Mazmur 4:6

4:6 Many say, “Who can show us anything good?”

Smile upon us, Lord! ¹ 

Mazmur 13:1

Psalm 13 ² 

For the music director; a psalm of David.

13:1 How long, Lord, will you continue to ignore me? ³ 

How long will you pay no attention to me? ⁴ 

Mazmur 17:15

17:15 As for me, because I am innocent I will see your face; ⁵ 

when I awake you will reveal yourself to me. ⁶ 

Mazmur 18:50

18:50 He ⁷  gives his chosen king magnificent victories; ⁸ 

he is faithful ⁹  to his chosen ruler, ¹⁰ 

to David and his descendants ¹¹  forever.” ¹² 

Mazmur 19:13

19:13 Moreover, keep me from committing flagrant ¹³  sins;

do not allow such sins to control me. ¹⁴ 

Then I will be blameless,

and innocent of blatant ¹⁵  rebellion.

Mazmur 21:9

21:9 You burn them up like a fiery furnace ¹⁶  when you appear; ¹⁷ 

the Lord angrily devours them; ¹⁸ 

the fire consumes them.

Mazmur 22:27

22:27 Let all the people of the earth acknowledge the Lord and turn to him! ¹⁹ 

Let all the nations ²⁰  worship you! ²¹ 

Mazmur 31:7

31:7 I will be happy and rejoice in your faithfulness,

because you notice my pain

and you are aware of how distressed I am. ²² 

Mazmur 40:6

40:6 Receiving sacrifices and offerings are not your primary concern. ²³ 

You make that quite clear to me! ²⁴ 

You do not ask for burnt sacrifices and sin offerings.

Mazmur 40:10

40:10 I have not failed to tell about your justice; ²⁵ 

I spoke about your reliability and deliverance;

I have not neglected to tell the great assembly about your loyal love and faithfulness. ²⁶ 

Mazmur 51:4

51:4 Against you – you above all ²⁷  – I have sinned;

I have done what is evil in your sight.

So ²⁸  you are just when you confront me; ²⁹ 

you are right when you condemn me. ³⁰ 

Mazmur 65:1

Psalm 65 ³¹ 

For the music director; a psalm of David, a song.

65:1 Praise awaits you, ³²  O God, in Zion.

Vows made to you are fulfilled.

Mazmur 66:15

66:15 I will offer up to you fattened animals as burnt sacrifices,

along with the smell of sacrificial rams.

I will offer cattle and goats. (Selah)

Mazmur 89:19

89:19 Then you ³³  spoke through a vision to your faithful followers ³⁴  and said:

“I have energized a warrior; ³⁵ 

I have raised up a young man ³⁶  from the people.

Mazmur 102:2

102:2 Do not ignore me in my time of trouble! ³⁷ 

Listen to me! ³⁸ 

When I call out to you, quickly answer me!

Mazmur 143:7-8

143:7 Answer me quickly, Lord!

My strength is fading. ³⁹ 

Do not reject me, ⁴⁰ 

or I will join ⁴¹  those descending into the grave. ⁴² 

143:8 May I hear about your loyal love in the morning, ⁴³ 

for I trust in you.

Show me the way I should go, ⁴⁴ 

because I long for you. ⁴⁵ 

[4:6]  ¹ tn Heb “lift up upon us the light of your face, Lord.” The verb נסה is apparently an alternate form of נשׂא, “lift up.” See GKC 217 §76.b. The idiom “light of your face” probably refers to a smile (see Eccl 8:1), which in turn suggests favor and blessing (see Num 6:25; Pss 31:16; 44:3; 67:1; 80:3, 7, 19; 89:15; Dan 9:17).

[4:6]  sn Smile upon us. Though many are discouraged, the psalmist asks the Lord to intervene and transform the situation.

[13:1]  ² sn Psalm 13. The psalmist, who is close to death, desperately pleads for God’s deliverance and affirms his trust in God’s faithfulness.

