As a comparison of Revised Standard Version with Good News Translation shows, there is considerable difference of opinion about the meaning of verses 6-7. In particular it is difficult to decide about (1) the geographical terms and (2) the meaning of God’s cataracts … waves … billows. In verse 6 Revised Standard Version gives the various clauses and phrases in the same order in which they occur in Hebrew; Good News Translation (see also New English Bible) has taken from the land of Jordan and of Hermon, from Mount Mizar to go with the following cataracts … waves … billows, and not with the preceding I remember thee (Good News Translation “I turn my thoughts to him”). Good News Translation has also shifted to the third person, “him” and “He,” in place of the second person, thee and thy. Good News Translation does this in order to maintain the third person reference to God uniformly throughout the psalm.
The land of Jordan could be Canaan as a whole or else the region where the Jordan River rises. Mount Hermon is some 75 kilometers (45 miles) northeast of Lake Galilee, reaching the height of some 2750 meters (8940 feet); the Masoretic text plural “Hermons” is explained as a reference to the whole mountain range, or else to the three main peaks of the Hermon. Mount Mizar is unknown; the Hebrew mitsʿar means “small” (as the Septuagint translates it here); some take it to be a lesser peak near Mount Hermon (Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch translates “the Hermon range with its peaks”); Hebrew Old Testament Text Project recommends Mizar; others take it to refer to Mount Zion (see New Jerusalem Bible “I think … of you, humble mountain”).
One of the difficulties with taking these three geographical terms as defining the psalmist’s location arises from the fact that the deep (Hebrew tehom) is the primeval abyss, the depths of chaos, out of which the earth was formed (Gen 1.2). The statement Deep calls to deep is taken to be poetic language; like waterfalls which seem to roar at each other, so the forces of chaos summon other forces to overwhelm the psalmist. That this word deep should refer to the torrents of the Jordan River seems unlikely, although some commentators so interpret it. Together with thy cataracts … waves … billows of verse 7, it seems better to take this as figurative language for extreme distress and anxiety. The forces of chaos overwhelm him, and he is near death (see the similar use of these figures in Jonah 2.2). Bible en français courant translates “You make the torrents roar, one flood calls to another, you make them all roll over me, I am completely submerged.”
Dahood takes all terms to be mythological allusions to Sheol, the world of the dead. This is quite possible, but the translation should not indicate that this is what the figures mean.
The Good News Translation expression “sent waves of sorrow over my soul” may be recast in some languages so that the imagery is preserved in a simile; for example, “he has caused me to feel sorrow like one feels the waves of the sea.” In languages where “waves of the sea” are unknown, a different adjustment may be required; for example, it may be necessary to shift to another image: “he has made me feel sorrow like one carried away by a flooding stream.”
In many languages it will not be possible to say as in Good News Translation “chaos roars at me like a flood.” Such an expression will often require major adjustments; for example, “I hear the roar of confusion; it is like the noise of a flood” or “I hear the noise of confusion which is like the noise of a flood. It is like the rumble of waterfalls falling down from Mount Hermon and Mount Mizar to the Jordan River.”
Quoted with permission from Bratcher, Robert G. and Reyburn, William D. A Handbook on the Book of Psalms. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 1991. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .