Mazmur 34:5

34:5 Those who look to him for help are happy;

their faces are not ashamed. ¹ 

Mazmur 74:21

74:21 Do not let the afflicted be turned back in shame!

Let the oppressed and poor praise your name! ² 

Mazmur 104:3

104:3 and lays the beams of the upper rooms of his palace on the rain clouds. ³ 

He makes the clouds his chariot,

and travels along on the wings of the wind. ⁴ 

Mazmur 119:78

119:78 May the arrogant be humiliated, for they have slandered me! ⁵ 

But I meditate on your precepts.

[34:5]  ¹ tc Heb “they look to him and are radiant and their faces are not ashamed.” The third person plural subject (“they”) is unidentified; there is no antecedent in the Hebrew text. For this reason some prefer to take the perfect verbal forms in the first line as imperatives, “look to him and be radiant” (cf. NEB, NRSV). Some medieval Hebrew mss and other ancient witnesses (Aquila, the Syriac, and Jerome) support an imperatival reading for the first verb. In the second line some (with support from the LXX and Syriac) change “their faces” to “your faces,” which allows one to retain more easily the jussive force of the verb (suggested by the preceding אַל [’al]): “do not let your faces be ashamed.” It is probable that the verbal construction in the second line is rhetorical, expressing the conviction that the action in view cannot or should not happen. See GKC 322 §109.e.

[74:21]  ² sn Let the oppressed and poor praise your name! The statement is metonymic. The point is this: May the oppressed be delivered from their enemies! Then they will have ample reason to praise God’s name.

[104:3]  ³ tn Heb “one who lays the beams on water [in] his upper rooms.” The “water” mentioned here corresponds to the “waters above” mentioned in Gen 1:7. For a discussion of the picture envisioned by the psalmist, see L. I. J. Stadelmann, The Hebrew Conception of the World, 44-45.

[104:3]  ⁴ sn Verse 3 may depict the Lord riding a cherub, which is in turn propelled by the wind current. Another option is that the wind is personified as a cherub. See Ps 18:10 and the discussion of ancient Near Eastern parallels to the imagery in M. Weinfeld, “‘Rider of the Clouds’ and ‘Gatherer of the Clouds’,” JANESCU 5 (1973): 422-24.

[119:78]  ⁵ tn Heb “for [with] falsehood they have denied me justice.”