Mazmur 57:3

57:3 May he send help from heaven and deliver me ¹ 

from my enemies who hurl insults! ²  (Selah)

May God send his loyal love and faithfulness!

Mazmur 84:10

84:10 Certainly ³  spending just one day in your temple courts is better

than spending a thousand elsewhere. ⁴ 

I would rather stand at the entrance ⁵  to the temple of my God

than live ⁶  in the tents of the wicked.

[57:3]  ¹ tn Heb “may he send from heaven and deliver me.” The prefixed verbal forms are understood as jussives expressing the psalmist’s prayer. The second verb, which has a vav (ו) conjunctive prefixed to it, probably indicates purpose. Another option is to take the forms as imperfects expressing confidence, “he will send from heaven and deliver me” (cf. NRSV).

[57:3]  ² tn Heb “he hurls insults, one who crushes me.” The translation assumes that this line identifies those from whom the psalmist seeks deliverance. (The singular is representative; the psalmist is surrounded by enemies, see v. 4.) Another option is to understand God as the subject of the verb חָרַף (kharaf), which could then be taken as a homonym of the more common root חָרַף (“insult”) meaning “confuse.” In this case “one who crushes me” is the object of the verb. One might translate, “he [God] confuses my enemies.”

[84:10]  ³ tn Or “for.”

[84:10]  ⁴ tn Heb “better is a day in your courts than a thousand [spent elsewhere].”

[84:10]  ⁵ tn Heb “I choose being at the entrance of the house of my God over living in the tents of the wicked.” The verb סָפַף (safaf) appears only here in the OT; it is derived from the noun סַף (saf, “threshold”). Traditionally some have interpreted this as a reference to being a doorkeeper at the temple, though some understand it to mean “lie as a beggar at the entrance to the temple” (see HALOT 765 s.v. ספף).

[84:10]  ⁶ tn The verb דּוּר (dur, “to live”) occurs only here in the OT.