Mazmur 17:5

17:5 I carefully obey your commands; ¹ 

I do not deviate from them. ² 

Mazmur 35:6

35:6 May their path be ³  dark and slippery,

as the Lord’s angel chases them!

Mazmur 37:31

37:31 The law of their God controls their thinking; ⁴ 

their ⁵  feet do not slip.

Mazmur 38:17

38:17 For I am about to stumble,

and I am in constant pain. ⁶ 

Mazmur 66:9

66:9 He preserves our lives ⁷ 

and does not allow our feet to slip.

Mazmur 73:2

73:2 But as for me, my feet almost slipped;

my feet almost slid out from under me. ⁸ 

Mazmur 73:18

73:18 Surely ⁹  you put them in slippery places;

you bring them down ¹⁰  to ruin.

Mazmur 94:18

94:18 If I say, “My foot is slipping,”

your loyal love, O Lord, supports me.

Mazmur 121:3

121:3 May he not allow your foot to slip!

May your protector ¹¹  not sleep! ¹² 

Amsal 4:19

4:19 The way of the wicked is like gloomy darkness; ¹³ 

they do not know what causes them to stumble. ¹⁴ 

Yeremia 23:12

23:12 So the paths they follow will be dark and slippery.

They will stumble and fall headlong.

For I will bring disaster on them.

A day of reckoning is coming for them.” ¹⁵ 

The Lord affirms it! ¹⁶ 

[17:5]  ¹ tn Heb “my steps stay firm in your tracks.” The infinitive absolute functions here as a finite verb (see GKC 347 §113.gg). God’s “tracks” are his commands, i.e., the moral pathways he has prescribed for the psalmist.

[17:5]  ² tn Heb “my footsteps do not stagger.”

[35:6]  ³ tn The prefixed verbal form is distinctly jussive, indicating this is a prayer.

[37:31]  ⁴ tn Heb “the law of his God [is] in his heart.” The “heart” is here the seat of one’s thoughts and motives.

[37:31]  ⁵ tn Heb “his.” The pronoun has been translated as plural to agree with the representative or typical “godly” in v. 30.

[38:17]  ⁶ tn Heb “and my pain [is] before me continually.”

[66:9]  ⁷ tn Heb “the one who places our soul in life.”

[73:2]  ⁸ tn The Hebrew verb normally means “to pour out,” but here it must have the nuance “to slide.”

[73:2]  sn My feet almost slid out from under me. The language is metaphorical. As the following context makes clear, the psalmist almost “slipped” in a spiritual sense. As he began to question God’s justice, the psalmist came close to abandoning his faith.

[73:18]  ⁹ tn The use of the Hebrew term אַךְ (’akh, “surely”) here literarily counteracts its use in v. 13. The repetition draws attention to the contrast between the two statements, the first of which expresses the psalmist’s earlier despair and the second his newly discovered confidence.

[73:18]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “cause them to fall.”

[121:3]  ¹¹ tn Heb “the one who guards you.”

[121:3]  ¹² tn The prefixed verbal forms following the negative particle אל appear to be jussives. As noted above, if they are taken as true jussives of prayer, then the speaker in v. 3 would appear to be distinct from both the speaker in vv. 1-2 and the speaker in vv. 4-8. However, according to GKC 322 §109.e), the jussives are used rhetorically here “to express the conviction that something cannot or should not happen.” In this case one should probably translate, “he will not allow your foot to slip, your protector will not sleep,” and understand just one speaker in vv. 4-8.

[4:19]  ¹³ sn The simile describes ignorance or spiritual blindness, sinfulness, calamity, despair.

[4:19]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “in what they stumble.”

[23:12]  ¹⁵ tn For the last two lines see 11:23 and the notes there.

[23:12]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “Oracle of the Lord.”