹ tn E. Dhorme (Job, 150) suggests that the relation between these two words is like a hendiadys. In other words, “life,” which he says is made prominent by the shift of the copula, specifies the nature of the grace. He renders it “the favor of life.” D. J. A. Clines at least acknowledges that the expression “you showed loyal love with me” is primary. There are many other attempts to improve the translation of this unusual combination.

[10:12]  ⁴² tn The noun פְּקָָֻדּה (pÿquddah), originally translated “visitation,” actually refers to any divine intervention for blessing on the life. Here it would include the care and overseeing of the life of Job. “Providence” may be too general for the translation, but it is not far from the meaning of this line. The LXX has “your oversight.”

[10:13]  ⁴³ sn “These things” refers to the affliction that God had brought on Job. They were concealed by God from the beginning.

[10:13]  ⁴⁴ sn The meaning of the line is that this was God’s purpose all along. “These things” and “this” refer to the details that will now be given in the next few verses.

[10:13]  ⁴⁵ sn The contradiction between how God had provided for and cared for Job’s life and how he was now dealing with him could only be resolved by Job with the supposition that God had planned this severe treatment from the first as part of his plan.

[12:1]  ⁴⁶ tn The imperative זְכֹר (zekhor, “Remember!”) is a figurative expression (metonymy of association) for obeying God and acknowledging his lordship over one’s life (e.g., Num 15:40; Deut 8:18; Pss 42:6-7; 63:6-8; 78:42; 103:18; 106:7; 119:52, 55; Jer 51:50; Ezek 20:43; Jonah 2:7; Mal 4:4). The exhortation to fear God and obey his commands in 12:13-14 spells out what it means to “remember” God.

[12:1]  ⁴⁷ tn The temporal adjective עַד (’ad, “before”) appears three times in 12:1-7 (vv. 1b, 2a, 6a). Likewise, the temporal preposition בְּ (bet, “when”) is repeated (vv. 3a, 4b). These seven verses comprise one long sentence in Hebrew: The main clause is 12:1a (“Remember your Creator in the days of your youth”), while 12:1b-7 consists of five subordinate temporal clauses (“before…before…when…when…before…”).

[12:1]  ⁴⁸ tn The adjective רָעָה (ra’ah, “evil”) does not refer here to ethical evil, but to physical difficulty, injury, pain, deprivation and suffering (e.g., Deut 31:17, 21; 32:23; 1 Sam 10:19; Neh 1:3; 2:17; Pss 34:20; 40:13; 88:4; 107:26; Eccl 11:10; Jer 2:27; Lam 3:38); see HALOT 1263 s.v. רָעָה 4.b; BDB 949 s.v. רָעָה 2.

[2:10]  ⁴⁹ tn Grk “so that we might walk in them” (or “by them”).

[2:1]  ⁵⁰ tn The adverbial participle “being” (ὄντας, ontas) is taken concessively.

[2:1]  ⁵¹ sn Chapter 2 starts off with a participle, although you were dead, that is left dangling. The syntax in Greek for vv. 1-3 constitutes one incomplete sentence, though it seems to have been done intentionally. The dangling participle leaves the readers in suspense while they wait for the solution (in v. 4) to their spiritual dilemma.

[4:19]  ⁵² sn Greediness refers to an increasing desire for more and more. The point is that sinful passions and desires are never satisfied.