Mazmur 18:18-19

18:18 They confronted ¹  me in my day of calamity,

but the Lord helped me. ² 

18:19 He brought me out into a wide open place;

he delivered me because he was pleased with me. ³ 

Mazmur 31:8

31:8 You do not deliver me over to the power of the enemy;

you enable me to stand ⁴  in a wide open place.

Mazmur 40:1-3

Psalm 40 ⁵ 

For the music director; By David, a psalm.

40:1 I relied completely ⁶  on the Lord,

and he turned toward me

and heard my cry for help.

40:2 He lifted me out of the watery pit, ⁷ 

out of the slimy mud. ⁸ 

He placed my feet on a rock

and gave me secure footing. ⁹ 

40:3 He gave me reason to sing a new song, ¹⁰ 

praising our God. ¹¹ 

May many see what God has done,

so that they might swear allegiance to him and trust in the Lord! ¹² 

Mazmur 116:6

116:6 The Lord protects ¹³  the untrained; ¹⁴ 

I was in serious trouble ¹⁵  and he delivered me.

Mazmur 116:16

116:16 Yes, Lord! I am indeed your servant;

I am your lowest slave. ¹⁶ 

You saved me from death. ¹⁷ 

Mazmur 116:1

Psalm 116 ¹⁸ 

116:1 I love the Lord

because he heard my plea for mercy, ¹⁹ 

1 Samuel 17:37

17:37 David went on to say, “The Lord who delivered me from the lion and the bear will also deliver me from the hand of this Philistine!” Then Saul said to David, “Go! The Lord will be with you.” ²⁰ 

1 Samuel 19:11-12

19:11 Saul sent messengers to David’s house to guard it and to kill him in the morning. Then David’s wife Michal told him, “If you do not save yourself ²¹  tonight, tomorrow you will be dead!” 19:12 So Michal lowered David through the window, and he ran away and escaped.

1 Samuel 23:26-28

23:26 Saul went on one side of the mountain, while David and his men went on the other side of the mountain. David was hurrying to get away from Saul, but Saul and his men were surrounding David and his men so they could capture them. 23:27 But a messenger came to Saul saying, “Come quickly, for the Philistines have raided the land!”

23:28 So Saul stopped pursuing David and went to confront the Philistines. Therefore that place is called Sela Hammahlekoth. ²² 

Ayub 36:16

36:16 And surely, he drew you ²³  from the mouth of distress,

to a wide place, unrestricted, ²⁴ 

and to the comfort ²⁵  of your table

filled with rich food. ²⁶ 

Ayub 36:2

36:2 “Be patient ²⁷  with me a little longer

and I will instruct you,

for I still have words to speak on God’s behalf. ²⁸ 

Kolose 1:8

1:8 who also told us of your love in the Spirit.

Kolose 1:10

1:10 so that you may live ²⁹  worthily of the Lord and please him in all respects ³⁰  – bearing fruit in every good deed, growing in the knowledge of God,

[18:18]  ¹ tn The same verb is translated “trapped” in v. 5. In this poetic narrative context the prefixed verbal form is best understood as a preterite indicating past tense, not imperfect.

[18:18]  ² tn Heb “became my support.”

[18:19]  ³ tn Or “delighted in me.”

[31:8]  ⁴ tn Heb “you cause my feet to stand.”

[40:1]  ⁵ sn Psalm 40. The psalmist combines a song of thanksgiving for a recent act of divine deliverance (vv. 1-11) with a confident petition for renewed divine intervention (vv. 12-17).

[40:1]  ⁶ tn Heb “relying, I relied.” The infinitive absolute precedes the finite verbal form to emphasize the verbal idea. The emphasis is reflected in the translation through the adverb “completely.” Another option is to translate, “I waited patiently” (cf. NASB, NIV, NRSV).

[40:2]  ⁷ tn Heb “cistern of roaring.” The Hebrew noun בּוֹר (bor, “cistern, pit”) is used metaphorically here of Sheol, the place of death, which is sometimes depicted as a raging sea (see Ps 18:4, 15-16). The noun שָׁאוֹן (sha’on, “roaring”) refers elsewhere to the crashing sound of the sea’s waves (see Ps 65:7).

[40:2]  ⁸ tn Heb “from the mud of mud.” The Hebrew phrase translated “slimy mud” employs an appositional genitive. Two synonyms are joined in a construct relationship to emphasize the single idea. For a detailed discussion of the grammatical point with numerous examples, see Y. Avishur, “Pairs of Synonymous Words in the Construct State (and in Appositional Hendiadys) in Biblical Hebrew,” Semitics 2 (1971): 17-81.

[40:2]  ⁹ tn Heb “he established my footsteps.”

