This verse portrays the normal situation at harvest time, which the psalmist prays will not happen. The passersby would greet the reapers with the words The blessing of the LORD be upon you! We bless you in the name of the LORD! This was the regular harvest blessing (see Ruth 2.4).

The psalmist has extended the figure almost beyond normal application to the situation. Verses 5-8 are the prayer against the enemies of Israel; the psalmist wishes that the enemies, instead of being like a normal growth and harvesting of grain (verses 7-8), may be like short-lived grass and weeds on the roofs of the houses (verses 6-7). In order to keep the picture clear for the readers, considerable restructuring in translation may be necessary. Because the custom of greeting the reapers may not seem to relate to the imaginary reapers in verse 7, it may be necessary to say, for example, “When people go past and see reapers at work, they say, ‘May the LORD bless you.’ ” If verse 8c is to be taken as the response of the reapers to the passers-by, it may be necessary to insert this here; for example, “and the reapers reply, ‘We bless you in the name of the LORD.’ ” Since this imaginary salutation between reapers and passers-by is an event which will not take place, it will be necessary to make this clear at the end by saying, for example, “and none of this will happen” or “no neighbor will greet you as you harvest, nor will you greet them, wishing them the LORD’s blessing.”

Some (Bible de Jérusalem, Bible en français courant, Biblia Dios Habla Hoy, Traduction œcuménique de la Bible) take the last line to be the psalmist’s own words, not a part of the blessing of the passers-by; this, however, does not seem very likely. New Jerusalem Bible and Weiser place this last line in separate quotation marks, as the answer of the reapers to the passers-by’s greetings; this may quite likely be correct. We bless you in the name of the LORD means “Acting as Yahweh’s representatives we wish his blessings on 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 .