Mazmur 21:9

21:9 You burn them up like a fiery furnace ¹  when you appear; ² 

the Lord angrily devours them; ³ 

the fire consumes them.

Mazmur 79:6

79:6 Pour out your anger on the nations that do not acknowledge you, ⁴ 

on the kingdoms that do not pray to you! ⁵ 

Mazmur 90:7

90:7 Yes, ⁶  we are consumed by your anger;

we are terrified by your wrath.

Mazmur 110:5

110:5 O sovereign Lord, ⁷  at your right hand

he strikes down ⁸  kings in the day he unleashes his anger. ⁹ 

[21:9]  ¹ tn Heb “you make them like a furnace of fire.” Although many modern translations retain the literal Hebrew, the statement is elliptical. The point is not that he makes them like a furnace, but like an object burned in a furnace (cf. NEB, “at your coming you shall plunge them into a fiery furnace”).

[21:9]  ² tn Heb “at the time of your face.” The “face” of the king here refers to his angry presence. See Lam 4:16.

[21:9]  ³ tn Heb “the Lord, in his anger he swallows them, and fire devours them.” Some take “the Lord” as a vocative, in which case he is addressed in vv. 8-9a. But this makes the use of the third person in v. 9b rather awkward, though the king could be the subject (see vv. 1-7).

[79:6]  ⁴ tn Heb “which do not know you.” Here the Hebrew term “know” means “acknowledge the authority of.”

[79:6]  ⁵ sn The kingdoms that do not pray to you. The people of these kingdoms pray to other gods, not the Lord, because they do not recognize his authority over them.

[90:7]  ⁶ tn Or “for.”

[110:5]  ⁷ tn As pointed in the Hebrew text, this title refers to God (many medieval Hebrew mss read יְהוָה, yehveh, “Lord” here). The present translation assumes that the psalmist here addresses the Lord as he celebrates what the king is able to accomplish while positioned at God’s “right hand.” According to this view the king is the subject of the third person verb forms in vv. 5b-7. (2) Another option is to understand the king as the addressee (as in vv. 2-3). In this case “the Lord” is the subject of the third person verbs throughout vv. 5-7 and is depicted as a warrior in a very anthropomorphic manner. In this case the Lord is pictured as being at the psalmist’s right hand (just the opposite of v. 1). See Pss 16:8; 121:5. (3) A third option is to revocalize אֲדֹנָי (’adonay, “Lord”) as אֲדֹנִי (’adoniy, “my lord”; see v. 1). In this case one may translate, “My lord, at his [God’s] right hand, strikes down.” In this case the king is the subject of the third person verbs in vv. 5b-7.

[110:5]  ⁸ tn The perfect verbal forms in vv. 5-6 are understood here as descriptive-dramatic or as generalizing. Another option is to take them as rhetorical. In this case the psalmist describes anticipated events as if they had already taken place.

[110:5]  ⁹ tn Heb “in the day of his anger.”