Mazmur 123:3-4

123:3 Show us favor, O Lord, show us favor!

For we have had our fill of humiliation, and then some. ¹ 

123:4 We have had our fill ² 

of the taunts of the self-assured,

of the contempt of the proud.

Amsal 16:18

16:18 Pride ³  goes ⁴  before destruction,

and a haughty spirit before a fall. ⁵ 

[123:3]  ¹ tn Heb “for greatly we are filled [with] humiliation.”

[123:4]  ² tn Heb “greatly our soul is full to it.”

[16:18]  ³ sn The two lines of this proverb are synonymous parallelism, and so there are parasynonyms. “Pride” is paired with “haughty spirit” (“spirit” being a genitive of specification); and “destruction” is matched with “a tottering, falling.”

[16:18]  ⁴ tn Heb “[is] before destruction.”

[16:18]  ⁵ sn Many proverbs have been written in a similar way to warn against the inevitable disintegration and downfall of pride. W. McKane records an Arabic proverb: “The nose is in the heavens, the seat is in the mire” (Proverbs [OTL], 490).