Translation & Sermon By Nate Wilson for Christ the Redeemer Church, Manhattan, KS, 11 Mar 2018
Greyed-out text should bring presentation down to 40+ minutes.
· Hundreds of years ago in England, there was a man by the name of Bernard Gilpin. He faithfully preached the Gospel in the Northern part of the country during the reign of Bloody Mary. She wasn’t called “bloody” for nothing. That wicked queen and her cohorts had Gilpin arrested and scheduled him to be burned at the stake in London for being a Protestant. The soldiers who arrested him began to march him down to London, but along the way, he broke his leg. As he sat by the side of the road in pain from his broken leg, the soldiers taunted him, saying, “Hey preacher, I thought you said that God would work everything together for your good. But here you are, on the side of the road in pain from a broken leg, on your way to be executed for heresy. God isn’t working things together for good for you!” But Bernard kept trusting God to save him. He meekly answered the soldiers that yes, he believed that even his broken leg was for his good. Some days later, Queen Mary died and Bernard Gilpin was set free. That’s when he realized that if his leg hadn’t been broken on the way to London, he would have arrived in London while Mary was still alive, and he would have been burned at the stake. But Gilpin respected God more than the Queen or anybody else, and he put his life behind that with full trust and obedience to God, and God delivered Him.
· We started into Psalm 34 last week, and I noted that this is an acrostic poem in Hebrew, one verse for each letter of the Hebrew alphabet, and, with only one exception[1], the first letter of each verse beginning with each subsequent letter of the alphabet.
· In the first half of the psalm, we looked at how to praise God for answering prayer.
· Now, in the second half of Psalm 34, I want to focus in on what it means to fear and respect the Lord. I see two main ways to do that in verses 11-22:
o The first way to show respect to God is to obey Him, so we will look at five commands we can obey to demonstrate our fear of the Lord.
o The second way to show respect to God is to trust Him, so the second part of this sermon will be looking at seven things we can trust God to do as a demonstration of our respect for Him.
· The part of the Psalm that we are looking at begins with an introduction that frames the whole picture in terms of fearing/respecting God:
o In order to start the verse with a “K” for the alphabet acrostic, I started with the word “Kindred” - the Hebrew word is the one usually translated “sons” or “children.” Verse 12 uses the parallel word “man” (although it is omitted in the NIV). This is for all the children[2] of God; it is for you.
o Verse 12 continues the introduction by offering a natural motivation to respect the Lord, namely that it will enhance your life and bring good things into it! This fear is definitely worth learning!
o So how do we learn respect for the LORD? The first lesson is…
· Verse 11 contains two commands: “come” and “listen.”
· The first command leku (from halak) is a general word in Hebrew for getting on the move.
o I find it interesting how often God’s commands start with a command to “come” or “go” – obedience to God is not a passive thing; it usually requires movement.
§ God told Abraham to go to a place, and then God would give him a land, a nation, and a blessing
§ When Moses sought permission from Pharaoh to do a worship service in the dessert, Pharaoh first was asked to “let my people go.” Staying “put” in Egypt was not an option.
§ When God spoke to Jonah, he first said, “get up and go to Nineveh” and then the mission and the life lessons started flowing.
§ And, of course, Jesus’ Great Commission started with “Going into all the world” in order to “make disciples of every ethnicity.”
§ Here in this Psalm, we see we have to move in close in order to learn to fear God.
o The assumption that the psalmist makes that you are not currently in the best position to hear and obey God indicates that we often need to move away from things that distract us – or that attract us in their direction instead of God’s direction.
o As I was preparing this part of my sermon last week, I was sitting in a library. Everything was quiet, and I was jamming on my studies, but then two people sat down next to me and struck up a conversation with one another. Suddenly, it was a lot harder for me to concentrate on God’s word. I tried to just focus through it, but after several minutes, as it became clear they weren’t planning to stop talking anytime soon and the librarian wasn’t going to call them down for it, I just had to get up and move across the library in order to be able to concentrate again on what God had called me to do.
o What do you need to move away from in order to get in position to hear & obey God better?