[13:1]  ³ tn Heb “will you forget me continually.”

[13:1]  ⁴ tn Heb “will you hide your face from me.”

[17:15]  ⁵ tn Heb “I, in innocence, I will see your face.” To “see” God’s “face” means to have access to his presence and to experience his favor (see Ps 11:7; see also Job 33:26 [where רָאָה (ra’ah), not חָזַה (khazah), is used]). Here, however, the psalmist may be anticipating a mystical experience. See the following note on the word “me.”

[17:15]  ⁶ tn Heb “I will be satisfied, when I awake, [with] your form.” The noun תְּמוּנָה (tÿmunah) normally carries the nuance “likeness” or “form.” In Job 4:16 it refers to a ghostlike spiritual entity (see v. 15) that revealed itself to Eliphaz during the night. The psalmist may anticipate a mystical encounter with God in which he expects to see a manifestation of God’s presence (i.e., a theophany), perhaps in conjunction with an oracle of deliverance. During the quiet darkness of the night, God examines the psalmist’s inner motives and finds them to be pure (see v. 3). The psalmist is confident that when he awakens, perhaps sometime during the night or in the morning, he will be visited by God and assured of vindication.

[17:15]  sn When I awake you will reveal yourself to me. Some see in this verse an allusion to resurrection. According to this view, when the psalmist awakens from the sleep of death, he will see God. It is unlikely that the psalmist had such a highly developed personal eschatology. As noted above, it is more likely that he is anticipating a divine visitation and mystical encounter as a prelude to his deliverance from his enemies.

[18:50]  ⁷ tn Or “the one who.”

[18:50]  ⁸ tn Heb “magnifies the victories of his king.” “His king” refers to the psalmist, the Davidic king whom God has chosen to rule Israel.

[18:50]  ⁹ tn Heb “[the one who] does loyalty.”

[18:50]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “his anointed [one],” i.e., the psalmist/Davidic king. See Ps 2:2.

[18:50]  ¹¹ tn Or “offspring”; Heb “seed.”

[18:50]  ¹² sn If David is the author of the psalm (see the superscription), then he here anticipates that God will continue to demonstrate loyalty to his descendants who succeed him. If the author is a later Davidic king, then he views the divine favor he has experienced as the outworking of God’s faithful promises to David his ancestor.

[19:13]  ¹³ tn Or “presumptuous.”

[19:13]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “let them not rule over me.”

[19:13]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “great.”

[21:9]  ¹⁶ 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]  ¹⁷ 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]  ¹⁸ 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).

[22:27]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “may all the ends of the earth remember and turn to the Lord.” The prefixed verbal forms in v. 27 are understood as jussives (cf. NEB). Another option (cf. NIV, NRSV) is to take the forms as imperfects and translate, “all the people of the earth will acknowledge and turn…and worship.” See vv. 29-32.

[22:27]  ²⁰ tn Heb “families of the nations.”

[22:27]  ²¹ tn Heb “before you.”

[31:7]  ²² tn Heb “you know the distresses of my life.”

[40:6]  ²³ tn Heb “sacrifice and offering you do not desire.” The statement is exaggerated for the sake of emphasis (see Ps 51:16 as well). God is pleased with sacrifices, but his first priority is obedience and loyalty (see 1 Sam 15:22). Sacrifices and offerings apart from genuine allegiance are meaningless (see Isa 1:11-20).

[40:6]  ²⁴ tn Heb “ears you hollowed out for me.” The meaning of this odd expression is debated (this is the only collocation of “hollowed out” and “ears” in the OT). It may have been an idiomatic expression referring to making a point clear to a listener. The LXX has “but a body you have prepared for me,” a reading which is followed in Heb 10:5.

[40:10]  ²⁵ tn Heb “your justice I have not hidden in the midst of my heart.”

[40:10]  ²⁶ tn Heb “I have not hidden your loyal love and reliability.”

