Mazmur 50:22

50:22 Carefully consider this, you who reject God! ¹ 

Otherwise I will rip you to shreds ² 

and no one will be able to rescue you.

Mazmur 69:28

69:28 May their names be deleted from the scroll of the living! ³ 

Do not let their names be listed with the godly! ⁴ 

Mazmur 83:4

83:4 They say, “Come on, let’s annihilate them so they are no longer a nation! ⁵ 

Then the name of Israel will be remembered no more.”

[50:22]  ¹ tn Heb “[you who] forget God.” “Forgetting God” here means forgetting about his commandments and not respecting his moral authority.

[50:22]  ² sn Elsewhere in the psalms this verb is used (within a metaphorical framework) of a lion tearing its prey (see Pss 7:2; 17:12; 22:13).

[69:28]  ³ tn Heb “let them be wiped out of the scroll of the living.”

[69:28]  sn The phrase the scroll of the living occurs only here in the OT. It pictures a scroll or census list containing the names of the citizens of a community. When an individual died, that person’s name was removed from the list. So this curse is a very vivid way of asking that the enemies die.

[69:28]  ⁴ tn Heb “and with the godly let them not be written.”

[69:28]  sn Do not let their names be listed with the godly. This curse pictures a scroll in which God records the names of his loyal followers. The psalmist makes the point that his enemies have no right to be included in this list of the godly.

[83:4]  ⁵ tn Heb “we will cause them to disappear from [being] a nation.”