Mazmur 31:17

31:17 O Lord, do not let me be humiliated,

for I call out to you!

May evil men be humiliated!

May they go wailing to the grave! ¹ 

Mazmur 31:1

Psalm 31 ² 

For the music director; a psalm of David.

31:1 In you, O Lord, I have taken shelter!

Never let me be humiliated!

Vindicate me by rescuing me! ³ 

1 Samuel 2:9

2:9 He watches over ⁴  his holy ones, ⁵ 

but the wicked are made speechless in the darkness,

for it is not by one’s own strength that one prevails.

[31:17]  ¹ tn The verb יִדְּמוּ (yiddÿmu) is understood as a form of דָּמַם (damam, “wail, lament”). Another option is to take the verb from דָּמַם (“be quiet”; see BDB 198-99 s.v. I דָּמַם), in which case one might translate, “May they lie silent in the grave.”

[31:1]  ² sn Psalm 31. The psalmist confidently asks the Lord to protect him. Enemies threaten him and even his friends have abandoned him, but he looks to the Lord for vindication. In vv. 19-24, which were apparently written after the Lord answered the prayer of vv. 1-18, the psalmist thanks the Lord for delivering him.

[31:1]  ³ tn Heb “in your vindication rescue me.”

[2:9]  ⁴ tn Heb “guards the feet of.” The expression means that God watches over and protects the godly in all of their activities and movements. The imperfect verbal forms in v. 9 are understood as indicating what is typically true. Another option is to translate them with the future tense. See v. 10b.

[2:9]  ⁵ tc The translation follows the Qere and many medieval Hebrew mss in reading the plural (“his holy ones”) rather than the singular (“his holy one”) of the Kethib.