Mazmur 5:7

5:7 But as for me, ¹  because of your great faithfulness I will enter your house; ² 

I will bow down toward your holy temple as I worship you. ³ 

Mazmur 5:11

5:11 But may all who take shelter ⁴  in you be happy! ⁵ 

May they continually ⁶  shout for joy! ⁷ 

Shelter them ⁸  so that those who are loyal to you ⁹  may rejoice! ¹⁰ 

Mazmur 21:9

21:9 You burn them up like a fiery furnace ¹¹  when you appear; ¹² 

the Lord angrily devours them; ¹³ 

the fire consumes them.

Mazmur 51:4

51:4 Against you – you above all ¹⁴  – I have sinned;

I have done what is evil in your sight.

So ¹⁵  you are just when you confront me; ¹⁶ 

you are right when you condemn me. ¹⁷ 

Mazmur 52:5

52:5 Yet ¹⁸  God will make you a permanent heap of ruins. ¹⁹ 

He will scoop you up ²⁰  and remove you from your home; ²¹ 

he will uproot you from the land of the living. (Selah)

[5:7]  ¹ sn But as for me. By placing the first person pronoun at the beginning of the verse, the psalmist highlights the contrast between the evildoers’ actions and destiny, outlined in the preceding verses, with his own.

[5:7]  ² sn I will enter your house. The psalmist is confident that God will accept him into his presence, in contrast to the evildoers (see v. 5).

[5:7]  ³ tn Heb “in fear [of] you.” The Hebrew noun יִרְאָה (yir’ah, “fear”), when used of fearing God, is sometimes used metonymically for what it ideally produces: “worship, reverence, piety.”

[5:11]  ⁴ sn Take shelter. “Taking shelter” in the Lord is an idiom for seeking his protection. Seeking his protection presupposes and even demonstrates the subject’s loyalty to the Lord. In the psalms those who “take shelter” in the Lord are contrasted with the wicked and equated with those who love, fear and serve the Lord (Pss 5:11-12; 31:17-20; 34:21-22).

[5:11]  ⁵ tn The prefixed verbal form is a jussive of wish or prayer. The psalmist calls on God to reward his faithful followers.

[5:11]  ⁶ tn Or perhaps more hyperbolically, “forever.”

[5:11]  ⁷ tn As in the preceding line, the prefixed verbal form is a jussive of wish or prayer.

[5:11]  ⁸ tn Heb “put a cover over them.” The verb form is a Hiphil imperfect from סָכַךְ (sakhakh, “cover, shut off”). The imperfect expresses the psalmist’s wish or request.

[5:11]  ⁹ tn Heb “the lovers of your name.” The phrase refers to those who are loyal to the Lord. See Pss 69:36; 119:132; Isa 56:6.

[5:11]  ¹⁰ tn The vav (ו) with prefixed verbal form following the volitional “shelter them” indicates purpose or result (“so that those…may rejoice).

[21:9]  ¹¹ 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]  ¹² 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]  ¹³ 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).

[51:4]  ¹⁴ 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]  ¹⁵ 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]  ¹⁶ 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]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “when you judge.”

[52:5]  ¹⁸ tn The adverb גַּם (gam, “also; even”) is translated here in an adversative sense (“yet”). It highlights the contrastive correspondence between the evildoer’s behavior and God’s response.

[52:5]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “will tear you down forever.”

[52:5]  ²⁰ tn This rare verb (חָתָה, khatah) occurs only here and in Prov 6:27; 25:22; Isa 30:14.

[52:5]  ²¹ tn Heb “from [your] tent.”