· The second command is “listen” – and the Hebrew verb shema’ embraces the whole process of hearing, paying attention to, understanding, and then heeding and obeying:
o Are you listening for God’s commands to you, standing ready to obey them?
· Following the question in v.12 comes three more Imperatives that can be obeyed:
o Why? Because God destroys the wicked, but invites the righteous who do not practice mirmah into fellowship with Him:
§ Psalm 5:6 “You will destroy speakers of falsehood; a man of bloodshed and deceit Yahweh will abhor.”(NAW)
§ Psalm 24:3-5 “Who will go up on Yahweh’s mountain, and who will rise up in His holy place? It will be innocent hands and a pure heart which has not carried hope based on vanity and has not vowed for the purpose of deceit. He will carry a blessing from Yahweh, even righteousness from the God of his salvation.” (NAW)
o Because what you say is of eternal significance. Things are not eternal, but persons are, and words are the basis of relationships with other persons that will last forever.
§ James 3:6 “And the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity. The tongue is so set among our members that it defiles the whole body, and sets on fire the course of nature; and it is set on fire by hell.” (NKJV)
§ “Speaking becomes sinful when it is hasty, rash, continual, unseasonable, excessive, clamorous, senseless, unchaste, indelicate, impure, filthy, prevaricating, quibbling, deceitful, lying, slanderous, tattling, babbling, backbiting, detractive, reproachful, opprobrious, flattering, seductive, betraying confidence, revealing secrets, awakening groundless suspicions, talebearing, news-carrying, railing, reviling, boastful, scornful, desperate, murmuring, foolish, egotistical, vain, proud, malignant, bitter, resentful, cursing, profane, or blasphemous.” ~William Plumer
o What does it look like to keep your tongue from evil?
§ Has your Mom ever told you that if you are upset you should to count to ten before you speak? That principle of holding back from spewing your frustrations out on everybody would save a lot of heartache right there.
§ But you can’t solve this problem by never speaking. I am reminded of the story of the monk who limited his speech to two words per year. After his first year in the monastery, he spoke his first two words to the prior: “Bed hard.” Another year went by and his two words at the end of the second year were, “Food cold.” “Good grief,” replied the prior, you’ve done nothing but complain the whole time you’ve been here!”
§ Positively conforming our spoken words to the spoken words of God is the other half of the picture. Filling your mind with the Bible, then taking every thought captive to the obedience of Jesus Christ, and then expressing things in a way that is consistent with what you’ve found in the Bible is the positive side of keeping your tongue from evil.
§ This negative holding back and positive speaking come together in one verse in Ephesians 4:29: “Let no unwholesome word proceed from your mouth, but only such a word as is good for edification according to the need of the moment, so that it will give grace to those who hear.” (NASB)
o You want to see good things happen and enjoy life? Fear God through obeying Him with your tongue, keeping it from evil and speaking grace. Next…
o Again, there is a positive & a negative command. God didn’t make human relationships neutral.
§ You can’t say, “I won’t do anything bad, but I won’t do anything good either.”
§ And you can’t say, “I’ll do good but at the same time I won’t turn away from evil.” It has to be both or it’s evil.
o As Christians we define evil in terms of Christ. It doesn’t matter what your neighbors think; it doesn’t matter what the news says; it doesn’t matter how you feel:
§ What does the Word of God say is evil? Then we must turn away from it.
§ What does the Word of God say is good? Then we must do it.
o This is a lifelong process. You can’t say, “I’ve turned away from evil and I’ve done good, so I can check both off the list.” No, every day, every hour, every minute this is the path of wisdom, identify evil and turn away from it, and identify good (as Christ defines good) and do it. This is the lifestyle of fearing God by obeying Him.
