Today’s Word
Down and Out
For You—whom You struck they pursued, and they recounted the pain of Your victims. Psalm 69:27 [Hebrew Bible] Robert Alter Whom You struck – When did God strike you? The verb is nākâ, used some 500 times in the Tanakh, often for physical injury or even death. But that’s not the way it’s used here. …
Walk Among the Tombstones
May their encampment be laid waste, and in their tents may no one dwell. Psalm 69:26 [Hebrew Bible] Robert Alter No one dwell – Enough already! David’s already cursed them. He’s already wished them trapped, blind, and feeble. He’s elicited the storm God to scorch them with hot lava. Why keep the curses going? Ah,…
The Storm God
May their table before them become a trap, and their allies a snare. May their eyes grow too dark to see, make their loins perpetually shake. Pour out upon them Your wrath, and Your blazing fury overtake them. Psalm 69:23-25 [Hebrew Bible] Robert Alter Wrath – Here are your choices: wrath, fury, indignation, anger, judgment,…
What Is That?
They gave for my nourishment wormwood, and for my thirst they made me drink vinegar. Psalm 69:22 [Hebrew Bible] Robert Alter Wormwood – I’m guessing that you have no idea what “wormwood” is. And I’ll bet you’re no better informed about “gall,” the other English translation. But I’m pretty sure you’ve heard the verse before…
English Nuances
Reproach breaks my heart, I grow ill: I hope for consolation, and there is none, and for comforters, and do not find them. Psalm 69:21 [Hebrew Bible] Robert Alter Consolation – Look at this verse in two other translations (verse 20 in English Bibles): Reproaches have broken my heart, so that I am in despair. I looked…
Headliners
It is You who know my reproach, and my shame and disgrace before all my foes. Psalm 69:20 [Hebrew Bible] Robert Alter Reproach – “In a White House eager to distance itself from allegations of nepotism, corruption and grifting, Hunter Biden is the problem that simply won’t go away.”[1] We’re not so familiar with the word “reproach,”…
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