In verse 17a the Hebrew verb form translated How precious may mean “how difficult” (Good News Translation, Bible en français courant, Traduction œcuménique de la Bible, Bible de Jérusalem, New Jerusalem Bible); see the use of the related adjective in 116.15. This seems preferable: the psalmist is exclaiming over the impossibility of understanding God’s thoughts (same word as in verse 2), which are beyond counting (verses 17b, 18a). Verse 17 may sometimes be rendered more clearly by switching lines a and b; for example, “God, your thoughts are so many,” “God, you think so many thoughts,” or “God, you have so many ideas.” Line a may then follow, “And your thoughts (or, the things you think) are so difficult for me to understand.”

More than the sand in verse 18 means “more than there are grains of sand.” The meaning of verse 18b is disputed. The verb in the Masoretic text is “awake” and is so translated by Revised Standard Version, Good News Translation, and others. A few Hebrew manuscripts have another verb which elsewhere in the Old Testament means “to cut” but here is conjectured to mean “to come to an end”; this text is preferred by An American Translation, New English Bible, Bible de Jérusalem, New Jerusalem Bible, Bible en français courant, New American Bible, New Jerusalem Bible, Biblia Dios Habla Hoy. The sense is “If I should finish counting them (that is, Yahweh’s thoughts)….” This gives excellent sense; the rest of the verse (“I am still with you”) would then mean that even if the psalmist were able to count all the thoughts of Yahweh, still he would not have begun to know Yahweh, who is ever beyond human capacity to understand. Toombs says the line means “If I were to count God’s thoughts till my strength failed, the task would remain unfinished.” Bible en français courant translates “Even if I were to finish my calculation (of your thoughts), I would not have finished understanding you.” The meaning can be expressed as follows: “I could never count them all because they are more than the grains of sand.” In languages in which sand is not common, and in which some other material object is used for comparing quantities, a substitution for sand should be used.

In this context the meaning of awake (of the Masoretic text) is not easy to determine. Kirkpatrick takes it to mean waking up after falling asleep; even then there would be more of God’s thoughts to count (also Cohen). It may refer to the next life (so Briggs, Dahood); but its statement here is so abrupt, with no relation to the context, that one is quite uncertain. Anderson and others believe that some words or a line must have fallen out of the text. The result of this uncertainty leaves the translator in a position of having to choose between what appears as an abrupt insertion in verse 18b and those versions which follow the conjectured meaning “to come to an end.” New English Bible renders it “to finish the count, my years must equal thine.” In other words “If I were able to count all of them, I would have to live as long as you.”

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 .