· V.14b seek peace & pursue it/hunt it down. (cf. Isa. 1:16b-17a, Rom. 12:18)
o Verse 13 covered evils of the tongue, and v. 14 covered evils in the actions, what more could be left? I think that it’s interesting that “seeking peace” is the third and final category of obeying God as an expression of fearing Him.
o In our church membership vows, we promise to “preserve the peace and purity of the church.” But peace and purity can be opposite ends of a spectrum. Too much peacemaking leads to compromise with sin. Too much witchhunting over sins and you have a very disturbed church. There’s a balance which requires the wisdom of God to tread for yourself and which requires us to extend grace to brothers and sisters who naturally stand on different points of that spectrum.
o Hebrews 12:14-15 demonstrates a good balance between peace and purity: “Pursue peace with all men and sanctification without which no one will see the Lord. See to it that no one comes short of the grace of God; that no root of bitterness springing up causes trouble…” (NASB, cf. James 3:17-18)
· So this is how to show respect (fear) to God through our obedience to Him. If we want to enjoy life and see good things:
o We will “come” and “listen” to His word,
o we will “keep our tongue from evil”
o we will “turn away from evil and do good,”
o and we will seek peace, hunting it down, no matter how elusive it is.
o This should be our position... Now, what about…
There is no verb in verses 15-16. The key words in these two verses are instead four prepositions:
1) Toward the righteous (v.15a)
2) Toward their cry/prayer/hollering (15b)
· This is a posture of love and interest, leaning eagerly towards them. Believing that this is true of God toward you will teach you all the more to respect Him!
· But note God’s posture towards His enemies: He is…
3) Against - literally “among” - evildoers (16a)
· God is not ignoring wickedness. He is right there paying attention and executing a plan.
· What is His plan? The fourth preposition introduces it:
4) To erase them from memory (v.16b)
· “Who now cares for Cyrus, Alexander, Caesar or Charlemagne? Their names, though still repeated on earth, have no sweet odors. No man reveres their memory, fears their power, or would give a farthing to be of their lineage. Whereas there are millions on earth who think of Abel, Enoch, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, David, Hannah, Anna, Mary, John, Peter and Paul, and hope soon to see them in glory and be joined to their assembly.” ~William Plumer
· Again, believing that this is true will increase your respect for God, and that is related to my second main point. Whereas the earlier verbs in verses 11 and 13 were designed to teach us to fear God through our acts of obedience to Him, these latter verses are designed to teach us…
I count 7 positive verbs about God’s salvation, plus 2 about His judicial treatment of the wicked.
· Presumably these are the cries of the righteous that God hears, although the subject is not in the Hebrew. In order to find a “Q” word, I just looked for an English word that was consistent with someone crying out to be heard and inserted the word “Querying.”
· I called a friend the other day, and he didn’t answer the phone, so my call went to his voicemail, but he hadn’t set up his voicemail box, so I wasn’t able to leave a message either. God is not like that. God doesn’t need voicemail because He always hears every time we call upon Him. He doesn’t even need a phone - and He hears! No prayer is lost on Him. And not only does He hear; He acts – that’s included in the word shema’.
· And look at His response rate. He delivers them from most of their troubles, right? NO!
· This wasn’t just David’s experience, it was the experience of the Jews throughout all of history, as Nehemiah 9:28 recounted: “…Yet when they returned and cried out to You, You heard from heaven; And many times You delivered them according to Your mercies…” (NKJV)
· A God who delivers like this is to be respected with our trust. “I want this God to be my deliverer too! I want to bring up with him the crises I am facing now!”
· The third verb describing God’s salvation is:
· Skeptics ask, “Where is God? I can’t see Him!” Well, here’s your answer: Look for someone whose heart is broken, and God is right there, saving them.
· Now, we’re not talking about just any kind of brokenheartedness: “He who has a ‘broken heart and a contrite spirit’ is heartily sorry for having offended God, violated his law, and grieved his Spirit. He makes a full surrender. He has no hope in himself. He sees that he is self-destroyed. God has smitten him, conscience has smitten him, the law has slain him. If God does not save him he sees he is ruined forever.” ~William Plumer
· This Hebrew noun daka only occurs in two other places in the OT, and one of them is Isa. 57:15 “For thus says the One who is high and lifted up, dwelling forever, and whose name is holy, ‘High and holy I dwell - and with the beaten one and the lowly of spirit, to revive the spirit of lowly ones and to revive the heart of beaten ones.’” (NAW)
· Its verb form occurs a little more frequently (about 18 times) and is prominent in Isa.53:5 “However, He was being pierced from our rebellion - beaten from our iniquity. Chastisement for our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes there is healing for us….10. And His beating pleased Jehovah. He caused grief if His soul would place itself for a guilt-offering...”
