Mazmur 9:20

9:20 Terrify them, Lord! ¹ 

Let the nations know they are mere mortals! ²  (Selah)

Mazmur 74:21

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

Let the oppressed and poor praise your name! ³ 

Mazmur 106:48

106:48 The Lord God of Israel deserves praise, ⁴ 

in the future and forevermore. ⁵ 

Let all the people say, “We agree! ⁶  Praise the Lord!” ⁷ 

Mazmur 109:17

109:17 He loved to curse ⁸  others, so those curses have come upon him. ⁹ 

He had no desire to bless anyone, so he has experienced no blessings. ¹⁰ 

Mazmur 129:6

129:6 May they be like the grass on the rooftops

which withers before one can even pull it up, ¹¹ 

[9:20]  ¹ tn Heb “place, Lord, terror with regard to them.” The Hebrew term מוֹרָה (morah, “terror”) is an alternative form of מוֹרָא (mora’; a reading that appears in some mss and finds support in several ancient textual witnesses).

[9:20]  ² tn Heb “let the nations know they [are] man[kind]”; i.e., mere human beings (as opposed to God).

[74:21]  ³ 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.

[106:48]  ⁴ tn Heb “[be] blessed.” See Pss 18:46; 28:6; 31:21.

[106:48]  ⁵ tn Heb “from everlasting to everlasting.”

[106:48]  ⁶ tn Heb “surely” (אָמֵן, ’amen), traditionally transliterated “amen.”

[106:48]  ⁷ sn The final verse (v. 48) is a conclusion to this fourth “book” (or major editorial division) of the Psalter. Similar statements appear at or near the end of each of the first, second and third “books” of the Psalter (see Pss 41:13; 72:18-19; 89:52, respectively).

[109:17]  ⁸ sn A curse in OT times consists of a formal appeal to God to bring judgment down upon another. Curses were sometimes justified (such as the one spoken by the psalmist here in vv. 6-19), but when they were not, the one pronouncing the curse was in danger of bringing the anticipated judgment down upon himself.

[109:17]  ⁹ tn Heb “and he loved a curse and it came [upon] him.” A reference to the evil man experiencing a curse seems premature here, for the psalmist is asking God to bring judgment on his enemies. For this reason some (cf. NIV, NRSV) prefer to repoint the vav (ו) on “it came” as conjunctive and translate the verb as a jussive of prayer (“may it come upon him!”). The prefixed form with vav consecutive in the next line is emended in the same way and translated, “may it be far from him.” However, the psalmist may be indicating that the evil man’s lifestyle has already begun to yield its destructive fruit.

[109:17]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “and he did not delight in a blessing and it is far from him.”

[129:6]  ¹¹ tn The Hebrew verb שָׁלַף (shalaf) normally means “to draw [a sword]” or “to pull.” BDB 1025 s.v. suggests the meaning “to shoot up” here, but it is more likely that the verb here means “to pluck; to pull up,” a nuance attested for this word in later Hebrew and Aramaic (see Jastrow 1587 s.v. שָׁלַף).