Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)
7 For I suffer[a] humiliation for your sake[b]
and am thoroughly disgraced.[c]
8 My own brothers treat me like a stranger;
they act as if I were a foreigner.[d]
9 Certainly[e] zeal for[f] your house[g] consumes me;
I endure the insults of those who insult you.[h]
10 I weep and refrain from eating food,[i]
which causes others to insult me.[j]
Footnotes
- Psalm 69:7 tn Heb “carry, bear.”
- Psalm 69:7 tn Heb “on account of you.”
- Psalm 69:7 tn Heb “and shame covers my face.”
- Psalm 69:8 tn Heb “and I am estranged to my brothers, and a foreigner to the sons of my mother.”
- Psalm 69:9 tn Or “for.” This verse explains that the psalmist’s suffering is due to his allegiance to God.
- Psalm 69:9 tn Or “devotion to.”
- Psalm 69:9 sn God’s house, the temple, here represents by metonymy God himself.
- Psalm 69:9 tn Heb “the insults of those who insult you fall upon me.”sn Jn 2:17 applies the first half of this verse to Jesus’ ministry in the context of John’s account of Jesus cleansing the temple.
- Psalm 69:10 sn Fasting was a practice of mourners. By refraining from normal activities such as eating food, the mourner demonstrated the sincerity of his sorrow.
- Psalm 69:10 tn Heb “and it becomes insults to me.”
11 I wear sackcloth
and they ridicule me.[a]
12 Those who sit at the city gate gossip about me;
drunkards mock me in their songs.[b]
13 O Lord, may you hear my prayer and be favorably disposed to me.[c]
O God, because of your great loyal love,
answer me with your faithful deliverance.[d]
14 Rescue me from the mud. Don’t let me sink.
Deliver me[e] from those who hate me,
from the deep water.
15 Don’t let the current overpower me.
Don’t let the deep swallow me up.
Don’t let the Pit[f] devour me.[g]
Footnotes
- Psalm 69:11 tn Heb “and I am an object of ridicule to them.”
- Psalm 69:12 tn Heb “the mocking songs of the drinkers of beer.”
- Psalm 69:13 tn Heb “as for me, [may] my prayer be to you, O Lord, [in] a time of favor.”
- Psalm 69:13 tn Heb “O God, in the abundance of your loyal love, answer me in the faithfulness of your deliverance.”
- Psalm 69:14 tn Heb “let me be delivered.”
- Psalm 69:15 tn Heb “well,” which here symbolizes the place of the dead (cf. Ps 55:23).
- Psalm 69:15 tn Heb “do not let the well close its mouth upon me.”
16 Answer me, O Lord, for your loyal love is good.[a]
Because of your great compassion, turn toward me.
17 Do not ignore[b] your servant,
for I am in trouble. Answer me right away.[c]
18 Come near me and redeem me.[d]
Because of my enemies, rescue me.
Footnotes
- Psalm 69:16 tn Or “pleasant”; or “desirable.”
- Psalm 69:17 tn Heb “do not hide your face from.” The Hebrew idiom “hide the face” can (1) mean “ignore” (see Pss 10:11; 13:1; 51:9) or (2) carry the stronger idea of “reject” (see Pss 30:7; 88:14).
- Psalm 69:17 tn Or “quickly.”
- Psalm 69:18 tn Heb “come near my life and redeem it.” The verb “redeem” casts the Lord in the role of a leader who protects members of his extended family in times of need and crisis (see Ps 19:14).
12 But they just keep saying, ‘We do not care what you say![a] We will do whatever we want to do! We will continue to behave wickedly and stubbornly!’”[b]
13 Therefore, the Lord says,
“Ask the people of other nations
whether they have heard of anything like this.
Israel should have been like a virgin,
but she has done something utterly revolting!
14 Does the snow ever completely vanish from the rocky slopes of Lebanon?
Do the cool waters from those distant mountains ever cease to flow?[c]
15 Yet my people have forgotten me
and offered sacrifices to worthless idols.
This makes them stumble along in the way they live
and leave the old reliable path of their fathers.[d]
They have left them to walk in bypaths,
in roads that are not smooth and level.[e]
16 So their land will become an object of horror.[f]
People will forever hiss out their scorn over it.
All who pass that way will be filled with horror
and will shake their heads in derision.[g]
17 I will scatter them before their enemies
like dust blowing in front of a burning east wind.
I will turn my back on them and not look favorably on them[h]
when disaster strikes them.”
Footnotes
- Jeremiah 18:12 tn Heb “It is useless!” See the same expression in a similar context in Jer 2:25.
- Jeremiah 18:12 tn Heb “We will follow our own plans and do each one according to the stubbornness of his own wicked heart.”sn This has been the consistent pattern of their behavior. See 7:24; 9:13; 13:10; 16:12.