· This is significant, because, as we saw in Leviticus, the asham-guilt-offering was what God provided to atone for the amas-guilt of sin, and as we’ll see at the end of Ps. 34, this amas-guilt – and how it is dealt with – is the make-or-break issue.
· Other forms of the word “crushed/contrite” in the Psalms include notably:
o Psalm 9:4-10 For You effected my justice and my adjudication; You sat on the bench, judging righteously. You repulsed nations; You destroyed the wicked – You obliterated their name forever and ever! As for the enemy, [his] swords were finished off indefinitely; You even uprooted [his] cities. The memory of them perished noisily, But as for Yahweh, He will be in office forever; He has prepared His bench for the judgment. And He Himself will judge the world with righteousness; He will adjudicate for peoples with things that are right. And Yahweh will be a stronghold for the one who is beaten down, a stronghold for times when there is a crisis. Then those who know Your name will trust in You, for You did not forsake those who were seeking You, Yahweh!” (NAW)
o Psalm 10:17-18 “It is the desires of the lowly ones that You, Yahweh heeded. You will cause their heart to stand firm; You will cause Your ear to be attentive, in order to adjudicate for an orphan or [for] the one who is beaten down; never again to add to the trembling of mortal-man from the earth.” (NAW)
o Ps. 51:17 “…a broken and contrite (crushed) heart you will not despise.”
· We see the same theme in the New Testament,
o for instance, in the Beatitudes of Mat. 5:3-4. “Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted…” (KJV)
o The Hebrew word daka is translated tapeinos in the Greek Old Testament, and that word also occurs in the Greek New Testament along the same lines:
§ Luke 18:14 I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other; for… he who humbles himself will be exalted." (NKJV)
§ 1 Peter 5:5 “…all of you, gird yourselves with humble-mindedness toward one another, because ‘God arrays Himself against proud men, but to humble men He gives grace.’” (NAW)
§ 2 Cor. 7:6 “…God, who comforts the downcast, comforted us…” (NKJV)
· This God who comforts and saves the brokenhearted and crushed is the kind of God I respect; this is the kind of God I can trust to be my savior!
· The 5th verb about God’s salvation is the same as the second one in the list:
· This makes it clear that the life of a believer is not a trouble-free life. There will be troubles, but you will be delivered from several of them, right? NO! You will be delivered from all of them!
· Romans 8:35-39 “Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? … But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (NASB)
· A God that powerful is worthy of your respect. He is worth putting your trust in.
· While the Psalms recount events in David’s life and can also apply to our lives, verses like this remind us that the Psalms are also about the life of our Savior and Keeper Himself. This verse was quoted by the Apostle John as a prophecy fulfilled in the life of Christ, whose bones were not broken despite it being customary as part of crucifixion at the time (John 19:32-36).
· In the New Testament, Jesus expanded on this. God’s care of you is not only concerning the catastrophic things that would break bones but also over the seemingly-insignificant little details; God even watches over each hair on your head! (Matt. 10:30)
· This verb is a participle in Hebrew, which indicates to me that this is an ongoing present-tense mission of God to protect/keep/tend to those He has made righteous, all the days of their life!
· A God like this is worth showing respect to by placing your trust in Him and entrusting your life to Him.
· Now before we get to the 7th verb describing God’s salvation we find two negative verbs that describe God’s just treatment of the wicked:
· First Samuel 25:29 describes the slaying of the wicked as an act of divine judgment against Nabal – his wickedness returning upon his own head such that he died of a heart attack,
· but the two Hebrew words in v.21: (ra’) “evil/wicked/unrighteous” and (moot) “die/slay/ death” occur most often together in the context of capital punishment, such as Deut. 17:5 & Luke 23:22. Often asham guilt in the Mosaic law resulted in a death sentence.
