Mazmur 40:10

40:10 I have not failed to tell about your justice; ¹ 

I spoke about your reliability and deliverance;

I have not neglected to tell the great assembly about your loyal love and faithfulness. ² 

Mazmur 57:4

57:4 I am surrounded by lions;

I lie down ³  among those who want to devour me; ⁴ 

men whose teeth are spears and arrows,

whose tongues are a sharp sword. ⁵ 

[40:10]  ¹ tn Heb “your justice I have not hidden in the midst of my heart.”

[40:10]  ² tn Heb “I have not hidden your loyal love and reliability.”

[57:4]  ³ tn The cohortative form אֶשְׁכְּבָה (’eshkÿvah, “I lie down”) is problematic, for it does not seem to carry one of the normal functions of the cohortative (resolve or request). One possibility is that the form here is a “pseudo-cohortative” used here in a gnomic sense (IBHS 576-77 §34.5.3b).

[57:4]  ⁴ tn The Hebrew verb לָהַט (lahat) is here understood as a hapax legomenon meaning “devour” (see HALOT 521 s.v. II להט), a homonym of the more common verb meaning “to burn.” A more traditional interpretation takes the verb from this latter root and translates, “those who are aflame” (see BDB 529 s.v.; cf. NASB “those who breathe forth fire”).

[57:4]  ⁵ tn Heb “my life, in the midst of lions, I lie down, devouring ones, sons of mankind, their teeth a spear and arrows and their tongue a sharp sword.” The syntax of the verse is difficult. Another option is to take “my life” with the preceding verse. For this to make sense, one must add a verb, perhaps “and may he deliver” (cf. the LXX), before the phrase. One might then translate, “May God send his loyal love and faithfulness and deliver my life.” If one does take “my life” with v. 4, then the parallelism of v. 5 is altered and one might translate: “in the midst of lions I lie down, [among] men who want to devour me, whose teeth….”