- Jeremiah 18:14 tn The precise translation of this verse is somewhat uncertain. Two phrases in this verse are the primary cause of discussion and the source of numerous emendations, none of which has gained consensus. The phrase that is rendered here “rocky slopes” is in Hebrew צוּר שָׂדַי (tsur saday), which would normally mean something like “rocky crag of the field” (see BDB 961 s.v. שָׂדַי 1.g). Numerous emendations have been proposed, most of which are listed in the footnotes of J. A. Thompson, Jeremiah (NICOT), 436. The present translation has chosen to follow the proposal of several scholars that the word here is related to the Akkadian word shadu, meaning mountain. The other difficulty is the word translated “cease,” which in the MT is literally “be uprooted” (יִנָּתְשׁוּ, yinnateshu). The word is usually emended to read יִנָּשְׁתוּ (yinnashetu, “are dried up”) as a case of transposed letters (cf., e.g., BDB 684 s.v. נָתַשׁ Niph). This is probably a case of an error in hearing, and the word נָטַשׁ (natash), which is often parallel to עָזַב (ʿazav), translated here “vanish,” should be read in the sense that it has in 1 Sam 10:2. If one reads “are plucked up” and understands it figuratively of ceasing (“are dried” or “cease”), the sense is the same. For the sense of “distant” for the word זָרִים (zarim), see 2 Kgs 19:24.sn Israel’s actions are contrary to nature. See the same kind of argumentation in Jer 2:11 and 8:7.
- Jeremiah 18:15 sn Heb “the ancient path.” This has already been referred to in Jer 6:16. There is another “old way,” but it is the path trod by the wicked (cf. Job 22:15).
- Jeremiah 18:15 sn Heb “ways that are not built up.” This refers to the built-up highways. See Isa 40:4 for the figure. The terms “way,” “by-paths,” and “roads” are, of course, being used here in the sense of moral behavior or action.
- Jeremiah 18:16 tn There may be a deliberate double meaning involved here. The word translated “an object of horror” refers both to destruction (cf. 2:15; 4:17) and the horror or dismay that accompanies it (cf. 5:30; 8:21). The fact that there is no conjunction or preposition in front of the noun “hissing” that follows this word suggests that the reaction is in view here, not its cause. So does “be filled with horror,” which translates an etymologically related verb.
- Jeremiah 18:16 tn Heb “an object of lasting hissing. All who pass that way will be appalled and shake their head.”sn The actions of “shaking of the head” and “hissing” were obviously gestures of scorn and derision. See Lam 2:15-16.
- Jeremiah 18:17 tc Heb “I will show them [my] back and not [my] face.” This reading follows the suggestion of some of the versions and some of the Masoretes. The MT reads, “I will look on their back and not on their faces.”sn To “turn the back” is universally recognized as a symbol of rejection. The turning of the face toward one is the subject of the beautiful Aaronic blessing in Num 6:24-26.
Exposition of Psalm 8: Jesus and the Destiny of Humanity
5 For he did not put the world to come,[a] about which we are speaking,[b] under the control of angels. 6 Instead someone testified somewhere:
“What is man that you think of him[c] or the son of man that you care for him?
7 You made him lower than the angels for a little while.
You crowned him with glory and honor.[d]
8 You put all things under his control.”[e]
For when he put all things under his control, he left nothing outside of his control. At present we do not yet see all things under his control,[f] 9 but we see Jesus, who was made lower than the angels for a little while,[g] now crowned with glory and honor because he suffered death,[h] so that by God’s grace he would experience[i] death on behalf of everyone.
Footnotes
- Hebrews 2:5 sn The phrase the world to come means “the coming inhabited earth,” using the Greek term which describes the world of people and their civilizations.
- Hebrews 2:5 sn See the previous reference to the world in Heb 1:6.
- Hebrews 2:6 tn Grk “remember him.”
- Hebrews 2:7 tc Several witnesses, many of them early and significant (א A C D* P Ψ 0243 0278 33 1739 1881 al lat co), have at the end of v 7, “You have given him dominion over the works of your hands.” Other mss, not quite as impressive in weight, lack the words (P46 B D2 M). In spite of the impressive external evidence for the longer reading, it is most likely a scribal addition to conform the text of Hebrews to Ps 8:6 (8:7 LXX). Conformity of a NT quotation of the OT to the LXX was a routine scribal activity, and can hardly be in doubt here as to the cause of the longer reading.
- Hebrews 2:8 tn Grk “you subjected all things under his feet.”sn A quotation from Ps 8:4-6.
- Hebrews 2:8 sn The expression all things under his control occurs three times in 2:8. The latter two occurrences are not exactly identical to the Greek text of Ps 8:6 quoted at the beginning of the verse, but have been adapted by the writer of Hebrews to fit his argument.
- Hebrews 2:9 tn Or “who was made a little lower than the angels.”
- Hebrews 2:9 tn Grk “because of the suffering of death.”
- Hebrews 2:9 tn Grk “would taste.” Here the Greek verb does not mean “sample a small amount” (as a typical English reader might infer from the word “taste”), but “experience something cognitively or emotionally; come to know something” (cf. BDAG 195 s.v. γεύομαι 2).
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