· This also extends to spiritual judgment:
o In Gen. 2, God decreed death as the punishment for eating of the forbidden fruit. Adam & Eve became subject to spiritual death and eventual physical death when they ate it anyway.
o Later, Jesus said, John 8:24 “Therefore I said to you that you will die in your sins; for if you do not believe that I am He, you will die in your sins.” (NKJV)
o And then the Apostle Paul: Romans 5:8-10 “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him. For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life.” (NKJV)
· In the NT, Jesus calls hate “murder” in the sermon on the Mount, and 1 John 3:15 echoes, “Everyone who hates his brother is a manslayer, and you know that every manslayer does not have eternal life abiding in himself.”
· Note that the ra’ah-evil/unrighteousness that slays the wicked is the same ra’ah in v.19 that assails the righteous yet from which the righteous is delivered. Those who do not cry out to God to be saved from the evil – inside them and outside them – will perish in their sin. Both the just and the unjust experience evil inside and out, the difference is that the just live by faith whereas the unjust don’t look to God for deliverance.
· But, for those who trust/take refuge in Him, we see our final verb about salvation:
· This is the Gospel!
o V.21 says that those who break the two greatest commandments by hating God and man and practicing evil will be found guilty by God in the judgment and will suffer death as the penalty decreed for punishment,
o but v.22 says it is possible to be found not guilty, to not be condemned in the judgment! And the way God has provided for this fabulous escape clause is by Him paying the price of death Himself to buy back (or “redeem”) souls so that they may live. This is exactly what Jesus the Messiah did!
· A thousand years after David, Jesus said, “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who hears My word, and believes Him who sent Me, has eternal life, and does not come into judgment, but has passed out of death into life.” (John 5:24, NASB)
· This “believing” in Jesus and God’s salvation is the same “trusting/taking refuge in Yahweh” that David uses to describe those who will not be found guilty, who will not be condemned, whose life will be redeemed, and who will become His servants, His vassals.
· Christ is the great redeemer. Who will show Him fear and respect by trusting Him to save you from evil – inside and out – and by obeying Him as your Master and King?
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Vaticanus (Psalm 33) |
Brenton (LXX) |
Douay-Rheims (Vulgate) |
KJV |
NAW |
MT |
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12 δεῦτε, τέκνα, ἀκούσατέ μου· φόβον κυρίου διδάξω ὑμᾶς. |
11 Come, ye children, hear me: I will teach you the fear of the Lord. |
12 Come, children, hearken to me: I will teach you the fear of the Lord. |
11 Come, ye children, hearken unto me: I will teach you the fear of the LORD. |
11 Kindred, come listen to me; I will teach y’all respect for Yahweh. |
יב לְכוּ בָנִים שִׁמְעוּ לִי יִרְאַת יְהוָה אֲלַמֶּדְכֶם. |
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13 τίς ἐστιν X ἄνθρωπος |
12 What X man is there that desires life, loving to see good days? |
13 Who is the man that desireth life: who |
12
What X man is he that
desir |
12 Life: who is the man so inclined, loving the days in order to see what is good? |
יג מִי הָאִישׁ הֶחָפֵץ חַיִּים אֹהֵב יָמִים לִרְאוֹת טוֹב[B]. |
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14 παῦσον τὴν γλῶσσάν σου ἀπὸ κακοῦ καὶ χείλη σου τοῦ μὴ λαλῆσαι δόλον. |
13 Keep thy tongue from evil, and thy lips from speaking guile. |
14 Keep thy tongue from evil, and thy lips from speaking guile. |
13 Keep thy tongue from evil, and thy lips from speaking guile. |
13 Maintain your tongue away from evil and your lips away from speaking deceit. |
יד נְצֹר[C] לְשׁוֹנְךָ מֵרָע וּשְׂפָתֶיךָ מִדַּבֵּר מִרְמָה. |
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15 ἔκκλινον ἀπὸ κακοῦ καὶ ποίησον ἀγαθόν, ζήτησον εἰρήνην καὶ δίωξον αὐτήν. |
