Ayub 32:3

32:3 With Job’s ¹  three friends he was also angry, because they could not find ²  an answer, and so declared Job guilty. ³ 

Mazmur 34:1

Psalm 34 ⁴ 

Written by David, when he pretended to be insane before Abimelech, causing the king to send him away. ⁵ 

34:1 I will praise ⁶  the Lord at all times;

my mouth will continually praise him. ⁷ 

[32:3]  ¹ tn Heb “his”; the referent (Job) has been specified in the translation to indicate whose friends they were.

[32:3]  ² tn The perfect verb should be given the category of potential perfect here.

[32:3]  ³ tc This is one of the eighteen “corrections of the scribes” (tiqqune sopherim); it originally read, “and they declared God [in the wrong].” The thought was that in abandoning the debate they had conceded Job’s point.

[34:1]  ⁴ sn Psalm 34. In this song of thanksgiving the psalmist praises God for delivering him from distress. He encourages others to be loyal to the Lord, tells them how to please God, and assures them that the Lord protects his servants. The psalm is an acrostic; vv. 1-21 begin with successive letters of the Hebrew alphabet. (Verse 6 begins with the letter he (ה) and v. 7 with the letter zayin (ז). The letter vav (ו), which comes between ה and ז, seems to be omitted, although it does appear at the beginning of v. 6b. The final verse of the psalm, which begins with the letter pe (פ), is outside the acrostic scheme.

[34:1]  ⁵ tn Heb “By David, when he changed his sense before Abimelech and he drove him away and he went.”

[34:1]  sn Pretended to be insane. The psalm heading appears to refer to the account in 1 Sam 21:10-15 which tells how David, fearful that King Achish of Gath might kill him, pretended to be insane in hopes that the king would simply send him away. The psalm heading names the king Abimelech, not Achish, suggesting that the tradition is confused on this point. However, perhaps “Abimelech” was a royal title, rather than a proper name. See P. C. Craigie, Psalms 1-50 (WBC), 278.

[34:1]  ⁶ tn Heb “bless.”

[34:1]  ⁷ tn Heb “continually [will] his praise [be] in my mouth.”