Mazmur 21:9

21:9 You burn them up like a fiery furnace ¹  when you appear; ² 

the Lord angrily devours them; ³ 

the fire consumes them.

Mazmur 27:9

27:9 Do not reject me! ⁴ 

Do not push your servant away in anger!

You are my deliverer! ⁵ 

Do not forsake or abandon me,

O God who vindicates me!

Mazmur 30:5

30:5 For his anger lasts only a brief moment,

and his good favor restores one’s life. ⁶ 

One may experience sorrow during the night,

but joy arrives in the morning. ⁷ 

Mazmur 78:38

78:38 Yet he is compassionate.

He forgives sin and does not destroy.

He often holds back his anger,

and does not stir up his fury. ⁸ 

[21:9]  ¹ tn Heb “you make them like a furnace of fire.” Although many modern translations retain the literal Hebrew, the statement is elliptical. The point is not that he makes them like a furnace, but like an object burned in a furnace (cf. NEB, “at your coming you shall plunge them into a fiery furnace”).

[21:9]  ² tn Heb “at the time of your face.” The “face” of the king here refers to his angry presence. See Lam 4:16.

[21:9]  ³ tn Heb “the Lord, in his anger he swallows them, and fire devours them.” Some take “the Lord” as a vocative, in which case he is addressed in vv. 8-9a. But this makes the use of the third person in v. 9b rather awkward, though the king could be the subject (see vv. 1-7).

[27:9]  ⁴ tn Heb “do not hide your face from me.” The idiom “hide the face” can mean “ignore” (see Pss 10:11; 13:1; 51:9) or carry the stronger idea of “reject” (see Pss 30:7; 88:14).

[27:9]  ⁵ tn Or “[source of] help.”

[30:5]  ⁶ tn Heb “for [there is] a moment in his anger, [but] life in his favor.” Because of the parallelism with “moment,” some understand חַיִּים (khayyim) in a quantitative sense: “lifetime” (cf. NIV, NRSV). However, the immediate context, which emphasizes deliverance from death (see v. 3), suggests that חַיִּים has a qualitative sense: “physical life” or even “prosperous life” (cf. NEB “in his favour there is life”).

[30:5]  ⁷ tn Heb “in the evening weeping comes to lodge, but at morning a shout of joy.” “Weeping” is personified here as a traveler who lodges with one temporarily.

[78:38]  ⁸ tn One could translate v. 38 in the past tense (“he was compassionate…forgave sin and did not destroy…held back his anger, and did not stir up his fury”), but the imperfect verbal forms are probably best understood as generalizing. Verse 38 steps back briefly from the narrational summary of Israel’s history and lays the theological basis for v. 39, which focuses on God’s mercy toward sinful Israel.