Mazmur 22:2

22:2 My God, I cry out during the day,

but you do not answer,

and during the night my prayers do not let up. ¹ 

Mazmur 35:14

35:14 I mourned for them as I would for a friend or my brother. ² 

I bowed down ³  in sorrow as if I were mourning for my mother. ⁴ 

Mazmur 42:3

42:3 I cannot eat, I weep day and night; ⁵ 

all day long they say to me, ⁶  “Where is your God?”

Mazmur 84:6

84:6 As they pass through the Baca Valley, ⁷ 

he provides a spring for them. ⁸ 

The rain ⁹  even covers it with pools of water. ¹⁰ 

[22:2]  ¹ tn Heb “there is no silence to me.”

[35:14]  ² tn Heb “like a friend, like a brother to me I walked about.”

[35:14]  ³ sn I bowed down. Bowing down was a posture for mourning. See Ps 38:6.

[35:14]  ⁴ tn Heb “like mourning for a mother [in] sorrow I bowed down.”

[42:3]  ⁵ tn Heb “My tears have become my food day and night.”

[42:3]  ⁶ tn Heb “when [they] say to me all the day.” The suffixed third masculine plural pronoun may have been accidentally omitted from the infinitive בֶּאֱמֹר (be’ÿmor, “when [they] say”). Note the term בְּאָמְרָם (bÿ’omram, “when they say”) in v. 10.

[84:6]  ⁷ tn The translation assumes that the Hebrew phrase עֵמֶק הַבָּכָא (’emeq habbakha’) is the name of an otherwise unknown arid valley through which pilgrims to Jerusalem passed. The term בָּכָא (bakha’) may be the name of a particular type of plant or shrub that grew in this valley. O. Borowski (Agriculture in Iron Age Israel, 130) suggests it is the black mulberry. Some take the phrase as purely metaphorical and relate בָּכָא to the root בָּכָה (bakhah, “to weep”). In this case one might translate, “the valley of weeping” or “the valley of affliction.”

[84:6]  ⁸ tc The MT reads “a spring they make it,” but this makes little sense. Many medieval Hebrew mss, as well as the LXX, understand God to be the subject and the valley to be the object, “he [God] makes it [the valley] [into] a spring.”

[84:6]  ⁹ tn This rare word may refer to the early (or autumn) rains (see Joel 2:23).

[84:6]  ¹⁰ tc The MT reads בְּרָכוֹת (bÿrakhot, “blessings”) but the preceding reference to a “spring” favors an emendation to בְּרֵכוֹת (bÿrekhot, “pools”).

[84:6]  sn Pools of water. Because water is so necessary for life, it makes an apt symbol for divine favor and blessing. As the pilgrims traveled to Jerusalem, God provided for their physical needs and gave them a token of his favor and of the blessings awaiting them at the temple.