Psalms 122

Psalms 122:1

6 tn Heb “he remembers his loyal love and his faithfulness to the house of Israel.”

7 tn Heb “the deliverance of our God,” with “God” being a subjective genitive (= God delivers).

Psalms 122:7

8

Psalms 122:9

1 sn Psalms 99. The psalmist celebrates the Lord’s just rule and recalls how he revealed himself to Israel’s leaders.

2 tn The prefixed verbal forms in v. 1 are understood here as indicating the nations’ characteristic response to the reality of the Lord’s kingship. Another option is to take them as jussives: “let the nations tremble…let the earth shake!”

3 sn Winged angels (Heb “cherubs”). Cherubs, as depicted in the OT, possess both human and animal (lion, ox, and eagle) characteristics (see Ezekiel 1:10; 10:14, 21; 41:18). They are pictured as winged creatures (Exodus 25:20; 37:9; 1 Kings 6:24-27; Ezekiel 10:8, 19) and serve as the very throne of God when the ark of the covenant is in view (Psalms 99:1; see Numbers 7:89; 1 Samuel 4:4; 2 Samuel 6:2; 2 Kings 19:15). The picture of the Lord seated on the cherubs suggests they might be used by him as a vehicle, a function they carry out in Ezekiel 1:22-28 (the “living creatures” mentioned here are identified as cherubs in Ezekiel 10:20). In Psalms 18:10 the image of a cherub serves to personify the wind.

4 tn The Hebrew verb נוּט (nut) occurs only here in the OT, but the meaning can be determined on the basis of the parallelism with רָגַז (ragaz, “tremble”) and evidence from the cognate languages (see H. R. Cohen, Biblical Hapax Legomena [SBLDS], 121).