14 Turn away from evil, and do good; seek peace, and pursue it. |
15 Turn away from evil and do good: seek after peace and pursue it. |
14 Depart from evil, and do good; seek peace, and pursue it. |
14 Negate evil, and do good. Seek peace, and hunt it down! |
טו סוּרF מֵרָע וַעֲשֵׂהF טוֹב בַּקֵּשׁ שָׁלוֹם וְרָדְפֵהוּ. |
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16 ὀφθαλμοὶ κυρίου ἐπὶ δικαίους, καὶ ὦτα αὐτοῦ εἰς δέησιν αὐτῶν. |
15 The eyes of the Lord are over the righteous, and his ears [are open] to their prayer: |
16 The eyes of the Lord are upon the just: and his ears unto their prayers. |
15 The eyes of the LORD are upon the righteous, and his ears are open unto their cry. |
15 [Orientation of] Yahweh’s eyes is toward those who have been made righteous, and His ears are toward their hollering. |
טז עֵינֵי יְהוָה אֶל צַדִּיקִים וְאָזְנָיו אֶל שַׁוְעָתָם. |
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17 πρόσωπον δὲ κυρίου ἐπὶ ποιοῦντας κακὰ τοῦ ἐξολεθρεῦσαι ἐκ γῆς τὸ μνημόσυνον αὐτῶν. |
16 but the face of the Lord is against them that do evil, to destroy their memorial from the earth. |
17 But the countenance of the Lord is against them that do evil things: to cut off the remembrance of them from the earth. |
16 The face of the LORD is against them that do evil, to cut off the remembrance of them from the earth. |
16 Presence of Yahweh is among those who do evil in order to cut off their memory from the earth. |
יז פְּנֵי יְהוָה בְּעֹשֵׂי רָע לְהַכְרִית מֵאֶרֶץ זִכְרָם. |
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18 ἐκέκραξαν [οἱ δίκαιοι[D]], καὶ ὁ κύριος εἰσήκουσεν αὐτῶν καὶ ἐκ πασῶν τῶν θλίψεων αὐτῶν ἐρρύσατο αὐτούς. |
[The righteous] cried, and the Lord hearkened to them, 17 and delivered them out of all their afflictions. |
18 [The just] cried, and the Lord heard them: and delivered them out of all their troubles. |
17 The righteous cry, and the LORD heareth, and delivereth them out of all their troubles. |
17 [Querying] ones cried out, then Yahweh Himself heard, and from all their crises He gave them deliverance. |
יח צָעֲקוּ וַיהוָה שָׁמֵעַ וּמִכָּל צָרוֹתָם הִצִּילָם. |
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19 ἐγγὺς κύριος τοῖς συντετριμμένοις τὴν καρδίαν καὶ τοὺς ταπεινοὺς τῷ πνεύματι σώσει. |
18 The Lord is near to them that are of a contrite heart; and will save the lowly in spirit. |
19 The Lord is nigh unto them that are of a contrite heart: and he will save the humble of spirit. |
18 The LORD is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart; and saveth such as be of a contrite spirit. |
18 Right next to those whose heart has been broken is Yahweh, and He will make safe those whose spirit is crushed. |
יט קָרוֹב יְהוָה לְנִשְׁבְּרֵי לֵב וְאֶת דַּכְּאֵי רוּחַ יוֹשִׁיעַ. |
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20 πολλαὶ αἱ θλίψεις τ |
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Many are the afflictions of the righteous: but out of them all Lord will
deliver |
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Many are the afflictions of the just; but out of them all will the Lord
deliver |
19 Many are the afflictions of the righteous: but the LORD delivereth him out of them all. |
19 Some amount of evils happen to one who is righteous, but Yahweh will give him deliverance from all of them. |
כ רַבּוֹת רָעוֹת צַדִּיק וּמִכֻּלָּם יַצִּילֶנּוּ יְהוָה. |
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21 [κύριος] φυλάσσει πάντα τὰ ὀστᾶ αὐτῶν, ἓν ἐξ αὐτῶν οὐ συντριβήσεται. |
20 He keeps all their bones: not one of them shall be broken. |
21 et dilataverunt super me os suum dixerunt euge euge viderunt oculi nostri |
20 He keepeth all his bones: not one of them is broken. |
20 Tending all his bones; not one from among them gets broken. |
כא שֹׁמֵר כָּל עַצְמוֹתָיו אַחַת מֵהֵנָּה לֹא נִשְׁבָּרָה.[E] |
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22 θάνατος ἁμαρτωλῶν πονηρός, καὶ οἱ μισοῦντες τὸν δίκαιον πλημμελήσουσιν. |
21 The death of sinners is evil: and they that hate righteousness will go wrong. |
22 The death of the wicked is very evil: and they that hate the just shall be guilty. |