[51:4]  ²⁷ tn Heb “only you,” as if the psalmist had sinned exclusively against God and no other. Since the Hebrew verb חָטָא (hata’, “to sin”) is used elsewhere of sinful acts against people (see BDB 306 s.v. 2.a) and David (the presumed author) certainly sinned when he murdered Uriah (2 Sam 12:9), it is likely that the psalmist is overstating the case to suggest that the attack on Uriah was ultimately an attack on God himself. To clarify the point of the hyperbole, the translation uses “especially,” rather than the potentially confusing “only.”

[51:4]  ²⁸ tn The Hebrew term לְמַעַן (lÿma’an) normally indicates purpose (“in order that”), but here it introduces a logical consequence of the preceding statement. (Taking the clause as indicating purpose here would yield a theologically preposterous idea – the psalmist purposely sinned so that God’s justice might be vindicated!) For other examples of לְמַעַן indicating result, see 2 Kgs 22:17; Jer 27:15; Amos 2:7, as well as IBHS 638-40 §38.3.

[51:4]  ²⁹ tn Heb “when you speak.” In this context the psalmist refers to God’s word of condemnation against his sin delivered through Nathan (cf. 2 Sam 12:7-12).

[51:4]  ³⁰ tn Heb “when you judge.”

[65:1]  ³¹ sn Psalm 65. The psalmist praises God because he forgives sin and blesses his people with an abundant harvest.

[65:1]  ³² tn Heb “for you, silence, praise.” Many prefer to emend the noun דֻּמִיָּה (dumiyyah, “silence”) to a participle דּוֹמִיָּה (domiyyah), from the root דָּמָה (damah, “be silent”), understood here in the sense of “wait.”

[89:19]  ³³ tn The pronoun “you” refers to the Lord, who is addressed here. The quotation that follows further develops the announcement of vv. 3-4.

[89:19]  ³⁴ tc Many medieval mss read the singular here, “your faithful follower.” In this case the statement refers directly to Nathan’s oracle to David (see 2 Sam 7:17).

[89:19]  ³⁵ tn Heb “I have placed help upon a warrior.”

[89:19]  ³⁶ tn Or perhaps “a chosen one.”

[102:2]  ³⁷ tn Heb “do not hide your face from me in the day of my trouble.” The idiom “to hide the face” can mean “to ignore” (see Pss 10:11; 13:1; 51:9) or carry the stronger idea of “to reject” (see Pss 29:7; 30:7; 88:14).

[102:2]  ³⁸ tn Heb “turn toward me your ear.”

[143:7]  ³⁹ tn Heb “my spirit is failing.”

[143:7]  ⁴⁰ tn Heb “do not hide your face from me.” The idiom “hide the face” (1) can mean “ignore” (see Pss 10:11; 13:1; 51:9) or (2) can carry the stronger idea of “reject” (see Pss 30:7; 88:14).

[143:7]  ⁴¹ tn Heb “I will be equal with.”

[143:7]  ⁴² tn Heb “the pit.” The Hebrew noun בּוֹר (bor, “pit; cistern”) is sometimes used of the grave and/or the realm of the dead. See Ps 28:1.

[143:8]  ⁴³ tn Heb “cause me to hear in the morning your loyal love.” Here “loyal love” probably stands metonymically for an oracle of assurance promising God’s intervention as an expression of his loyal love.

[143:8]  sn The morning is sometimes viewed as the time of divine intervention (see Pss 30:5; 59:16; 90:14).

[143:8]  ⁴⁴ sn The way probably refers here to God’s moral and ethical standards and requirements (see v. 10).

[143:8]  ⁴⁵ tn Heb “for to you I lift up my life.” The Hebrew expression נָאָשׂ נֶפֶשׁ (na’as nefesh, “to lift up [one’s] life”) means “to desire; to long for” (see Deut 24:15; Prov 19:18; Jer 22:27; 44:14; Hos 4:8, as well as H. W. Wolff, Anthropology of the Old Testament, 16).