[40:3]  ¹⁰ sn A new song was appropriate because the Lord had intervened in the psalmist’s experience in a fresh and exciting way.

[40:3]  ¹¹ tn Heb “and he placed in my mouth a new song, praise to our God.”

[40:3]  ¹² tn Heb “may many see and fear and trust in the Lord.” The translation assumes that the initial prefixed verbal form is a jussive (“may many see”), rather than an imperfect (“many will see”). The following prefixed verbal forms with vav (ו) conjunctive are taken as indicating purpose or result (“so that they might swear allegiance…and trust”) after the introductory jussive.

[116:6]  ¹³ tn Heb “guards.” The active participle indicates this is a characteristic of the Lord.

[116:6]  ¹⁴ tn Or “the [morally] naive,” that is, the one who is young and still in the process of learning right from wrong and distinguishing wisdom from folly. See Ps 19:7.

[116:6]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “I was low.”

[116:16]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “I am your servant, the son of your female servant.” The phrase “son of a female servant” (see also Ps 86:16) is used of a son born to a secondary wife or concubine (Exod 23:12). In some cases the child’s father is the master of the house (see Gen 21:10, 13; Judg 9:18). The use of the expression here certainly does not imply that the Lord has such a secondary wife or concubine! It is used metaphorically and idiomatically to emphasize the psalmist’s humility before the Lord and his status as the Lord’s servant.

[116:16]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “you have loosed my bonds.” In this context the imagery refers to deliverance from death (see v. 3).

[116:1]  ¹⁸ sn Psalm 116. The psalmist thanks the Lord for delivering him from a life threatening crisis and promises to tell the entire covenant community what God has done for him.

[116:1]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “I love because the Lord heard my voice, my pleas.” It is possible that “the Lord” originally appeared directly after “I love” and was later accidentally misplaced. The translation assumes the prefixed verbal form is a preterite. The psalmist recalls that God heard his cry for help (note the perfect in v. 2a and the narrative in vv. 3-4).

[17:37]  ²⁰ tn Or “Go, and may the Lord be with you” (so NASB, NCV, NRSV).

[19:11]  ²¹ tn Heb “your life.”

[23:28]  ²² sn The name הַמַּחְלְקוֹת סֶלַע (Sela Hammakhleqoth) probably means “Rock of Divisions” in Hebrew, in the sense that Saul and David parted company there (cf. NAB “Gorge of Divisions”; TEV “Separation Hill”). This etymology assumes that the word derives from the Hebrew root II חלק (khlq, “to divide”; HALOT 322 s.v. II חלק). However, there is another root I חלק, which means “to be smooth or slippery” (HALOT 322 s.v. I חלק). If the word is taken from this root, the expression would mean “Slippery Rock.”

[36:16]  ²³ tn The Hebrew verb means “to entice; to lure; to allure; to seduce,” but these have negative connotations. The English “to persuade; to draw” might work better. The verb is the Hiphil perfect of סוּת (sut). But the nuance of the verb is difficult. It can be equivalent to an English present expressing what God is doing (Peake). But the subject is contested as well. Since the verb usually has an evil connotation, there have been attempts to make the “plaza” the subject – “the wide place has led you astray” (Ewald).

[36:16]  ²⁴ tn Heb “a broad place where there is no cramping beneath [or under] it.”

[36:16]  ²⁵ tn The word נַחַת (nakhat) could be translated “set” if it is connected with the verb נוּחַ (nuakh, “to rest,” but then “to lay to rest, to set”). Kissane translates it “comfort.” Dhorme thinks it could come from נוּחַ (nuakh, “to rest”) or נָחַת (nakhat, “to descend”). But his conclusion is that it is a dittography after “under it” (p. 545).

[36:16]  ²⁶ tn Heb “filled with fat.”

[36:2]  ²⁷ tn The verb כָּתַּר (kattar) is the Piel imperative; in Hebrew the word means “to surround” and is related to the noun for crown. But in Syriac it means “to wait.” This section of the book of Job will have a few Aramaic words.

[36:2]  ²⁸ tn The Hebrew text simply has “for yet for God words.”

[1:10]  ²⁹ tn The infinitive περιπατῆσαι (peripathsai, “to walk, to live, to live one’s life”) is best taken as an infinitive of purpose related to “praying” (προσευχόμενοι, proseucomenoi) and “asking” (αἰτούμενοι, aitoumenoi) in v. 9 and is thus translated as “that you may live.”

[1:10]  ³⁰ tn BDAG 129 s.v. ἀρεσκεία states that ἀρεσκείαν (areskeian) refers to a “desire to please εἰς πᾶσαν ἀ. to please (the Lord) in all respects Col 1:10.”