Psalm 74:4-6

New English Translation

Footnotes

1. Psalm 74:4 tn This verb is often used of a lion’s roar, so the psalmist may be comparing the enemy to a raging, devouring lion.
2. Psalm 74:4 tn Heb “your meeting place.”
3. Psalm 74:4 tn Heb “they set up their banners [as] banners.” The Hebrew noun אוֹת (ʾot, “sign”) here refers to the enemy army’s battle flags and banners (see Num 2:12).
4. Psalm 74:5 tn Heb “it is known like one bringing upwards, in a thicket of wood, axes.” The Babylonian invaders destroyed the woodwork in the temple.
5. Psalm 74:6 tn This is the reading of the Qere (marginal reading). The Kethib (consonantal text) has “and a time.”
6. Psalm 74:6 tn The imperfect verbal form vividly describes the act as underway.
7. Psalm 74:6 tn Heb “its engravings together.”
8. Psalm 74:6 tn This Hebrew noun occurs only here in the OT (see H. R. Cohen, Biblical Hapax Legomena [SBLDS], 49-50).
9. Psalm 74:6 tn This Hebrew noun occurs only here in the OT. An Akkadian cognate refers to a “pickaxe” (cf. NEB “hatchet and pick”; NIV “axes and hatchets”; NRSV “hatchets and hammers”).