21 Evil[F] shall slay the wicked: and they that hate the righteous shall be desolate. |
21 Unrighteousness will slay an evil person, and those who hate a righteous person will bear guilt. |
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23 λυτρώσεται κύριος ψυχὰς δούλων αὐτοῦ, καὶ οὐ μὴ πλημμελήσωσιν πάντες οἱ ἐλπίζοντες ἐπ᾿ αὐτόν. |
22
The Lord will redeem the souls of his servants: and no |
23 The Lord will redeem the soul[s] of his servants: and
no |
22
The LORD redeemeth the soul[H] of his servants: and no |
22 Vassals of His Yahweh is redeeming the life of, so all those who take refuge in Him will not bear guilt. |
כג פּוֹדֶה יְהוָה נֶפֶשׁ עֲבָדָיו וְלֹא יֶאְשְׁמוּ כָּל הַחֹסִים בּוֹ. |
[1] The vav is omitted from the middle of the alphabet, leaving an extra verse at the end which the author starts with the letter pe.
[2] Plumer also noted that the psalmist sets the example of what is the most important thing to teach children!
[A] My original chart includes the NASB and NIV, but
their copyright restrictions have forced me to remove them from the
publicly-available edition of this chart. I have included the ESV in footnotes
when it employs a word not already used by the KJV, NASB, or NIV. (NAW is my
translation.) When a translation adds words not in the Hebrew text, but does
not indicate it has done so by the use of italics (or greyed-out text), I put
the added words in [square brackets]. When one version chooses a wording which is
different from all the other translations, I underline it. When a
version chooses a translation which, in my opinion, either departs too far from
the root meaning of the Hebrew word or departs too far from the grammar form of
the original text, I use strikeout. And when a version omits a word
which is in the Hebrew text, I insert an X. (I also place an X at the end of a
word if the original word is plural but the English translation is singular.) I
occasionally use colors to help the reader see correlations between the various
editions and versions when there are more than two different translations of a
given word. Hebrew text that is colored purple matches the Dead Sea Scrolls,
and variants between the DSS and the MT are noted in endnotes with the following
exceptions: When a holem or qametz-hatuf or qibbutz pointing
in the MT is represented in the DSS by a vav (or vice versa),
or when a hireq pointing in the MT is represented in the DSS by a yod
(the corresponding consonantal representation of the same vowel) – or vice
versa, or when the tetragrammaton is spelled with paleo-Hebrew letters, I
did not record it a variant. The only known Dead Sea Scroll containing Psalm 34
is 4Q83,
which has fragments from vs. 1, 21, and 22.
[B] Many English translations render the first half “who desires life,” But in Hebrew, “desires/loves/is inclined toward” is a singular adjective with the word “the” in front of it, matching the singular “man” not the plural “life.” Furthermore, Some English versions translate the second phrase “loving to see many good days,” but the word “many” or “length” is not in the Hebrew or Greek text, and “Days” is plural in Hebrew whereas “good” is singular, so singular good can’t be an adjective describing plural days, rather, “seeing what is good” is the purpose for being oriented towards a full life and loving the days of your life.
[C] Qal Imperative ms
[D] Also in the Syriac and Targums, but this is an understandable insertion for making better sense of the original which may have left out the obvious under the constraint of its own poetic form.
[E] DSS 4Q83 spells this word without the He at the end of this word, making it masculine instead of feminine, but “bones” are feminine. Either way, the verb is a participle like the opening verb is (although the MT spelling could also be interpreted as Perfect tense). This is mentioned as a prophecy fulfilled in the life of Christ (John 19:32-36).
[F] ESV=affliction
[G] LXX and Targums read this with different vowels which made it a noun (death) instead of a verb. Davidson labels this a Pilel Future 2sf verb.
[H] LXX&Vulgate souls (plural), ESV=life, NIV=omits