Mazmur 24:4

24:4 The one whose deeds are blameless

and whose motives are pure, ¹ 

who does not lie, ² 

or make promises with no intention of keeping them. ³ 

Mazmur 86:4

86:4 Make your servant ⁴  glad,

for to you, O Lord, I pray! ⁵ 

Mazmur 143:8

143:8 May I hear about your loyal love in the morning, ⁶ 

for I trust in you.

Show me the way I should go, ⁷ 

because I long for you. ⁸ 

Mazmur 143:1

Psalm 143 ⁹ 

A psalm of David.

143:1 O Lord, hear my prayer!

Pay attention to my plea for help!

Because of your faithfulness and justice, answer me!

1 Samuel 1:15

1:15 But Hannah replied, “That’s not the way it is, ¹⁰  my lord! I am under a great deal of stress. ¹¹  I have drunk neither wine nor beer. Rather, I have poured out my soul to ¹²  the Lord.

Ratapan 3:41

3:41 Let us lift up our hearts ¹³  and our hands

to God in heaven:

[24:4]  ¹ tn Heb “the innocent of hands and the pure of heart.” The “hands” allude to one’s actions, the “heart” to one’s thought life and motives.

[24:4]  ² tn Heb “who does not lift up for emptiness my life.” The first person pronoun on נַפְשִׁי (nafshiy, “my life”) makes little sense here; many medieval Hebrew mss support the ancient versions in reading a third person pronoun “his.” The idiom “lift the life” here means to “long for” or “desire strongly.” In this context (note the reference to an oath in the following line) “emptiness” probably refers to speech (see Ps 12:2).

[24:4]  ³ tn Heb “and does not swear an oath deceitfully.”

[86:4]  ⁴ tn Heb “the soul of your servant.”

[86:4]  ⁵ tn Heb “I lift up my soul.”

[143:8]  ⁶ 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]  ⁷ sn The way probably refers here to God’s moral and ethical standards and requirements (see v. 10).

[143:8]  ⁸ 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).

[143:1]  ⁹ sn Psalm 143. As in the previous psalm, the psalmist laments his persecuted state and asks the Lord to deliver him from his enemies.

[1:15]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “No.”

[1:15]  ¹¹ tn Heb “I am a woman difficult of spirit.” The LXX has “for whom the day is difficult,” apparently mistaking the Hebrew word for “spirit” רוּחַ (ruakh) to be the word for “day” יוֹם (yom).

[1:15]  ¹² tn Heb “before.”

[3:41]  ¹³ tc The MT reads the singular noun לְבָבֵנוּ (lÿvavenu, “our heart”) but the ancient versions (LXX, Aramaic Targum, Latin Vulgate) and many medieval Hebrew mss read the plural noun לְבָבֵינוּ (lÿvavenu, “our hearts”). Hebrew regularly places plural pronouns on singular nouns used as a collective (135 times on the singular “heart” and only twice on the plural “hearts”). The plural “hearts” in any Hebrew construction is actually rather rare. The LXX renders similar Hebrew constructions (singular “heart” plus a plural pronoun) with the plural “hearts” about 1/3 of the time, therefore it cannot be considered evidence for the reading. The Vulgate may have been influenced by the LXX. Although a distributive sense is appropriate for a much higher percentage of passages using the plural “hearts” in the LXX, no clear reason for the differentiation in the LXX has emerged. Likely the singular Hebrew form is original but the meaning is best represented in English with the plural.