[b-hebrew] Ps. 55:23b

Isaac Fried if at math.bu.edu
Tue Feb 19 23:20:43 EST 2008


John,

The New American Bible renders the second part Psalms 55:(22)23 as  
"God will never allow the righteous to stumble", seeing MOT as a  
variant of MOK [as in Leviticus 25:25], MUG [as in Nahum 1:5], and  
NTH. The KJV renders it more dubiously as "he shall never suffer the  
righteous to be moved [moved where?]", seeing MOT as a variant of MU$  
[as in Zechariah 14:4]. I would not see MOT as 'shake', certainly not  
in the prolonged physical sense.
It stands to reason that L-(OLAM refers to God's time. Yet, indeed,  
in Exodus 21:6 L-(OLAM appears in the sense of only 'life-time'.  
Psalms 21:5 is open to more than one interpretation.

Isaac Fried, Boston University

On Feb 18, 2008, at 7:42 PM, JBarach at aol.com wrote:

> BHaverim --
>
> In Ps. 55:23b, I see that most translations say something like "He  
> will
> never let the righteous be shaken."  Whence comes the "never,"   
> though?
>
> It appears that the translation never comes from "not" (lo') and  
> "forever"
> (l'olam).  Is that the normal idiom for expressing the idea that   
> something
> will "never" happen?  Is the psalm saying that the righteous will   
> NEVER be
> shaken?  Or is it saying that the righteous will NOT be shaken   
> FOREVER?  The
> latter would imply that the righteous may certainly be shaken  for  
> a time, but that
> that time of shaking will come to an end.
>
> Help!
>
> John
>
>
>
>
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